Gender Egalitarianism in Hunter-Gatherers

The social organization of humanity before the advent of agriculture tells us a lot about the context in which our species evolved over tens of thousands of years. It is in fact distinguished from that of primates by a more intense collaboration between individuals, which allows the development of a "cumulative culture." Researchers have just shown why gender equality may explain this propensity to associate a higher number of individuals coming from different groups (M. Dyble et al., "Sex equality can explain the unique social structure of hunter-gatherer bands", Science, 15 May 2015).

The social organization of mobile hunter-gatherers has several derived features, including low within-camp relatedness and fluid meta-groups. Although these features have been proposed to have provided the selective context for the evolution of human hypercooperation and cumulative culture, how such a distinctive social system may have emerged remains unclear. We present an agent-based model suggesting that, even if all individuals in a community seek to live with as many kin as possible, within-camp relatedness is reduced if men and women have equal influence in selecting camp members. Our model closely approximates observed patterns of co-residence among Agta and Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers. Our results suggest that pair-bonding and increased sex egalitarianism in human evolutionary history may have had a transformative effect on human social organization.

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), 2024

Gendered divisions of labor are a feature of every known contemporary hunter-gatherer (forager) society. While gender roles are certainly flexible, and prominent and well-studied cases of female hunting do exist, it is more often men who hunt. A new study surveyed ethnographically known foragers and found that women hunt in 79% of foraging societies, with big-game hunting occurring in 33%. Based on this single type of labor, which is one among dozens performed in foraging societies, the authors question the existence of gendered division of labor altogether. As a diverse group of hunter-gatherer experts, we find that claims that foraging societies lack or have weak gendered divisions of labor are contradicted by empirical evidence. We conducted an in-depth examination of Anderson et al. ( ) data and methods, finding evidence of sample selection bias and numerous coding errors undermining the paper's conclusions. have started a useful dialogue to ameliorate the popular misconception that women never hunt. However, their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies. Furthermore, a myopic focus on hunting diminishes the value of contributions that take different forms and downplays the trade-offs foragers of both sexes routinely face. We caution against ethnographic revisionism that projects Westernized conceptions of labor and its value onto foraging societies.

Are All Warriors Male? Gender Roles on the Ancient Eurasian Steppe, Katheryn M. Linduff and Karen S. Rubinson (eds.), 2008

pastoral peoples and provide a rich new context in which to understand the shared life ways as well as distinctive local features of these previously highly romanticized groups.

International Journal of Modern Anthropology, 2021

Gender inequality has generated a lot of debates among scholars across disciplines. Much of these studies have not explored a robust scholarship on the historical development of gender inequality by comparing different human societies and their subsistence strategies. This review study is designed to fill this gap, thereby contributing to corpus of literature on gender inequality in economic relations. As a historical research, the study uses secondary materials. These materials are mainly ethnographies of the societies under comparison. The study compares the roles of each of the gender categories in subsistence activities, in economic systems, to trace the sources of gender inequality in economic relations. Data available suggest egalitarian gender and economic relations. However, as societies evolved, there became a gradual decline in egalitarianism, leading to marked inequality. The inequality is relative to the complexity of social structure peculiar to the societies under review.

ET W E EN 1960 AND 1966, Hanna and Barbera produced a cartoon series, The Flintstcnes, which appropriately reveals ~Western gender ideologies and the ease with which we transport them into the past. As a cartoon, The Flintstone: is a tool of enculturation; among other aspects of life, it demonstrates to our youth our idealized gender roles. ~Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble (the female leading roles) serve as archetypes by cooking, cleaning, gossiping, and car ing for their children within their homes, but it is questionable whether they rep resent the Stone Age women they are supposed to portray. Their husbands, Fred and Barney, leave every day to work in the stone quarry, and when they are not "working," they are meandering out in the world taking risks and getting into trouble. These gender roles clearly reBect those of Western industrialism, marked by a period in which men were hrst called out of agricultural work in the house hold context to work in factories (Stone and McKee 1998:29-38). In the indus trial age, manhood was achieved and measured against economic prosperity gained through individualistic, competitive, and aggressive behavior. By default, women were expected to care for the domestic sphere and to create a balance for men by being social, noncompetitive, nonaggressive, and passive.

Current Anthropology

The role of men in hunter-gatherer societies has been subject to vigorous debate over the past 15 years. The proposal that men hunt wild game as a form of status signaling or "showing off" to provide reproductive benefits to the hunter challenges the traditional view that men hunt to provision their families. Two broad assumptions underlie the signaling view: (1) hunting is a poor means of obtaining food, and (2) hunted game is a public good shared widely with others and without expectation of future reciprocation. If hunters lack the ability to direct food shares and obtain subsequent benefits contingent on redistribution, then the ubiquitous observations of male hunting and universal pair-bonding cannot be explained from a perspective that emphasizes kin provisioning and a division of labor. Here we show that there is little empirical support for the view that men hunt for signaling benefits alone. The ethnographic record depicts a more complex relationship between food sharing patterns, subsistence strategies, mating, and the sexual division of labor. We present a framework incorporating trade-offs between mating and subsistence strategies in an economic bargaining context that contributes to understanding men's and women's roles in huntergatherer societies.

American Journal of Archaeology 117.4, 2013