The labour of women and children was
essential in tending the herds, and women had rights of distribution over milk, but only
men had property rights over cattle. With the payment of tbridewealth cattle, the husband
acquired rights over his wife’s person, labour and fertility. Female fertility and male
bravery were both valued by the Maasai, but Liewelyn-Davies argued that they were not
balanced: ‘Females never become moran and they are seen as lacking in the desirable
qualities of masculinity. Indeed, to some extent femininity is thought of as an absence of
masculinity’ (ibid.: 352). The rituals of the moran age-set transformed boys into elders,
who controlled property and reproduction. Circumcision and marriage transformed non-
reproductive girls into reproductive women, but that very fertility was itself transactable
by men, through marriage alliances and bridewealth payments. In the case of the Maasai,
age and gender worked together as symbolic systems through which production and
reproduction were generated, and hierarchy reproduced and maintained.