Throughout the  Highlands, women are traditionally distrusted by men, who go to extraordinary lengths to protect themselves and maintain their status.  Sexual relations are not undertaken lightly.  Contact with women, as well as  her ability to take a man's child from him, is believed to cause sickness, so the two sexes often live in separate houses and the even prefer to cook for themselves.

The boys are usually removed from their mothers houses at a very young age and live with the men. The women sleep in semi-circular sleeping rooms at each end of the house, and the pigs sleep in stalls along one wall.  The cooking and sitting area is in the center.