Female foragers sometimes hunt, yet gendered divisions of labor are real: a comment on Anderson et al. (2023) The Myth of Man the Hunter ( www.sciencedirect.com )

Tl;dr an undergraduate paper last year claiming females hunt just as often as males got picked up by the media and amplified before it was discovered their analysis was deeply flawed and unreliable. Here several anthropologists present a very gracious rebuttal.

HubertManne ,

I fins it hard to believe that humans did not realize what we know today where you pretty much gather, set traps, and do hunting of opportunity when alone or in small groups with some formal group hunting that pretty much uses anyone available. I could see more gender division happening with farming and domestication.

Aurenkin ,

There could be an advantage for groups that had males do the riskier jobs because the cost of losing a male is much less than a female in terms of maintaining population.

This is pure speculation on my part though, I have no education here and no idea what I'm talking about.

ArcaneSlime , (edited )

Odd question, but I noticed the use of "Females" here for which people are often derided because female is supposed to not be used for human women but rather only animal women.

This begs the question: Where do we consider Neanderthals (or whichever pre homo-sapien group is referenced by this timetable) on the "human" scale? Are they human enough that you "should have" said "males and women" to refer to them politically correctly, or are they far enough removed from homo-sapiens not to be considered "human" in this consideration?

I realize this hypothetical is sort of jumping the shark because I doubt neanderthal women are around in large enough numbers to be offended online about it, but it did make me think, which I find fun to do.

Aurenkin ,

Good question, I didn't even consider that I just used the same language that was in the title without thinking.

ArcaneSlime ,

Oh for sure, I wasn't trying to like come at you or anything, I understand the context because of the rest of your post and it's very clear you weren't being "bad" or whatever. It just got my brain spinning.

Streetlights OP ,

If I can quote the authors:

We caution against ethnographic revisionism that projects Westernized conceptions of labor and its value onto foraging societies.

feedum_sneedson ,

Some people got very angry with me about this.

Streetlights OP ,

What was the context?

feedum_sneedson ,

Biology preceding sociology in the first instance. Male muscle mass and female lipid oxidation, maybe. Gendered labour across different cultures. Exceptions not disproving historical trends. Etc.

Streetlights OP ,

That seems somewhat unrelated to this paper about foraging societies.

feedum_sneedson ,

You're joking, right?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • science@lemmy.world
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •