"Sexual" Division of Labor? (was Re: ehrenreich on biology)

hoov hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Thu Dec 2 16:25:27 PST 1999



> ***** Ruth Hubbard, "Rethinking Women's Biology," _The Politics of
> Women's Biology_, pp. 125-6
> ...Anthropologists observing the !Kung, a group of foragers living in the
> Kalahari desert in southern Africa, have noted that their menstrual and
> reproductive histories are quite different from what we in the West think
> of as "normal".... !Kung women and men collect their food, and as is true
> in most foraging societies, women provide most of it which involves a good
> deal of walking and carrying.
> Yoshie

Patricia Draper ('!Kung Women: Contrasts in Sexual Egalitarianism in Foraging and Sedentary Contexts,' in Rayna Reiter, ed. _Toward an Anthropology of Women_) found that !Kung women in the bush had more autonomy and were freer from male domination than !Kung women in settled groups. Draper noted that transition from hunting & gathering to animal husbandry and crop planting led to decline of women's influence relative to men.

Features of foraging life promoting egalitarianism include:

'women's subsistence contribution and the control women retain

over the food they have gathered; the requisities of foraging

in the Kalahari which entail a similar degree of mobility for

both sexes; the lack of rigidity inb sex-typing of many adult

activities, including domestic chores and aspects of child

socialization; the cultural sanction against physical expression

of aggression; the small group size; and the nature of the

settlement pattern.' (p. 78)

Settled way of life resulted in:

'increasing rigidity in sex-typing of adult work; more permanent

attachment of the individual to a particular place and group of

people; dissimilar childhood socialization for boys and girls;

descrease in the mobility of women as contrasted with men;

changing nature of women's subsistence contribution; richer

material inventory with implications for women's work; tendency

for men to have greater access to and control over such

important resources as domestic animals, knowledge of Bantu

language and culture, wage work; male entrance into extra-village

politics; settlement pattern; and increasing household privacy.'

(p. 78) Michael Hoover



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