> By saying that it's a "sexual" division of labor, instead of a "gendered"
> division of labor, you are giving the division of labor in question a
> natural or biological determinant for its origin & development, given your
> understanding of sex.
Ambivalence is intended here. There may have been then a natural or biological determinant for a non hierarchical sexual division of labor (if indeed one held). Don't know.
(This in fact is a problem in Marx's and Engels's
> works as well.)
Well yes. It needs to fleshed out. I have been trying to raise the question, suggested three questions which could be put to Origins of Family, etc. See Carol Gould's criticism of Engels in Engels after Marx, ed. Manfred Stegner (sp?). I am not persuaded by her criticism, by the way. What I need to get my hands on is Gerda Lerner's Origins of Patriarchy which I read more than ten years ago.
With your understanding, gender lapses back into sex
> (understood as a biological given in common sense) continually.
A *hierarchical* gendered division of labor, patriarchy, primogeniture, etc have no basis in biology. Engels' argument of course was that its basis was in private property. But this is contested, and his argument is not always clear. At any rate, even if a sexual division of labor was based in nature in what Engels called high barbarism, it has no justification today.
Yours, Rakesh