Research Paper on:
Differences in Gender in the Peasant Residences of Central Europe and Southeast Asia

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
very term poverty varies from culture to culture as do the way in which men and womens roles vary. This, then, begs the questions: How did the experiences of men  and women in early modern peasant households differ, between peoples in Southeast Asia and Central Europe? Would an economic change have prompted a shifting of these duties and expectations? The  European peasant and the Asian peasant shared many of the same characteristics. Most of them live in family units on farms and are engaged in agricultural endeavors. The peasants concentrated  only on those skills which would better enable them to be successful in farming and so most peasants had little to no education. The differences afforded households in the  two regions were vastly different, however. Men in Asia were allowed to have as many wives as they could afford, though most men could only afford one. In addition, divorce  was easier and held with less distain as it was in Central Europe. Therefore, step-parents and half brothers and sisters were common. This was true, even for Central Europe, though  a good deal of their re-marriages were due to death of a spouse and not from divorce. In, the Village and the State, it is reported that men and women  tended to marry much earlier in Europe than in Asia. Both peasant groups seemed to have grown grain crops: rice in Asia and wheat in Europe. Similarly, neither group  of peasants could afford many fine furnishings and provided nearly everything they needed for the family from the farm. While both groups built their houses out of what materials were  available indigenously, the Asians tended to make their homes out of materials which could be rebuilt quickly, as opposed to the European structures which had to be more sturdy to