Discussions of equality and inequality in human societies often focus upon the recognition of superiority of one individual to another in a given community system. Differential ranking behavior would appear to be ubiquitous to human society and may be said to receive its impetus from value systems which define standards of moral evaluations (Fallers 1964: 238). Role differentiation is another factor accounting for unequal status and prestige since societal value systems unequivocally reward some patterns of behavior more highly than others. An analysis of ranking phenomena in an Islamic peasant society such as Turkey cannot afford to neglect the important bipartite division based on sex. Turkish peasant society has been analyzed without proper regard to the separate, co-existing social spheres of men and women, best exemplified by the institution of purdah. The most casual visitor can readily observe this religiously sanctioned seclusion and isolation of women, where separation is not achieved by means of admonition and rigid enforcement of a set of rules and regulations but is customary and traditional. Its roots lie in the history of Islam in the Middle East-in the role differentiation of men and women-and in the patrilineal kinship orientation of the society. In contrast to those patterns discussed by Stirling (1953) in his treatment of male society, very definite mechanisms for ascertaining relative rank and social standing exist within the institution of purdah. In this article, I will try to point up some aspects of ranking among rural Turkish women, which I believe is a necessary refinement of any ranking discussion of Islamic society where sexual differentiation as evidenced by the nature of purdah is widespread. As the result of a brief visit to Suberde,' a small village of some two hundred and fifty people in Southwestern