hidden away that ...  I never saw one girl who looked above the age of six ... except in the women’s rooms."[36] Among the northern Indian girls are from the age of eight or nine prohibited from joining in the most innocent amusements with children of the opposite sex, and are watched and guarded with such an unremitting attention as cannot be exceeded by the most rigid discipline of an English boarding-school.[40] Similar arrangements are reported among the Hill Dyaks,[41] certain Victorian tribes,[17] and many others.  As already instanced, the separation of the sexes extends even to brothers and sisters and other close relatives.  Thus in Fiji brothers and sisters are forbidden by national and religious custom to speak to each other.[9] In Melanesia, according to Codrington, the boy begins to avoid his mother when he puts on clothing, and his sister as soon as she is tattooed.[42] In the exclusive Nanburi caste of Travancore brothers and sisters are separated at an early age.

Women are more often than not excluded also from religious worship on account of the idea of their uncleanness.  The Arabs in many cases will not allow women religious instruction.  The Ansayrees consider woman to be an inferior being without a soul, and therefore exclude her from religious services.[34] In the Sandwich Islands women were not allowed to share in worship or festivals.[35] The Australians are very jealous lest women should look into their sacred mysteries.  It is death for a woman to look into a Bora.[20] In Fiji women are kept away from worship and excluded from all the temples.[9] The women of some of the Indian hill-tribes may not sacrifice nor appear at shrines, nor take part in religious festivals.  In New Ireland women are not allowed to approach the temples.[43] In the Marquesas Islands the Hoolah-hoolah ground, where festivals are held, is taboo to women, who are killed if they enter or even touch with their feet the shadow of the trees.[30] Women are also excluded from the sacred festivals of the Ahts.[44] In the Amazon region, the women are not even permitted to see the objects used in important ceremonies.  If any woman of the Uaupes tribe happens to see the masks used in the tribal ceremony she is put to death.[45]

Crawley has explained the taboos on the sexes eating together and on the cooking of food by women for men as due to the superstitious belief that food which has come in contact with or under the influence of the female is capable of transmitting her properties.  Some southern Arabs would die rather than accept food from a woman.[12] Among the old Semites it was not the custom for a man to eat with his wife and children.  Among the Motu of New Guinea when a man is helega, he may not eat food that his wife has cooked.[46] South Australian boys during initiation are forbidden to eat with the women, lest they “grow ugly or become grey.”

It was probably some fear of the charm-weaving power of woman which lay at the root of the rules which forbade her to speak her husband’s name, the implication being that she might use it in some incantation against him.  For instance, a Zulu woman was forbidden to speak her husband’s name; if she did so, she would be suspected of witchcraft.[47] Herodotus tells us that no Ionian woman would ever mention the name of her husband, nor may a Hindu woman do so.[48]