Chanchalo, behave as equals with their husbands and are treated as such, within and

outside the household. As a result of this practice, men and women enter into marriage on

an equal basis. When they are asked which spouse is the household head the universal

response for both wife and husband is that their households have "dos cabezas" (two

heads), not just one (Hamilton 2001).

 According to Hamilton, Chanchalo has resisted the prevailing patriarchal culture of

Ecuador and the rest of Latin America thanks to the absence of development projects in

this village. Being ignored by development, Chanchalo was not influenced by the

gendered ideology of the predominant culture of Ecuador.

Inequality in Gender Relations

 Gender relations of inequality are those where one partner (generally the man), uses

any form of power over the other part to determine the different issues pertaining to

family like size, productive activities, expense allocations, etc. Doughty (1971 cited in

Stein 1972), comments that within the family unity it is the husband who gives "orders"

and is considered "more valuable" than his wife, whose ideal role is conceptualized as

essentially passive in nature, "like the soil in which man plants his seeds so they are fed".

At meals, women and girls serve the men their food, and then eat elsewhere. Likewise,

women walk behind their husbands to show their respect in public.

 Here the rural Andean woman is depicted as humble, obedient, and completely

controlled by men. Bourque and Warren (1981) who studied women in Moyobamba,

Peru (about 100 km from Lima), and Stolen (1987) who studied gender relations in the

community of Caipi, in Machachi, (about 50 km from Quito), confirm this pattern of

inferiority in rural Andean women.