Hunting Women of hunter-gatherer societies

[Cthulhu.Science]

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.

Victorian England was not shocked that women worked in coal mines. Naturally women were strong enough for the work.

The scandal was that women WORE PANTS while working in the coal mines. -- Oh the humanity!

The Women Miners in Pants Who Shocked Victorian Britain

"The article of clothing which women ought only to wear in a figure of speech."

www.atlasobscura.com

The scandal of female miners in 19th-century Britain

Images of topless women and girls working down mines caused a furore when they appeared in the British press over 170 years ago. However, as Denise Bates explains, accusations of immorality did not reflect the true situation

www.historyextra.com

 

[Justin Swanton]

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.

"All generalisations are false including this one". Which is true, but generalisations can be true as generalisations. Digging around I found this article with the censuses done of male and female occupations in the UK over the course of the 19th century. The numbers are not entirely trustworthy as the article points out, but the general trends are clear. The 1851 census has 30% of women as occupied and 83.3% unoccupied. Taking an average that means that 3/4 of women had no formal occupation.

The industries with strong female representation were textiles, clothing and paper with the majority of the workforce being composed of women (just over a million). But this was the exception to the domination of industrial production by men and the women didn't get the best posts in the textile trade - the highly paid job of mule spinning was done largely by men, partly because it required strength. Women certainly didn't feature significantly in mining: 11,000 women compared to 383,000 men, i.e. 2.8%. 11,000 sounds like a lot until you realise that the population of Britain in 1851 was 18 million.

The article makes clear that many of women's traditional occupations were taken away from them and done in factories by men. Most were left with not that much to do, at least in the professional sphere. There was domestic service, but you couldn't do that if you were married with children.

 

[Swank]

"All generalisations are false including this one". Which is true, but generalisations can be true as generalisations. Digging around I found this article with the censuses done of male and female occupations in the UK over the course of the 19th century. The numbers are not entirely trustworthy as the article points out, but the general trends are clear. The 1851 census has 30% of women as occupied and 83.3% unoccupied. Taking an average that means that 3/4 of women had no formal occupation.

The industries with strong female representation were textiles, clothing and paper with the majority of the workforce being composed of women (just over a million). But this was the exception to the domination of industrial production by men and the women didn't get the best posts in the textile trade - the highly paid job of mule spinning was done largely by men, partly because it required strength. Women certainly didn't feature significantly in mining: 11,000 women compared to 383,000 men, i.e. 2.8%. 11,000 sounds like a lot until you realise that the population of Britain in 1851 was 18 million.

The article makes clear that many of women's traditional occupations were taken away from them and done in factories by men. Most were left with not that much to do, at least in the professional sphere. There was domestic service, but you couldn't do that if you were married with children.

I think you're assuming an awful lot about how people spent their days, and whether what productive activities they were doing counted as "formal occupations" by a census taker. My grandmother was left alone overnight sometimes to shepherd the goats starting at age 5. I'm sure she did not receive the title of "livestock manager". Probably the only people in that family that were considered to have formal occupations were the male coal miners, yet even this small child was expected to be productive in 1915 Colorado.

 

[Justin Swanton]

I think you're assuming an awful lot about how people spent their days, and whether what productive activities they were doing counted as "formal occupations" by a census taker. My grandmother was left alone overnight sometimes to shepherd the goats starting at age 5. I'm sure she did not receive the title of "livestock manager". Probably the only people in that family that were considered to have formal occupations were the male coal miners, yet even this small child was expected to be productive in 1915 Colorado.

I did say "at least in the professional sphere." What most women got in the Victorian era were low-end jobs that considerably dropped their social status from what it had been a century earlier. I needed to clarify that by "not that much to do" I meant much less of the skilled employment that gave her that original status. For men (and any women working alongside them) working hours in industry were much longer in the 19th century than in any previous era. So lose-lose.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Most work prior to industrialisation would take place only during daylight, as much was cottage industry or agricultural. With the coming of the industrial revolution, many people moved out of the countryside and into towns, and (for those able to find work) into factories where working hours were determined by the owners. If there was a clock, it could be deliberately slowed down, or often there wasn't; so the factory owner would tell you when your day was ended. During this period women would often do the same job as men, but get paid half as much. If you didn't like it, there was nothing you could do, as the only other option was the workhouse (or worse).

 

[paranoid marvin]

Victorian England was not shocked that women worked in coal mines. Naturally women were strong enough for the work.

The scandal was that women WORE PANTS while working in the coal mines. -- Oh the humanity!

The Women Miners in Pants Who Shocked Victorian Britain

"The article of clothing which women ought only to wear in a figure of speech."

www.atlasobscura.com

The scandal of female miners in 19th-century Britain

Images of topless women and girls working down mines caused a furore when they appeared in the British press over 170 years ago. However, as Denise Bates explains, accusations of immorality did not reflect the true situation

www.historyextra.com

Considering the hot conditions, the damage to clothing (at the employee's own expense) and the fact that no-one could see you as you were working largely underground/in the dark, men would often work naked. So I guess wearing pants for women was a bit of an extravagance.

But Victorian England was a place of contradictions. It was a time of strict moral and social codes for people, which worked very well for rich Victorian gentlemen and ladies. But for everyone else it was a hard, short life of oppression and misery. Supposedly the Victorian ethos were morality, religion, hard work and charity to those less fortunate than themselves. But in reality it led to some of the worst working and living conditions ever in Britain; and all within the law that favoured (and were made and enforced) by the rich and the titled. Things were getting that bad that even some of those rich and titled people were becoming embarrassed by just how badly 90% of the population were being treated.

Writers such as Dickens and Blake saw through the thin veneer of godliness and charity in 19th Century Britain to the hypocrisy that lay beneath.

 

[Omits]

I wonder about:
- Religion (worshipping gods) defining roles.
- Someone has to guard the young and property (If all women in early societies had offspring then they would not hunt).
- Do not need to track prey exhaustively but surround it, trap it.
- Males generally are more muscular so certain roles fit that (males throw the harpoon females cut the meat?).
- Cunning is evenly distributed.
- Does the male sex drive define a protected role for females?

 

[sknox]

Very true, what paranoid marvin says. It's one reason why I have a hard time reading fantasy tales set in Victorian England. First, I am so over England. What about Italy during the 19thc? Or Spain? Or Poland? Or, if you want to go more mainstream, Germany or France? So much good material simply ignored in favor of ...

Well, of what? Of one of the grimmest centuries in English history. If you go with the aristocracy, you can have gardens and estates and fancy meals, but you're ignoring most of humanity who made all that possible. If you go down into the streets, most of the stories (fantasy, but also romance) are mainly about how one brave soul fought her (or his) way out of it all. I know, I know ... it's a personal problem. <grin>

 

[paranoid marvin]

I wonder about:
- Religion (worshipping gods) defining roles.
- Someone has to guard the young and property (If all women in early societies had offspring then they would not hunt).
- Do not need to track prey exhaustively but surround it, trap it.
- Males generally are more muscular so certain roles fit that (males throw the harpoon females cut the meat?).
- Cunning is evenly distributed.
- Does the male sex drive define a protected role for females?

As I mentioned earlier, I think that it depends on the time period. Single family units would all have had to work; when living in a community, the larger it is the more you can allocate the right people to the right jobs. Males undoubtedly would have been protective of females, but more likely from other potential mates than from the work of getting something to eat; if a female had children, it was more important - not less - that she hunted for food.

The thing about humans is that they are intelligent, and that animals/potential food is more predictable. Chasing after something took time and effort and was dangerous; setting traps was less so. And when you had communities you could start to settle down, build enclosures and keep and breed animals for clothing, milk and food. The biggest danger to females - and males - were other humans.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Most Hunting-Gathering societies are using roles as defined by ability. Since this behavior is found in modern day hunting-gathering societies, there must be something that changes role by ability to role by assignment. It starts out by assigning roles to those best suited for the job either by letting things be the way they are or acknowledging what people are doing. Once the process of assigning roles becomes arbitrary, any kind of reason would do. It would probably be hard to fake abilities when operating in the real world where roles fit the ability. Perhaps some one helps out or some one, or many, are relieved of some of the fruit of their labors. When groups were small, it was probably hard to fake it. Once groups got larger it probably got easier to fake things.

Hunter-gatherers probably don't have a sizable surplus of goods. Once hunter-gatherer groups start agricultural activities, everything changes.
One interesting aspect is that in hunter-gatherer societies sharing is very important. It is learned at an early age. Also learned at an early age is learning how to take care of one's own self, even being able to cook for themselves. Children in hunter-gatherer societies also have a much more relaxed childhood with more freedom and are not set to rigorous chore schedules like children in agrarian societies.

Somewhere along the way towards an agrarian future, stereotyping sets in, political officers get appointed, surplus goods are hoarded, built up so that sharing is no longer practiced which gave the entire group a basic allowance to subsist on. The division of goods starts with everyone, and of course, those higher up in the social order get more. Instead there is a surplus amongst those who have too much and a deficit amongst those who don't have enough. This could set up the wealth inequality which is supported by people thinking that someday they too will become rich. Women have a dualistic position much the same as the is it a wave or a particle situation. They are involved in all the steps that move societies forward. Instead of amassing power as a group, they operate as individuals, which dilutes their power. Maybe that is the whole point of assigning roles to women, to keep them operating on an individual basis while everything else is set up in groups with goals that only result in collecting power.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Short excerpt from the original article:

A common belief holds that, among foraging populations, men have typically hunted animals while women gathered plant products for food. However, mounting archaeological evidence from across human history and prehistory is challenging this paradigm; for instance, women in many societies have been found buried alongside big-game hunting tools.

Some researchers have suggested that women's role as hunters was confined to the past, with more recent foraging societies following the paradigm of men as hunters and women as gatherers. To investigate that possibility, Anderson and colleagues analyzed data from the past 100 years on 63 foraging societies around the world, including societies in North and South America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and the Oceanic region.

They found that women hunt in 79% of the analyzed societies, regardless of their status as mothers. More than 70% of female hunting appears to be intentional—as opposed to opportunistic killing of animals encountered while performing other activities, and intentional hunting by women appears to target game of all sizes, most often large game.

The analysis also revealed that women are actively involved in teaching hunting practices and that they often employ a greater variety of weapon choice and hunting strategies than men.

The 19th century was the heyday of wealthy white men, often bored aristocrats, writing histories of all peoples that ultimately came down to "White men smart and wise," other peoples not so much. Women are now and have always been subservient to men. This is the natural order that has always been. And, sadly, this construct still survives as the basis of historical teaching today.

 

[sknox]

And, sadly, this construct still survives as the basis of historical teaching today.

It is not what I was taught in college. Had I put forward such arguments, I would have been roundly and rightly roasted.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

It is not what I was taught in college. Had I put forward such arguments, I would have been roundly and rightly roasted.

While I oversimplified the oversimplification, the fact that the article that started this series of posts exists at all; that the summary of that article includes the sentence:

A common belief holds that, among foraging populations, men have typically hunted animals while women gathered plant products for food.

or that the title was

Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers​

Is clear indication that at least some of the history taught as of June 28, 2023 has been built from earlier historical teachings derived from the 19th century mode.

 

[Montero]

Mentioning the Victorian attitudes and working class life vs a more moneyed lifestyle, I've definitely heard in several places that the Victorians regarded the working class as a lesser species - so delicate young ladies were of course fragile, but 14 year old house maids could be expected to lug multiple buckets of coal upstairs.

My mother used to tell me a story her mother's mother told her - great-grandma went into service. They lived out in an estate village and great-grandma as a school leaver - so 12 in those days, was found a place as a made of all work in a relatively ordinary house in town. As in nothing grand. After a few weeks, great-great-grandma went to see how her daughter was getting on, and found she had the most appalling split and chapped skin on her hands. She'd been set to scrubbing the doorstep before daylight with cold water in the cold, so it was perfect and gleaming before any neighbours saw it. GGG Grandma promptly laid into her employers for their treatment of her 12 year old daughter and took her home again.

 

[sknox]

Ah, there's a difference between what is commonly believed and what is actually taught. This is one of the principal lessons I learned after thirty-five years of teaching.

To address this example in particular, what we have are assertions about what is commonly believed, widely taught, without any evidence as to what is actually being taught. So there's at least room to question the assertions.

The actual article is more nuanced. The authors state that this stereotype has persisted across social sciences. That's significant; I'll come back to it. They cite a couple of sources, which is sufficient. They then state that "we have known these patterns are culturally defined and thus variable for over a century now" and provide multiple sources for that. Clearly the counter-case has been presented within academia.

But I, like I'm sure many folks, readily accepted that men were the hunters and women were the gatherers. I never questioned that, in my younger years. I don't recall ever having been explicitly taught it, but it just seemed reasonable? Why? Surely because I am male, living in a patriarchal society. Mostly I heard this stated by other people who were on their way to making some other point--about the "natural" proclivities of males or of females. To put this more succinctly, the paradigm was perpetuated because it reiterated social norms. It was more about us now than about our ancestors then.

I'm very familiar with this. There are any number of myths about the Middle Ages firmly held by many folks who never took a medieval history course in their life. Why do they believe these things? Because those myths reinforce and recapitulate what they already believe about the world. Those beliefs require far more work than just a semester in Western Civ.

So, I readily accept that this myth is widely believed. What I was challenging was that it is widely and currently taught in college (I can't speak to high school). What is commonly believed is not always what is actually taught.

Oh, I said I would come back. Note the authors said social sciences. History isn't a social science (despite being placed there by misguided administrative types). It belongs in the humanities. The distinction matters here because this is about hunter-gatherer societies, which is before recorded history and so is not the proper provenance of historians. It belongs to the anthropologists and the like. So any misunderstandings are on them. <grin>

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Hunter-gatherer societies first teach what is required to survive, which provides a base that is rooted in reality, perhaps leading to less of a chance of misunderstanding how things work. They don't know how everything works but what they personally experience is probably better understood. Modern day (and maybe older times) agrarian based societies with surpluses and delivery by demand, teach a mixture of what is needed to survive and things that have nothing to do with basic day to day survival. With an education like that it might be easier to believe, and even create, misunderstandings of what is happening.

This is an over simplification, but I believe science and social studies (old school terms) need to be taught together, not as separate items that never have any intersections. Each profoundly affects the other. The way these studies are taught can be where there is separation, because there are multiple ways of teaching a subject because different people can have different ways of understanding how information is presented to them.

As far as what is taught in schools to people, perhaps how things are actually done might provide a better example of how things are going. Misconceptions, stereotyping, tradition can all play a part in determining academic salaries, which does result in women being paid less than men. That goes under the heading of do as I say, not as I do, but it's teaching by example and people can see the difference.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Ah, there's a difference between what is commonly believed and what is actually taught. This is one of the principal lessons I learned after thirty-five years of teaching.

To address this example in particular, what we have are assertions about what is commonly believed, widely taught, without any evidence as to what is actually being taught. So there's at least room to question the assertions.

The actual article is more nuanced. The authors state that this stereotype has persisted across social sciences. That's significant; I'll come back to it. They cite a couple of sources, which is sufficient. They then state that "we have known these patterns are culturally defined and thus variable for over a century now" and provide multiple sources for that. Clearly the counter-case has been presented within academia.

But I, like I'm sure many folks, readily accepted that men were the hunters and women were the gatherers. I never questioned that, in my younger years. I don't recall ever having been explicitly taught it, but it just seemed reasonable? Why? Surely because I am male, living in a patriarchal society. Mostly I heard this stated by other people who were on their way to making some other point--about the "natural" proclivities of males or of females. To put this more succinctly, the paradigm was perpetuated because it reiterated social norms. It was more about us now than about our ancestors then.

I'm very familiar with this. There are any number of myths about the Middle Ages firmly held by many folks who never took a medieval history course in their life. Why do they believe these things? Because those myths reinforce and recapitulate what they already believe about the world. Those beliefs require far more work than just a semester in Western Civ.

So, I readily accept that this myth is widely believed. What I was challenging was that it is widely and currently taught in college (I can't speak to high school). What is commonly believed is not always what is actually taught.

Oh, I said I would come back. Note the authors said social sciences. History isn't a social science (despite being placed there by misguided administrative types). It belongs in the humanities. The distinction matters here because this is about hunter-gatherer societies, which is before recorded history and so is not the proper provenance of historians. It belongs to the anthropologists and the like. So any misunderstandings are on them. <grin>

Beautiful summary of formal college education.

Hopefully what everyone else teaches adults and children will eventually catch up to latest understanding on all subjects, including history.

 

[CupofJoe]

In the programme Origins of Us it was put forward that one of the main differences of early humans to the other apes of the time and now is that several hundred thousand years ago, early/protohumans got the ability to metabolise starch. Hunting and meat may be great but it is risky and unreliable, while finding tubers and roots may be a more reliable source of energy. Even more so when cooking was involved make that energy easy to get to.
As the programme also stated that young men will take more risks when they think pretty young ladies are watching them [I am paraphrasing somewhat - it had to do with skateboard tricks].
I think the whole dynamic of Hunter vs Gatherer could be wrong.
Could hunting be seen more as a sexual display?
Men do it, yes to get meat, but also to show that they can do things that other men can't.
Like a Peacock growing and elaborate tail just to show that it can...

 

[paranoid marvin]

In the programme Origins of Us it was put forward that one of the main differences of early humans to the other apes of the time and now is that several hundred thousand years ago, early/protohumans got the ability to metabolise starch. Hunting and meat may be great but it is risky and unreliable, while finding tubers and roots may be a more reliable source of energy. Even more so when cooking was involved make that energy easy to get to.
As the programme also stated that young men will take more risks when they think pretty young ladies are watching them [I am paraphrasing somewhat - it had to do with skateboard tricks].
I think the whole dynamic of Hunter vs Gatherer could be wrong.
Could hunting be seen more as a sexual display?
Men do it, yes to get meat, but also to show that they can do things that other men can't.
Like a Peacock growing and elaborate tail just to show that it can...

If we look to nature, we see male creatures doing all sorts of things to attract females. But it would more likely be a case of fighting off other males or other displays rather than going off hunting for animals.

And in the animal kingdom, it's often the females who do the hunting.

 

[sknox]

>Hopefully what everyone else teaches adults and children will eventually catch up to latest understanding on all subjects, including history

I was sort of making the opposite point. I take as fundamental that when formal knowledge contradicts popular belief, the latter wins every time. This is why progress-through-education is a flawed theory.

Exactly why people need to believe the medieval Catholic Church was all-powerful, why all medieval kings had absolute power, or that medieval peasants were oppressed in the way we moderns understand oppression to mean ... why these beliefs persist despite generations of teaching otherwise, all that is mysterious to me. I don't think progressivism is an adequate explanation. I don't think clumsy teaching accounts for it. But I observe it, semester after semester. But I do understand aspects of the phenomenon.

One is complexity. We humans favor simple explanations over complex ones. Ask me anything about the Middle Ages and I'm going to begin by saying well we're talking about a thousand years and an entire continent. The answer is going to vary with time and place. And that's just the preamble to an answer. But popes telling people what to think, that's easy. And it's easy in part because it is unconnected to time and place. It's universal and timeless (except to a vaguely-defined "Middle Ages"). Such so-called explanations are easy to repeat, fit neatly into headlines, are tailor-made for blog posts (and their forebears).

No subject is more complicated that history, because history involves humans, so it is the subject most susceptible to reductionism. So, I don't expect any teaching to catch up to academic understanding (which itself is constantly in motion), nor do I expect that even if it did, it would make any headway against popular belief. This bothers me not at all. We've always been this way, yet somehow we've built entire civilizations. Heck, we even built a really good system of education. Despite all the misunderstandings and myths.