It is interesting that some of Tolkien'points on the difference between on men and women, as expressed in letter #43, are rather closely paralelled in his description of elven nissi and neri (males and females), as found in Laws and customs of the eldar, HoME X:
Quote:
The nissi are more often skilled in the tending of fields and gardens, in playing upon instruments of music, and in the spinning, weaving, fashioning, and adornment of all threads and cloths; and in matters of lore they love most the histories of the Eldar and of the houses of the Noldor; and all matters of kinship and descent are held by them in memory.
But the neri are more skilled as smiths and wrights, as carvers of wood and stone, and as jewellers. It is they for the most part who compose musics and make the instruments, or devise new ones; they are the chief poets and students of languages and inventors of words. Many of them delight in forestry and in the lore of the wild, seeking the friendship of all things that grow or live there in freedom
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The same active/passive roles seem to apply, though in a more diluted manner.