> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Reference:: Annette B. Weiner & Jane Schneider, J. eds, *Cloth and human experience*. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp 3-4, 1989. > Date:: 1989 > Tags:: #warp > WeftLinks:: [[Equity value of craft]] > Claim:: [[Claim - Craft plays an important role in rites of passage associated with birth and childhood]] > [!SUMMARY] Summary > Women play a major role in the textiles that bind a society together. ### Highlights >Women are by no means the universal producers of cloth, but in many societies they monopolize all or most of the manufacturing sequence, giving them a larger role than men. Many societies also assign women, rather than men, to exchange or give the cloth that tie the living to the dead, the bride’s family to the groom’s family, the politically dominant to their dependent clients. In ceremonies of rulership, cloth is generally in the hands of the men, but here, too, women may participate as producers or handlers of sanctified materials…. the study of cloth can illuminate women’s contributions to social and political organization that are otherwise overlooked.