The female family core explored ethnosociologically

Extended family households of South Asia distinguish their core female pers onnel as sexually active or inactive, junior or senior and own or other. (i ) Noting similar variables in the region's classical theories and elsewhere in its ethnography and constructing from these a paradigm to assist furthe r questioning. this paper finds (ii) eight major societal qualities generat ed by the same paradigm. (iii) eight corresponding domestic role-types, (iv ) a common female life-course through those role-types, (v) characteristic relations of worship complementing that female life-course, and (vi) divers e related perspectives on male-female differences. So many results from que stioning with this one paradigm make the common and congruent female family core a likely source of the civilisation's diversity as well as of its und erlying assumptions.