Deep-seated attitudes to women have roots in ancient agriculture(economist.com)
economist.com
Deep-seated attitudes to women have roots in ancient agriculture
http://www.economist.com/node/18986073?
12 comments
you should take a long look at those handles on a plow and think about how you steer that around, and keep it ploughing, rather than sliding over the top of the fields.
You must not remember the story of the golden calf. There are plenty examples of worshiping domesticated animals.
No, I've heard of it; in fact after typing that I thought "does that explain sacred cows in India?"
But worshiping domesticated animals isn't as universal or persistent as patriarchy supposedly is.
But worshiping domesticated animals isn't as universal or persistent as patriarchy supposedly is.
It's persistent in pre-traditional societies.
The orthodoxy is pre-traditional societies were about equal in likelyhood between matriarchy, patriarchy, and both. If you're looking at dominant deities for this definition.
The orthodoxy is pre-traditional societies were about equal in likelyhood between matriarchy, patriarchy, and both. If you're looking at dominant deities for this definition.
[deleted]
The author fails to present any serious evidence for their claim. I suspect that sexism began long before the invention of farming.
Which author? The Economist author, or Alesina, Giuliano, and Nunn, the authors of the academic study? The Economist is just giving description of the results for a popular audience, so I don't think they have to provide serious evidence.
The original academic article can be read here:
The Quarterly Journal of Economics http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/qje.q... (open access full text, at least for now)
I haven't read it, it is a peer reviewed publication, so I imagine they do have some evidence.
The original academic article can be read here:
The Quarterly Journal of Economics http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/qje.q... (open access full text, at least for now)
I haven't read it, it is a peer reviewed publication, so I imagine they do have some evidence.
It's a slippery slope, but I don't think they're directly claiming the cause of sexism. Instead, the point they're claiming is: "Women descended from plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be elected to parliament or to run businesses than their counterparts in countries at similar levels of development who happen to be descended from hoe-users."
So the bulk of the argument stems from some initial qualitative assessment of the region's agricultural state (i.e. hoe or plow) and then comparing it to present day stats for the metrics he outlines.
Your suspicions are probably right, but I don't think the author would even disagree necessarily. I think this is just an interesting look into one of the factors that may have been responsible.
So the bulk of the argument stems from some initial qualitative assessment of the region's agricultural state (i.e. hoe or plow) and then comparing it to present day stats for the metrics he outlines.
Your suspicions are probably right, but I don't think the author would even disagree necessarily. I think this is just an interesting look into one of the factors that may have been responsible.
If anything the invention of farming may have lead to less violence and greater equality. This was a period of time when humanity transitioned from the Hunter to the Farmer.
Farming promoted development. It did not hold it back.
Farming promoted development. It did not hold it back.
Isn't it pretty well established that farming led to an increase in violence?
Thinking in terms of "development" is generally a bad approach. History doesn't have levels. Using generic terms like that implicitly assumes all sorts of correlations that don't actually exist.
Thinking in terms of "development" is generally a bad approach. History doesn't have levels. Using generic terms like that implicitly assumes all sorts of correlations that don't actually exist.
Isn't it pretty well established that farming led to an increase in violence?
Not that I'm aware of. My understanding is that agricultural societies were less violent. As I understand it, when humans are in hunter-gathering societies, we are more territorial and less accepting of those outside of our tribe. (On the order of 50 people.) I'd like to know if that understanding is wrong.
What I do know is that we have gotten much less violent over time. The 20th century, even with all of its wars, was still much less violent than all previous centuries.
Not that I'm aware of. My understanding is that agricultural societies were less violent. As I understand it, when humans are in hunter-gathering societies, we are more territorial and less accepting of those outside of our tribe. (On the order of 50 people.) I'd like to know if that understanding is wrong.
What I do know is that we have gotten much less violent over time. The 20th century, even with all of its wars, was still much less violent than all previous centuries.
I would suggest there are two related factors here.
Before significant agriculture some amount of warfare was simply a part of life as usual. This scenario suggests martial competence is fairly ubiquitous, and thus dominating enemies without paying a high cost in blood is difficult (e.g. you might need great political skills to stitch together a powerful local coalition).
However once significant cities were established, being skilled at warfare was potentially very lucrative. This means a soldier specialist may be a very rewarding career.
Is it really the plough itself, or that the larger cities the plough helped create were a big incentive for professional soldiers to become the ruling class?
Before significant agriculture some amount of warfare was simply a part of life as usual. This scenario suggests martial competence is fairly ubiquitous, and thus dominating enemies without paying a high cost in blood is difficult (e.g. you might need great political skills to stitch together a powerful local coalition).
However once significant cities were established, being skilled at warfare was potentially very lucrative. This means a soldier specialist may be a very rewarding career.
Is it really the plough itself, or that the larger cities the plough helped create were a big incentive for professional soldiers to become the ruling class?
Farming promoted "development", but it was also the cause of the majority of social inequality in society. Those who controlled the food supply had an inordinate amount of power over the population, far more than could be achieved in hunter-gatherer societies. Read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" for a decent introduction regarding this.
I think you have that backwards - in an agricultural society, food production is distributed - so you can't have control over the food supply unless you have an inordinate amount of power over the population.
The point is that the existence of agriculture leads to many things, of which even more centralized control is the result. Agriculture by its nature supports more people than necessary to produce the food. This surplus necessarily begets an underclass and an a ruling class. The book Guns, Germs, and Steel has some very interesting case studies of societies that grew into very stratified political societies based on the discovery of agriculture. The cause/effect implication is clear because of analysis of cultures with a recent common origin who where the difference in outcomes were only a matter of properties of the land which encouraged or precluded agriculture.
Ok, you're taking the linear progression of history part, but leaving the slaughter-bench?
Hegel would be very disappointed
Hegel would be very disappointed
A claim about "all-powerful mother goddesses" before the end of the fifth millennium BC is inherently unhistorical. The submitted article notes, "For each group, the data included a description of its agricultural methods as far back in time as it was possible to go using historical evidence or, in the case of groups which did not have a written language, the first time they were observed by outsiders." That's much nearer in time than the transition to plowing the article refers to.
There was no writing anywhere during the earliest part of that transition, and if we saw statues of voluptuous female figures in some places (as we do) from that far back, it is at least as likely that the statues are porn as that they are representations of powerful goddesses. Archeology has historically systematically underestimated, perhaps for delicate readers, the amount of sheer erotic art that was produced by early human beings. The oldest surviving human art on at least two continents is crude drawings of vulvae, so the working hypothesis until additional evidence is found is that ancient human beings did not have a highly developed religion of "all-powerful mother goddesses" but rather incoherent local folk religions that didn't exclude teenage boys (the ancient artists of surviving ancient art were mostly teenage boys) from producing crudely drawn and crudely sculpted porn.
See The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie (published by the University of Chicago press)
http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-Guthrie/dp...
for much more about the evidence, as analyzed by an author who is a specialist in Pleistocene megafauna (including Homo sapiens) and himself a fine visual artist.
AFTER EDIT: It boggles my mind that I can link to a source in my comment and still have "readers" here ask what my source is for a factual statement in this comment. The source I linked is the source. (The book I link to is by a research scholar, and itself cites dozens of thorough sources about all aspects of human prehistory.) The book I link to is a lot better than any Wikipedia article. (I am a Wikipedian, painfully aware of how many good sources are missed when amateurs edit articles on Wikipedia.)
There was no writing anywhere during the earliest part of that transition, and if we saw statues of voluptuous female figures in some places (as we do) from that far back, it is at least as likely that the statues are porn as that they are representations of powerful goddesses. Archeology has historically systematically underestimated, perhaps for delicate readers, the amount of sheer erotic art that was produced by early human beings. The oldest surviving human art on at least two continents is crude drawings of vulvae, so the working hypothesis until additional evidence is found is that ancient human beings did not have a highly developed religion of "all-powerful mother goddesses" but rather incoherent local folk religions that didn't exclude teenage boys (the ancient artists of surviving ancient art were mostly teenage boys) from producing crudely drawn and crudely sculpted porn.
See The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie (published by the University of Chicago press)
http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-Guthrie/dp...
for much more about the evidence, as analyzed by an author who is a specialist in Pleistocene megafauna (including Homo sapiens) and himself a fine visual artist.
AFTER EDIT: It boggles my mind that I can link to a source in my comment and still have "readers" here ask what my source is for a factual statement in this comment. The source I linked is the source. (The book I link to is by a research scholar, and itself cites dozens of thorough sources about all aspects of human prehistory.) The book I link to is a lot better than any Wikipedia article. (I am a Wikipedian, painfully aware of how many good sources are missed when amateurs edit articles on Wikipedia.)
It sounds like your problem with the article is that its "mother goddess" interpretation is baseless because there is no written record of that time period. That's valid, except you then proceed to offer your own modern interpretation that is equally as baseless. Just because we are inordinately pre-occupied by porn today, doesn't mean pre-historic people were. If anything, they were hungry, hand-to-mouth wilderness survivors so those big-bellied women are much more likely to symbolize a well-fed person than a pornographic ideal (especially since breasts were not the sex symbol they are today for much of human history, and neither was masturbation to external visual sources). Or they could be literally anything else - kids toys, voodoo dolls, whatever. Like you said, no written record = speculation.
Also:
the ancient artists of surviving ancient art were mostly teenage boys
Sources?
Edit: Anyone care to reply instead of downvoting?
Also:
the ancient artists of surviving ancient art were mostly teenage boys
Sources?
Edit: Anyone care to reply instead of downvoting?
> it is at least as likely that the statues are porn as that they are representations of powerful goddesses
I'm not so sure there is or needs to be a distinction between the two. Penis goes in, life comes out. You can't explain that. Well, paleolithic man couldn't. But they could draw/sculpt it and revere it for both its pleasure- and life-giving properties.
I'm not so sure there is or needs to be a distinction between the two. Penis goes in, life comes out. You can't explain that. Well, paleolithic man couldn't. But they could draw/sculpt it and revere it for both its pleasure- and life-giving properties.
>Penis goes in, life comes out. You can't explain that. Well, paleolithic man couldn't. But they could draw/sculpt it and revere it
It was not until 1677 [1] that people started to discover how reproduction works beyond "penis goes in, life comes out". Yet there are no major religions documented before that (in about 5000 years of recorded history) which revered crude vulva drawings. Whereas pornographic graffiti has been widespread everywhere from the streets of Ancient Rome [2] to modern boys' bathrooms.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_van_Leeuwenhoek#Discove...
[2]http://www.pompeiana.org/resources/ancient/graffiti%20from%2...
It was not until 1677 [1] that people started to discover how reproduction works beyond "penis goes in, life comes out". Yet there are no major religions documented before that (in about 5000 years of recorded history) which revered crude vulva drawings. Whereas pornographic graffiti has been widespread everywhere from the streets of Ancient Rome [2] to modern boys' bathrooms.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_van_Leeuwenhoek#Discove...
[2]http://www.pompeiana.org/resources/ancient/graffiti%20from%2...
First and foremost, the 2nd link you posted is full of hilarious; thanks for sharing.
> II.7 (gladiator barracks); 8767: Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion.
I don't know that I'm arguing for anything 'major' or 'documented'; for any specific religion or culture; or for anything at all beyond the fact that crude vulva drawings can be either or simultaneously a show of reverence and sexual interest. That we (meaning largely post-Testament historians) haven't documented the intentions of ancient cave-artists as being born of such duality is hardly evidence against that possibility.
> II.7 (gladiator barracks); 8767: Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion.
I don't know that I'm arguing for anything 'major' or 'documented'; for any specific religion or culture; or for anything at all beyond the fact that crude vulva drawings can be either or simultaneously a show of reverence and sexual interest. That we (meaning largely post-Testament historians) haven't documented the intentions of ancient cave-artists as being born of such duality is hardly evidence against that possibility.
I'm no anthropologist, but the document leaving religions were social organizing at broader scales (market communities and early cities) than the basic coming of age rituals/education that were best left to family, clan and kin (hunters, herders and farmers).
[deleted]
Reverence is the debatable aspect here. Statue of a goddess implies respect, pornography implies objectification and a very different power relationship. So if we draw conclusions about the role of women in that society, interpreting statues as porn versus pedestals makes a difference.
> pornography implies objectification
That's a very modern application of those words. The very act of creating a statue is (true) objectification, whether it was carried out due to respect or solely to titillate. I'm not convinced that both cannot be true of the same statue.
And the modern concept of pornography means very little when framed in a pre-Judeo-Christian world. I doubt any of our loin-clothed ancestors shared the shame-based perspective 21st century humans have on the human body. No doubt some statues/drawings of vulvae were made because vulvae were fun things to interact with, and some were made because they were meant to be revered; I'd argue that it's possible for some percentage of those works of art to be motivated by both respect and eroticism, and further that the two motivations need not be considered so inherently at odds.
That's a very modern application of those words. The very act of creating a statue is (true) objectification, whether it was carried out due to respect or solely to titillate. I'm not convinced that both cannot be true of the same statue.
And the modern concept of pornography means very little when framed in a pre-Judeo-Christian world. I doubt any of our loin-clothed ancestors shared the shame-based perspective 21st century humans have on the human body. No doubt some statues/drawings of vulvae were made because vulvae were fun things to interact with, and some were made because they were meant to be revered; I'd argue that it's possible for some percentage of those works of art to be motivated by both respect and eroticism, and further that the two motivations need not be considered so inherently at odds.
I agree.
Making a statue in ancient times wasn't cheap or easy. Cheap in the aspect of always living on the edge of life, where a bad season could decimate a living group, and having time to do so. Easy in that tools weren't readily available to get it done quickly. I don't think anyone was just swinging in a hammock on a lazy Sunday - there were no lazy Sundays.
From that you can most likely assume that statues had purpose and significance. They weren't just put up for titillation which is really all modern porn is today.
Making a statue in ancient times wasn't cheap or easy. Cheap in the aspect of always living on the edge of life, where a bad season could decimate a living group, and having time to do so. Easy in that tools weren't readily available to get it done quickly. I don't think anyone was just swinging in a hammock on a lazy Sunday - there were no lazy Sundays.
From that you can most likely assume that statues had purpose and significance. They weren't just put up for titillation which is really all modern porn is today.
Hunter gatherers may have worked far fewer hours than agrarian societies, especially if they had just had a decent haul.
> That's a very modern application of those words.
It follows from your argument that because our ancestors didn't share an evolutionary perspective, modern humans describing our ancestors in evolutionary terms is less meaningful.
Put another way, when modern humans describe the process of objectification, it matters not at all if the objectifier says to themselves "I sure am making an object out of this".
It follows from your argument that because our ancestors didn't share an evolutionary perspective, modern humans describing our ancestors in evolutionary terms is less meaningful.
Put another way, when modern humans describe the process of objectification, it matters not at all if the objectifier says to themselves "I sure am making an object out of this".
> pornography implies objectification
It really doesn't. People can relate to porn in many ways. Unless the definition of "objectification" is so broad as to make the statement meaningless.
It really doesn't. People can relate to porn in many ways. Unless the definition of "objectification" is so broad as to make the statement meaningless.
> pornography implies objectification and a very different power relationship
that's way too general. There's enough pornography out there, recent and old, where people are just having nice sex without there being some sort of power/dominating relationship nor where things get objectified to the extreme.
that's way too general. There's enough pornography out there, recent and old, where people are just having nice sex without there being some sort of power/dominating relationship nor where things get objectified to the extreme.
>pornography implies objectification
what exactly do you mean by this?
what exactly do you mean by this?
The idea is that porn reduces the actors in it to objects that exists solely to be exploited for the pleasure of others. It is often combined with unease over the power relationship implied, typically of women being subject to men.
The main counter to this is that it's fiction and the actors are consenting adults, and that the only material difference between porn and other crappy fictional films is prudish judgment of (primarily) women's sexual behavior.
The main counter to this is that it's fiction and the actors are consenting adults, and that the only material difference between porn and other crappy fictional films is prudish judgment of (primarily) women's sexual behavior.
History and truth are often out of synchronization (esp. in these days of pervasive propaganda/active manipulation of the population using mass communication technology). The chapters of the human story that played out 15,000 to 5,000 years ago in Africa/Europe/Near East/India are still being figured out by a combination of archeological, genetic, and linguistic research. Concerning the worship of "Earth/Mother Goddesses" vs. "Sky Gods" (e.g. Yahweh, Zeus, Thor, etc.) and the interactions of the different groups of people who preferred (and oftentimes forced upon others) their own visions of deity, if you want to engage rationally on this topic, I recommend researching and understanding (and contesting in an actual rational manner if you believe that the hypothesis is false) the "Kurgan Hypothesis."[1] There are some good books about it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis
In Guns, Germs and Steel Jarred Diamond mentions that there were less than ten places were farming was invented, and that cultures descended from these centers usually retained their selection of crops. So with the link between the plow and some specific crops, it seems that the sample size could potentially be as low as less than ten ( instead of 1200 language groups).
"Their primary source of information was a detailed ethnographic description of over 1,200 language groups across the world."
This method could be extremely error-prone, due to borrowings, etc. between languages, e.g. see some of the criticisms against gluttochronology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottochronology#Discussion) which uses similar techniques to determine relation between languages.
This method could be extremely error-prone, due to borrowings, etc. between languages, e.g. see some of the criticisms against gluttochronology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottochronology#Discussion) which uses similar techniques to determine relation between languages.
>The plough was heavier [...] it gave men an advantage over women. [...] Women descended from plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be elected to parliament or to run businesses
And this is why North European countries, which used the heaviest plows [1], are the most backward in their treatment of women. Oh wait...
In any case, as anyone who has had a serious conversation with a farmer can attest, the bulk of the work in agriculture is by far in harvesting and not in plowing. Pretty much all traditional societies "allow" women to do that.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carruca
And this is why North European countries, which used the heaviest plows [1], are the most backward in their treatment of women. Oh wait...
In any case, as anyone who has had a serious conversation with a farmer can attest, the bulk of the work in agriculture is by far in harvesting and not in plowing. Pretty much all traditional societies "allow" women to do that.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carruca
Also interesting is their assertion that society first changes very quickly after the introduction of the plow, but then has very long lasting effects. Why did the first change quickly but the second have long lasting effects?
I don't understand your critique. Can you explain it more?
First they find support for the hypothesis that the place of women in society can change very quickly because their function in society changes.
Then they find support for the opposing hypothesis that such changes in society have long lasting effects, i.e., that the position of women in society does not change quickly.
Finally they place both opposing hypotheses in a single narrative.
To me, this is a major inconsistency, perhaps only due to the journalist rather than the scientists. Both hypotheses should be discarded since neither fits all the observations.
Then they find support for the opposing hypothesis that such changes in society have long lasting effects, i.e., that the position of women in society does not change quickly.
Finally they place both opposing hypotheses in a single narrative.
To me, this is a major inconsistency, perhaps only due to the journalist rather than the scientists. Both hypotheses should be discarded since neither fits all the observations.
That, exactly, was my thought also.
A) That's a straw man argument. North European countries are no longer agrarian societies. Compare pre-enlightenment northern europe to their counterparts and you'll have a more honest comparison.
B) The separation of work due to existential needs was not sexist. It's just the initial condition that created the asymmetry in gender roles. That's to say a more agrarian society isn't necessarily more sexist than a less agrarian one. It's all the other factors that mold this asymmetry.
B) The separation of work due to existential needs was not sexist. It's just the initial condition that created the asymmetry in gender roles. That's to say a more agrarian society isn't necessarily more sexist than a less agrarian one. It's all the other factors that mold this asymmetry.
Harvesting is a surge-activity that has to be completed in a very narrow timespan for maximal yield. Also, harvesting primarily requires stamina, not strength.
Tilling, on the other hand, is less time sensitive, and can better be the job of a smaller group spreading their effort over a longer period of time.
Also, the research doesn't claims any relation between the weight of the plow and the mindset beyond for the passing of a threshold where men gain a physical advantage.
Tilling, on the other hand, is less time sensitive, and can better be the job of a smaller group spreading their effort over a longer period of time.
Also, the research doesn't claims any relation between the weight of the plow and the mindset beyond for the passing of a threshold where men gain a physical advantage.
>the research doesn't claims any relation between the weight of the plow and the mindset beyond for the passing of a threshold
So let's see, the research is about the relationship between two variables, both of them naturally continuous: weight of farming tools and degree of discrimination against women. The correlation doesn't quite hold for some sections of the graph, so what do you know: let's just separate the first variable into two arbitrary buckets, "light" and "heavy". Voila, case proved! Except if we happened to place the division at a "heavier" point, leaving only the Nordic countries in the "heavy" bucket, we'd obtain the exact inverse correlation.
So let's see, the research is about the relationship between two variables, both of them naturally continuous: weight of farming tools and degree of discrimination against women. The correlation doesn't quite hold for some sections of the graph, so what do you know: let's just separate the first variable into two arbitrary buckets, "light" and "heavy". Voila, case proved! Except if we happened to place the division at a "heavier" point, leaving only the Nordic countries in the "heavy" bucket, we'd obtain the exact inverse correlation.
Hoeing to ploughing is a discontinuous function. Either you scratch the ground with your hoe or you plough it. There is no middle ground where your hoe gradually gets heavier and turn into a plough.
Again, weight of farm tools is a naturally continuous variable. There are heavy hoes, light plows and lots of ground in between [1] [2]. Transforming weight into a binary variable with an arbitrary separation point is not sound statistical practice.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattock
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ard_(plough)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattock
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ard_(plough)
>Transforming weight into a binary variable with an arbitrary separation point is not sound statistical practice
But the separation is not arbitrary. "Light enough to wield by women" is the important statistic here, so the value in question is binary by nature. Weight in isolation simply isn't what is being considered here.
But the separation is not arbitrary. "Light enough to wield by women" is the important statistic here, so the value in question is binary by nature. Weight in isolation simply isn't what is being considered here.
The effectiveness of a tool as a function of its weight is not necessarily linear either.
history is perfect for data mining. just search for interesting correlations and then publish when you've found one. it's not like anybody can run a fresh experiment to see if it is spurious or not.
People seem to be a bit overly upset by the mention of the mother goddess, which I agree is certainly an outmoded hypothesis. But that's a throwaway line in the article, which fundamentally is about how different technology can create different social norms and institutions. It's like half the comments on the article bitching about a capitalization error.
If the authors of the original article dotted all their is and crossed their ts, that's really something extraordinary: peoples whose ancestors were plough users show a strong correlation with regressive views on gender. That's remarkable.
That original paper can be found here:
On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/qje.q...
Note also that the strong correlation here lends itself to a variety of causal claims. Maybe ploughs led to higher population densities and strong states, which enforce gender roles. Maybe it's the strength based argument offered by the Economist. Maybe they became manufacturable only once society had developed strong states, which would make the correlation purely a one of shared cause.
If the authors of the original article dotted all their is and crossed their ts, that's really something extraordinary: peoples whose ancestors were plough users show a strong correlation with regressive views on gender. That's remarkable.
That original paper can be found here:
On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/qje.q...
Note also that the strong correlation here lends itself to a variety of causal claims. Maybe ploughs led to higher population densities and strong states, which enforce gender roles. Maybe it's the strength based argument offered by the Economist. Maybe they became manufacturable only once society had developed strong states, which would make the correlation purely a one of shared cause.
I think the explanation here is much simpler that it needs to be.
Pre-agriculture, everyone's job #1 was getting food on the table. Post-agriculture, you had a surplus of food, so people began to specialize. Economic and market forces started to become more sophisticated, as people were secure enough that daily survival wasn't an issue.
So economically speaking, before the advent of modern farm machinery, what did a farmer need to prosper? Answer: Labor.
Where did this labor come from? Answer: Children.
Farm families are historically speaking very large. Much larger than what a hunter/gatherer could possible support.
A woman might have 12-15 children, and since you have a food supply, many of them will survive to adulthood. So if you have 15 term pregnancies, starting at age 15, you're talking about being almost continuously pregnant until age 30.
In primitive surroundings, pregnancy is deadly. Today, the lifetime risk of maternal death in sub-Saharan Africa is 1/16. (vs. 1/2800 in the developed world).
Pre-agriculture, everyone's job #1 was getting food on the table. Post-agriculture, you had a surplus of food, so people began to specialize. Economic and market forces started to become more sophisticated, as people were secure enough that daily survival wasn't an issue.
So economically speaking, before the advent of modern farm machinery, what did a farmer need to prosper? Answer: Labor.
Where did this labor come from? Answer: Children.
Farm families are historically speaking very large. Much larger than what a hunter/gatherer could possible support.
A woman might have 12-15 children, and since you have a food supply, many of them will survive to adulthood. So if you have 15 term pregnancies, starting at age 15, you're talking about being almost continuously pregnant until age 30.
In primitive surroundings, pregnancy is deadly. Today, the lifetime risk of maternal death in sub-Saharan Africa is 1/16. (vs. 1/2800 in the developed world).
It's definitely a case of specialisation, but your explanation doesn't address the correlation between the ancient methods of agriculture and current day labour force participation that the study does:
But in countries like Rwanda, Botswana, Madagascar or Kenya, whose people are predominantly descended from hoe-users, women are far more likely to be in the labour force than those in historically plough-using places like India, Syria or Egypt.
But in countries like Rwanda, Botswana, Madagascar or Kenya, whose people are predominantly descended from hoe-users, women are far more likely to be in the labour force than those in historically plough-using places like India, Syria or Egypt.
This "historians" theory is a version of anthropology. Except it's missing one key piece. The orthodoxy holds that heavy plows and other strenuous activity leads to miscarriage. People can call all the other evidence as speculative but this assertion is much harder to dismiss.
The beauty of evolution is that it not only produces a wide variety of human offspring (via sexual reproduction and sexual selection) but also a _homo_ _sapien_ family unit in which each individual (male + female(s), usually) has different strengths.
This surplus of skills has allowed humans to survive under a wide variety of circumstances and environments. Evolution does not guarantee long term survival of the fittest--it guarantees long term survival of the most adaptable.
In some environments, the female may be more critical to the success of the family (or extended clan, or tribe, or what have you). In others, it's the man. Sometimes it's equal. But just because a particular skill set isn't the most valuable at any point in time doesn't mean that the individuals with those skills should be second class citizens. Eventually, years or decades or millennia from now, or thousands of miles away, their time will come again.
This surplus of skills has allowed humans to survive under a wide variety of circumstances and environments. Evolution does not guarantee long term survival of the fittest--it guarantees long term survival of the most adaptable.
In some environments, the female may be more critical to the success of the family (or extended clan, or tribe, or what have you). In others, it's the man. Sometimes it's equal. But just because a particular skill set isn't the most valuable at any point in time doesn't mean that the individuals with those skills should be second class citizens. Eventually, years or decades or millennia from now, or thousands of miles away, their time will come again.
It's worth noting that at the same time, with the rise of agriculture came the rise of property and with it --- the rise of ownership of not just the here and now, but also the future... who will own the land in the future?
The focus on thr future ownership gave rise to the focus in single inheritance: a son. And tbe importance of knowing whose son was your's. To ensure lineage men suppressed women as an extension if their property.
Now both theories are complimentary because the reason sons (not daughters) became the targtarget for inheritance probably boiled down to these same issues of strength.
The key change thwt occured is we became more monogomous and suppressive of women even though it was not a natural way to be, to preserve property after death.
Source: "Sex at Dawn", an interesting read on post-religiously framed anthropology
The focus on thr future ownership gave rise to the focus in single inheritance: a son. And tbe importance of knowing whose son was your's. To ensure lineage men suppressed women as an extension if their property.
Now both theories are complimentary because the reason sons (not daughters) became the targtarget for inheritance probably boiled down to these same issues of strength.
The key change thwt occured is we became more monogomous and suppressive of women even though it was not a natural way to be, to preserve property after death.
Source: "Sex at Dawn", an interesting read on post-religiously framed anthropology
This is all an exercise in intellectual wankery that reminds me of the bit in Cryptonomicon where Randy's girlfriend publishes a paper correlating Unix beards with female oppression.
Oh, and by the way, 'twas Margaret Mead -- a woman and hardly an apologist for the patriarchy -- who put the lie to the myth that preagricultural human society was matriarchal. There have been matrilineal societies, but in these the property tended to pass from father to daughter's husband rather than father to son.