Hunting Women of hunter-gatherer societies

Cthulhu.Science said:
Are we arguing?

From the first post, I am simply showing that women were/are not precluded from living full and active lives in stone age society.
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When you quote a point I make and post something that appears to go in a different direction, it appears that you are arguing. Which is why I asked.
 
Among the San in Namibia (where they still live their hunter gatherer lifestyle) it is usually the men who hunt and the women who gather, but this isn't written in stone. Sometimes some women join in hunting and some men in gathering. Hunting does require great endurance as their poison can take up to 3 days to work in the case of larger prey.
 
paranoid marvin said:
The idea propagated that women are inferior to men is, and always was, only used when it was practicable and convenient to do so. During the Black Death women took on roles that would have been totally forbidden to them at other times. The same happened in WWI and WWII.

At a time when humans were scarce and meat was hard to come by, I doubt that there was any difference made between the physiology of the individual.
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The idea of female inferiority is a recent one. Our problem is that we're too shortsighted, equating the Industrial Revolution society of Victorian England with the millennia that preceded it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Look at the women in the Canterbury Tales. They are formidable. The prioress has the equivalent power of a bishop.

Before industrialisation, women and men contributed more or less equally to the economic output of their communities. Women did all the dyeing, weaving, clothesmaking, bottling, preserving, etc. They also helped with the harvest, sowing and milking. Men did the heavy lifting like ploughing, cottage repairs, metal and wood work. And warfare (women are quickly dead on a battlefield). There was mutual dependence hence mutual respect. Jobs were determined by capabilities, not preassigned gender roles.

Industrialisation changed all that, taking the women's jobs away from them and giving them to men in factories. Women were reduced to a combination of nanny/housewife and their social status plummeted as a result. This created the artificial idea that women were radically inferior to men, quite helpless in fact, and needed men for everything. A woman's job was to look pretty and raise children. No wonder women eventually rebelled against this stereotype.

The San preserve the old mutual dependence and female inferiority is quite foreign to their egalitarian society. If you want to resolve the man vs woman issue then get rid of industrialisation and go back to a pre-industrial life in small communities. The problem will disappear like magic.
 
Justin Swanton said:
The idea of female inferiority is a recent one. Our problem is that we're too shortsighted, equating the Industrial Revolution society of Victorian England with the millennia that preceded it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Look at the women in the Canterbury Tales. They are formidable. The prioress has the equivalent power of a bishop.

Before industrialisation, women and men contributed more or less equally to the economic output of their communities. Women did all the dyeing, weaving, clothesmaking, bottling, preserving, etc. They also helped with the harvest, sowing and milking. Men did the heavy lifting like ploughing, cottage repairs, metal and wood work. And warfare (women are quickly dead on a battlefield). There was mutual dependence hence mutual respect. Jobs were determined by capabilities, not preassigned gender roles.

Industrialisation changed all that, taking the women's jobs away from them and giving them to men in factories. Women were reduced to a combination of nanny/housewife and their social status plummeted as a result. This created the artificial idea that women were radically inferior to men, quite helpless in fact, and needed men for everything. A woman's job was to look pretty and raise children. No wonder women eventually rebelled against this stereotype.

The San preserve the old mutual dependence and female inferiority is quite foreign to their egalitarian society. If you want to resolve the man vs woman issue then get rid of industrialisation and go back to a pre-industrial life in small communities. The problem will disappear like magic.
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Maybe. But many historians would say that women became chattel with the beginning of farming and crop surpluses several thousand years ago. But there definitely was another major shift in the last 200 years.
 
Swank said:
Maybe. But many historians would say that women became chattel with the beginning of farming and crop surpluses several thousand years ago. But there definitely was another major shift in the last 200 years.
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Many historians can say what they like but many historians would be wrong. There's enough data on this.
 
Justin Swanton said:
The idea of female inferiority is a recent one. Our problem is that we're too shortsighted, equating the Industrial Revolution society of Victorian England with the millennia that preceded it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Look at the women in the Canterbury Tales. They are formidable. The prioress has the equivalent power of a bishop.

Before industrialisation, women and men contributed more or less equally to the economic output of their communities. Women did all the dyeing, weaving, clothesmaking, bottling, preserving, etc. They also helped with the harvest, sowing and milking. Men did the heavy lifting like ploughing, cottage repairs, metal and wood work. And warfare (women are quickly dead on a battlefield). There was mutual dependence hence mutual respect. Jobs were determined by capabilities, not preassigned gender roles.

Industrialisation changed all that, taking the women's jobs away from them and giving them to men in factories. Women were reduced to a combination of nanny/housewife and their social status plummeted as a result. This created the artificial idea that women were radically inferior to men, quite helpless in fact, and needed men for everything. A woman's job was to look pretty and raise children. No wonder women eventually rebelled against this stereotype.

The San preserve the old mutual dependence and female inferiority is quite foreign to their egalitarian society. If you want to resolve the man vs woman issue then get rid of industrialisation and go back to a pre-industrial life in small communities. The problem will disappear like magic.
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I agree with this to a certain extent. But it was always men who decided on what those capabilities were. So no female Pope, male lineage superceded female, no women in the Greek or Roman forums etc..

I also agree about pre-indistrialisation. For a significant period of history, the majority of the population was subservient to the landowner. To all intents they were his property, and were effectively the tools he needed to work his fields and pay his taxes. I don't think he particularly cared if it was men or women doing the work and paying the tithes, just so long as it was done.

As soon as the industrial revolution came about and there was greater freedom of movement and a better choice of employment, all the best jobs and best wages went to men. If you were unhappy about that, you could always complain to your male MP. Not only could a female not be an MP, they were deemed unfit to vote.
 
I would also add that although prior to the industrial revolution, men and women knew their roles and their place in society, these were largely determined by the men in charge; either in Parliament, on the throne or the Church. They also knew the (often quite severe) consequences of stepping outside of those boundaries.

Obeying the rules of society are not necessarily the same as respecting or agreeing with them. The thing is we will never know, because no-one cared about the thoughts and feelings of common people at that time.

We do however know that there were quite a number of female noblemen who fought back against men attempting to take advantage of the fact they were women, and force them into marriage or giving up their lands and possessions.
 
I agree with this to a certain extent. But it was always men who decided on what those capabilities were. So no female Pope, male lineage superceded female, no women in the Greek or Roman forums etc..

I also agree about pre-indistrialisation. For a significant period of history, the majority of the population was subservient to the landowner. To all intents they were his property, and were effectively the tools he needed to work his fields and pay his taxes. I don't think he particularly cared if it was men or women doing the work and paying the tithes, just so long as it was done.
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From late Roman to late Mediaeval times land was about renting. The tenents (originally coloni in the Roman Empire and later serfs) didn't own the land but paid a rent to the landowner in the form of agricultural produce. They didn't have to supply a lot as the landowner and his retinue could eat only so much and couldn't export it since all his neighbours anyone else within reach grew food themselves. Peasant lifestyle was pretty relaxed - I discussed this elsewhere. Plently of holidays in the year and for something like a marriage the village could take a week off to celebrate. It wasn't idyllic of course, but it wasn't the dirty-faced, overcast-sky, drudging misery of Hollywood stereotyping. In many ways it was better than now.

Point is that since most men didn't own land, they were on a pretty equal footing with their womenfolk who were definitely not their chattels.

I would also add that although prior to the industrial revolution, men and women knew their roles and their place in society, these were largely determined by the men in charge; either in Parliament, on the throne or the Church. They also knew the (often quite severe) consequences of stepping outside of those boundaries.
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Sure, but as you point out that applied to everyone. There never was a 'patriarchy', just a hierarchy to which men were subjected as much as women. The only historical exception to this was the Victorian era.

Edit: come to think of it, the Victorian era wasn't an exception. Your factory worker slaving 14 hours a day could hardly rejoice in the privilege of belonging to an all-powerful patriarchy. The women, who had much less to do, were actually better off.

When it comes to power men have always occupied most of the top posts, in an age where you had to defend your rights on a battlefield. But, again, that was a very small minority of the male population.
 
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Justin Swanton said:
From late Roman to late Mediaeval times land was about renting. The tenents (originally coloni in the Roman Empire and later serfs) didn't own the land but paid a rent to the landowner in the form of agricultural produce. They didn't have to supply a lot as the landowner and his retinue could eat only so much and couldn't export it since all his neighbours anyone else within reach grew food themselves. Peasant lifestyle was pretty relaxed - I discussed this elsewhere. Plently of holidays in the year and for something like a marriage the village could take a week off to celebrate. It wasn't idyllic of course, but it wasn't the dirty-faced, overcast-sky, drudging misery of Hollywood stereotyping. In many ways it was better than now.

Point is that since most men didn't own land, they were on a pretty equal footing with their womenfolk who were definitely not their chattels.


Sure, but as you point out that applied to everyone. There never was a 'patriarchy', just a hierarchy to which men were subjected as much as women. The only historical exception to this was the Victorian era.

Edit: come to think of it, the Victorian era wasn't an exception. Your factory worker slaving 14 hours a day could hardly rejoice in the privilege of belonging to an all-powerful patriarchy. The women, who had much less to do, were actually better off.

When it comes to power men have always occupied most of the top posts, in an age where you had to defend your rights on a battlefield. But, again, that was a very small minority of the male population.
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Of course this topic is about hunter-gatherer societies...Please feel free to start a new topic about anything/everything that interests you.
 
>Most myth shattering seems to come back to realizing that nothing human is so simple that you can apply a rule to it.
One of the first terms I learned in grad school (history) was "reductionist". It's a concept that really ought to be drilled into every student starting in high school.
 
sknox said:
>Most myth shattering seems to come back to realizing that nothing human is so simple that you can apply a rule to it.
One of the first terms I learned in grad school (history) was "reductionist". It's a concept that really ought to be drilled into every student starting in high school.
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I agree. Humans are only consistent in their inconstinency.
 
Justin Swanton said:
Industrialisation changed all that, taking the women's jobs away from them and giving them to men in factories. Women were reduced to a combination of nanny/housewife and their social status plummeted as a result. This created the artificial idea that women were radically inferior to men, quite helpless in fact, and needed men for everything. A woman's job was to look pretty and raise children. No wonder women eventually rebelled against this stereotype.
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That is a bit of a generalisation. In the UK at least, many of the factories employed women and children (cheaper labour). Women did a lot of manual work outside the industrial sector, even if there was division of labour between the sexes. If you were poor, working class in the 18th and 19th centuries you needed to work to eat.
 
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