The lineage is an affair of men. Women belong to at least two households. By the same token three-quarters of them, except, that is, for those who marry within the lineage (p. 202), belong to at least two lineages. As members of their husband's husehold they co-operate as he does with the households of his close agnates, but they also have a range of close kin ties of their own, the more so the closer to home they marry. When it comes to quarrels and fights women often side fiercely with their men, not out of lineage loyalty but out of direct personal loyalty. Where a woman's natal lineage clashes with her husband's lineage, behaviour is difficult to predict. Young women are in any case likely to avoid public participation out of shame; older women are perhaps more likely to side with husbands and sons against fathers and brothers.
In theory, mutual defence is a duty binding on close agnates. In practice, either through active quarrels or through indifference, people contract out of this duty as out of the more general neighbourly services, on the same penalty - loss of reciprocal rights. To forego this protection is clearly dangerous; but on occasion, it is also dangerous to retain it, and some men declare themselves peace lovers and uninterested in their kinsmen's quarrels. Some of the poorer and more lowly lineages in Elbashï have no visible unity at all. Even in the more prominent ones it is often difficult to know who would in fact fight if the need arose. Where agnates are in close daily contact, lineage solidarity may be assumed, but apparent indifference in day to day life by no means implies that people are not still lineage members in the important sense.