Sexual conduct and gender roles differ in different social settings and different societies, and an analysis of sociological and anthropological data on the place of women in different societies and on issues such as menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth suggest ways in which different societies cope with childbirth, women's roles, certain taboos, and similar concerns. How women and their biological functions are viewed in a given society are suggestive of societal values and related norms.
Such studies have been conducted for some time, and they involve particular methodological issues and sources of error which should be understood. One of the most important ethnographic researches offering data on sex roles and gender socialization was that of Margaret Mead, who conducted research in Samoa in the 1930s and further research later in New Guinea. From the first, Mead was criticized for her methodology, her conclusions, and for the emphasis she would place on one aspect of the social organization of Samoa over another. Derek Freeman in his critique of Mead addresses a number of issues related to Mead's methodology and more to ways in which he feels she may have been in error in what she saw in Samoan society or in the way she ranked certain behaviors or explained them theoretically. To make his criticism, Freeman does more than read what Mead has written and extrapolate to his own conceptions--he instead turns to the Samoans themselves and to subsequent research to show ways in which Mead may have erred.
Mead in her work notes the need for experiments and cites the impossibility of conducting human experiments by any other method than ethnographic study:
The only method is that of the anthropologist, to go to a different civilization and make a study of human beings under different cultural conditions in some other part of the world. For such studies the anthropologist chooses quite simple peoples, primitive peopl...