Way of Kings Readalong: Gender roles on Roshar

We've seen a little bit about the differences in what members of different genders are allowed and encouraged to do. I thought it was interesting how things like reading were entrusted only to women, since reading is how you gain knowledge (and power!), and it seems like the men were the ones who wanted all the power in this world. So here's a discussion post about the different gender roles and what some possible implications are.

But first, a few words from Brandon Sanderson:

I found this video on YouTube where Sanderson talks a bit about gender roles in history and in The Way of Kings. It's only a minute or two in the middle of the video (4:30-6:58), but I thought it was interesting.

YouTube is being annoying and I cannot embed the video so here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqeKPBHquOg

Gender differences on Roshar

A table of some basic differences in genders:

Men	Women
Can read glyphs	Can read and write
Masculine arts: business, soldiery, leadership, dueling, farming, surgery	Feminine arts: music, painting, writing, logic, and science
Role in war: fighting and strategizing	Role in war: Administrative matters, passing along information
Rules of appearance: none	Rules of appearance: All women who are past the age of adolescence must guard their “safehand” by covering it with a long sleeve or glove.
Other roles: Ardent	Other roles: Ardent

Last week Michelle @ Book Hangovers asked about safehands last week, and I figured there had to be a better explanation than the one I pieced together. Turns out there is! Here is Sanderson's answer from a Q&A on Goodreads:

There will be more explanation in-world as it comes along, but it's for much the same reason that in some cultures in our world you don't show people the bottoms of your feet, and in other cultures showing the top of your head is offensive. It's part of what has grown out of the Vorin culture, and there are reasons for it. One of them has to do with a famous book written by an artist who claimed that true feminine pursuits and arts were those that could be performed with one hand, while masculine arts were those performed with two hands, in a way associating delicacy with women and brute force with men. Some people in Roshar disagree with this idea, but the custom has grown out of that foundational work on masculine and feminine arts. That's where that came from. One aspect of this is that women began to paint one-handed and do things one-handed in upper, higher society. You'll notice that the lower classes don't pay a lot of attention to it—they'll just wear a glove.
As a student of human nature and of anthropology, it fascinates me how some cultures create one thing as being taboo whereas in another culture, the same thing can be very much not taboo. It's just what we do as people.
There's more to it than that, but that will stand for now. 

Going back to the video, Sanderson mentions something about needing a married pair of men and women to make things work. In a war, you need the generals and the soldiers, and you also need someone who can relay information and take care of administrative matters. While one role is more direct in its application to war, both are equally necessary. 

I thought this was interesting, since it kind of speaks to how gender roles are distributed on Roshar - the men think they are the ones with power, doing things like providing food, being surgeons, and slaying enemies, but women hold the knowledge and arts that everyone depends on. The women may not be directly contributing to survival, but they are in charge of all the things that make us human - the arts, the intellectual pursuit of science, and writing.

I thought this was an interesting choice, since in our society we equate knowledge with power. So the women are secretly in charge, but the men can keep thinking that they are in power? Dalinar makes a remark at some point about how unseemly it would be for a man to write - I think it was in the context of not knowing who wrote the words in blood next to Gavilar. Clearly he doesn't envy the women's ability to read and write, or possess knowledge that he has no access to.

Another thought - if people are only valuable in pairs, what about people who are gay or choose to be unmarried? I would assume that these situations are quietly frowned upon but I can't really picture a world without a few people who don't follow the norm. It also seems like Ardents are outside of gender roles, since Kabsal is allowed to eat the "feminine" food jam. So do they renounce their gender when they join ardentia? But then what about when they leave? SO MANY QUESTIONS.