Encyclopedia of the Incas

and imperial life. While not the sole gender system (see Acllacuna), it
contributed significantly to female and male identities, interlocked with the
gendered division of labor, governed the transmission of rights to land and
resources, shaped religious structures, and gave form to the power relations tying
Inca rulers with conquered polities.
Andean women experienced their lives in gender specific, yet interrelated,
worlds. This dynamic—of autonomy and interdependence—was supported by
Andean traditions of parallel transmission of rights to community resources.
Although parallel transmission was not the only means through which these
rights were acquired in the Andean ayllu, it was a preeminent channel for
procuring them. Women, through their mothers, enjoyed access to community
land, water, herds, and other resources that sustained life. We cannot estimate
what portion of ayllu resources were in the hands of women, but parallel
transmission rights ensured that women, independently of kinsmen or husbands,
could obtain their society’s means of subsistence.
The gendered division of labor in the Andes meshed with traditions of parallel
descent: cultural norms defined appropriate activities for women and men while
embedding them in a wider conception of complementarity. Andean practices of
living were daily expressions of the dynamics of gender parallelism and gender
interdependence. Women’s contributions to production were manifold. Cooking,
brewing chicha (maize beer), preparing fields for cultivation, planting seeds,
harvesting, weeding, herding, and carrying water filled a woman’s day. Women’s
work in the ayllu—from weaving, cooking, and sowing, to child care—was
never considered a private service for husbands. Their labor, complemented by
the work of men, grounded the continuance of household, kin, and community.
The Incas retained this conception of interdependent male and female work as
fundamental to their system of tribute (see Labor Service).
Although men wove for their households and some, the cumbicamayoc, were
specialists who created textiles prized by the elite, women were the weavers of
the Andes. They were inseparable from the spindles carried on their journeys. In
addition to weaving cloth for the entire household, women under Inca rule were
responsible for tribute in textiles owed the state. Women of the Inca nobility
were also renowned weavers. They played critical roles during imperial
ceremonies by making prized textiles; they also produced highly desirable
“gifts” in cloth distributed by the Inca to political underlings (see Costume;
Labor Service; Weaving and Textiles).