The proposed library-based, cross-cultural project will study the managerial competence of older women in the non-industrialized world. Focus will be on the matron's authority over younger female relatives, the forms this authority takes and its cultural context. The antecedent variables are three aspects of culture which profoundly influence women's lives in non-industrial societies: how a society traces descent, the society's customary residence pattern and the contribution women make to its subsustence. The following hypotheses will be tested. First, in those societies in which women make a major contribution to subsistence, older women will dominate younger female kin in the interest of productivity. Second, in those societies in which women's contribution to subsistence is minimal and in which patrilocal residence is practiced and descent is patrilineal, the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship will be emphasized, and the older woman will confine and restrict her daughter-in-law in order to assure her virtue. Third, when women's contribution to subsistence is minimal and residence is other than patrilocal and descent is other than patrilineal, younger women although in a subordinate position, will enjoy a measure of autonomy. [To test these hypotheses cross-culturally, the P.I. will code the dependent variables (older women's authority) on a five point scale using ethnographic data from three libraries. The antecedent variables are available in the corpus of codes produced by Murdock and his co-workers. Subsamples of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample will be utilized and the component societies will be selected by specified methods. Tests of significance will follow the small sample procedures introduced by Landauer and Whiting.] If support for the hypotheses is statistically significant, the results will suggest that American society would benefit from fuller use of the largely untapped potential of its older women. The project's codes and the ethnographic bibliography on which they are based will create a new data set, which should stimulate much needed further research on older women.
