Sexual division of labour

The sexual division of labour (SDL) is the delegation of different tasks between male and female animals. Among human foragers, males and females targeted different types of foods and shared them with each other for a mutual or familial benefit.[1] In some species, males and females eat slightly different foods, while in other species, males and females will routinely share food; but only in humans are these two attributes combined.[2] The few remaining hunter-gatherer populations in the world serve as evolutionary models that can help explain the origin of the sexual division of labor. Many studies on the sexual division of labor have been conducted on hunter-gatherer populations, such as the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer population of Tanzania.[3] In modern day society sex differences in occupation is seen across cultures, with the tendency that men do technical work and women tend to do work related to care. [4]

Behavioral ecological perspective

Man the hunter vs. woman the gatherer

Both men and women have the option of investing resources either to provision children or to have additional offspring. According to life history theory males and females monitor costs and benefits of each alternative to maximize reproductive fitness;[5] however, trade-off differences do exist between sexes. Females are likely to benefit most from parental care effort because they are certain which offspring are theirs and have relatively few reproductive opportunities, each of which is relatively costly and risky. In contrast, males are less certain of paternity, but may have many more mating opportunities bearing relatively low costs and risks. Though not every hunter-gatherer population pinpoints females to gathering and males to hunting (most notably the Aeta[6] and Ju'/hoansi[7]), the norm of most current populations divide the roles of labor in this manner. Natural selection is more likely to favor male reproductive strategies that stress mating effort and female strategies that emphasize parental investment.[5] As a result, women do the low-risk task of gathering vegetation and underground storage organs that are rich in energy to provide for themselves and offspring.[5] Since women provide a reliable source of caloric intake, men are able to afford a higher risk of failure by hunting animals.

In the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human[8] British primatologist Richard Wrangham suggests that the origin of the division of labor between males and females may have originated with the invention of cooking, [9][10] which is estimated to have happened simultaneously with humans gaining control of fire between 1 and 2 million years ago.[11] The idea was early proposed by Friedrich Engels in an unfinished essay from 1876.

The classic theory of natural selection positing a difference in male and female reproductive strategies has recently been reexamined, with an alternate theory being proposed that promiscuity was encouraged among women and men alike, causing uncertainty among males of the paternity of their offspring, allowing for group cooperation in raising all offspring due to the possibility that any child could be the descendant of a male, similar to observations of the closest relative of humans, the bonobo.[12] Moreover, recent archaeological research done by the anthropologist and archaeologist Steven Kuhn[13] from the University of Arizona suggests that the sexual division of labor did not exist prior to the Upper Paleolithic (50,000 and 10,000 years ago) and developed relatively recently in human history. The sexual division of labor may have arisen to allow humans to acquire food and other resources more efficiently.[14]

In modern human society

Sexual division of labor is observed globally, and across most cultures.[15] In many societies the breadwinner homemaker model has been a stable characteristic. [16] The division is more pronounced in some fields of work than in others, generally, work outside, dangerous work and work in highly technical disciplines (typically STEM jobs with the exception of those related to health care) is more likely to be done by men,[17] while work related to care and interpersonal relations is generally more likely to be done by women.[18] The borders of the division are not generally stable, with some fields showing a reversal of the proportions, such as doctors.[19] Some fields see an increasing segregation, positively correlated with the levels of egalitarian policies of the countries, known as the gender-equality paradox.

Hypotheses for evolutionary origins

Provisioning household

The traditional explanation of the sexual division of labour finds that males and females cooperate within pair bonds by targeting different foods so that everyone in the household benefits.[20] Females may target foods that do not conflict with reproduction and child care, while males will target foods that females do not gather, which increases variance in daily consumption and provides a broader diet for the family.[20] Foraging specialization in particular food groups should increase skill level and thus foraging success rates for targeted foods.

Show-Off / Signaling hypothesis

The "show‐off" hypothesis proposes that men hunt to gain social attention and mating benefits by widely sharing game. This model proposes that hunting functions mainly to provide an honest signal of the underlying genetic quality of hunters, which later yields a mating advantage or social deference.[21] Women tend to target the foods that are most reliable, while men tend to target difficult-to-acquire foods to "signal" their abilities and genetic quality. Hunting is thus viewed as a form of mating or male-male status competition, not familial provisioning.[22] Recent studies on the Hadza have revealed that men hunt mainly to distribute food to their own families rather than sharing it with other members of the community.[23] This conclusion suggests evidence against hunting for signaling purposes.

The Victorian Period

The Victorian era has been closely examined by Sally Shuttleworth and company. Women played dual roles and were expected to deliver with conviction in the aspects in which they were required to perform duties in and outside of the household. She states, "Two traditional tropes are here combined: Victorian medical textbooks demonstrated not only woman's biological fitness and adaptation to the sacred role of homemaker, but also her terrifying subjection to the forces of the body. At once angel and demon, woman came to represent both the civilizing power that would cleanse the male from contamination in the brutal world of the economic market and also the rampant, uncontrolled excesses of the material economy."[24]

SDL and optimal foraging theory

Optimal foraging theory (OFT) states that organisms forage in such a way as to maximize their energy intake per unit time.[25] In other words, animals behave in such a way as to find, capture, and consume food containing the most calories while expending the least amount of time possible in doing so. The sexual division of labor provides an appropriate explanation as to why males forgo the opportunity to gather any items with caloric value- a strategy that would seem suboptimal from an energetic standpoint. The OFT suggests that the sexual division of labor is an adaptation that benefits the household; thus, foraging behavior of males will appear optimal at the level of the family.[26] If a hunter-gatherer man does not rely on resources from others and passes up a food item with caloric value, it can be assumed that he is foraging at an optimal level. But, if he passes up the opportunity because it is a food that women routinely gather, then as long as men and women share their spoils, it will be optimal for men to forgo the collection and continue searching for different resources to complement the resources gathered by women.[27]

Cooking and the sexual division of labor

The emergence of cooking in early Homo may have created problems of food theft from women while food was being cooked.[28] As a result, females would recruit male partners to protect them and their resources from others. This concept, known as the theft hypothesis, accommodates an explanation as to why the labor of cooking is strongly associated with the status of women.[28] Women are forced to gather and cook foods because they will not acquire food otherwise and access to resources is critical for their reproductive success.[28] On the contrary, men do not gather because their physical dominance allows them to scrounge cooked foods from women. Thus, women's foraging and food preparation efforts allow men to participate in the high-risk, high-reward activities of hunting. Females, in turn, become increasingly sexually attractive as a means to exploit male interest in investing in her protection.[28]

Evolution of sex differences

Many studies investigating the spatial abilities of men and women have found no significant differences,[29][30][31] though metastudies show a male advantage in mental rotation and assessing horizontality and verticality,[32][33] and a female advantage in spatial memory.[34][35] The sexual division of labor has been proposed as an explanation for these cognitive differences. Those differences disappear with a short training [36] or when given a favorable image of woman ability.[37] Furthermore, the individual differences are greater than the average differences, which isn't therefore a valid prediction of male or female cognitive ability.[38] This hypothesis argues that males needed the ability to follow prey over long distances and to accurately target their game with projectile technology, and, as a result, male specialization in hunting prowess would have spurred the selection for increased spatial and navigational ability. Similarly, the ability to remember the locations of underground storage organs and other vegetation would have led to an increase in overall efficiency and decrease in total energy expenditure since the time spent searching for food would decrease.[39] Natural selection based on behaviors that increase hunting success and energetic efficiency would bear a positive influence on reproductive success. However, recent research suggests that the sexual division of labor developed relatively recently and that gender roles were not always the same in early-human cultures, contradicting the theory that each sex is naturally predisposed to different types of work.[40]

The discussion of the division of gender roles have been an ongoing debate and Gerda Lerner quotes the philosopher Socrates to demonstrate that the idea of defined gender roles is patriarchal. It also identifies how men and women are capable of performing the same job descriptions with the exception of when it calls for anatomical differences, such as giving birth. "In Book V of the Republic, Plato—in the voice of Socrates—sets down the conditions for the training of the guardians, his elite leadership group. Socrates proposes that women should have the same opportunity as men to be trained as guardians. In support of this he offers a strong statement against making sex differences the basis for discrimination: if the difference [between men and women] consists only in women bearing and men begetting children, this does not amount to proof that a woman differs from a man in respect to the sort of education she should receive; and we shall therefore continue to maintain that our guardians and their wives ought to have the same pursuits.[41]

He continues to add that with the same set of established resources such as education, training and teaching, it creates an atmosphere of equity which helps to further the cause of gender equality. "Socrates proposes the same education for boys and girls, freeing guardian women from housework and child-care. But this female equality of opportunity will serve a larger purpose: the destruction of the family. Plato's aim is to abolish private property, the private family, and with it self-interest in his leadership group, for he sees clearly that private property engenders class antagonism and disharmony. Therefore "men and women are to have a common way of life. . . —common education, common children; and they are to watch over the citizens in common."[41]

Some researchers, such as Cordelia Fine, argue that available evidence does not support a biological basis for gender roles.[42]

Evolutionary perspective

Based on the current theories and research on the sexual division of labor, four critical aspects of hunter‐gatherer socioecology led to the evolutionary origin of the SDL in humans: (1) long‐term dependency on high‐cost offspring,[43] (2) optimal dietary mix of mutually exclusive foods,[44] (3) efficient foraging based on specialized skill, and (4) sex‐differentiated comparative advantage in tasks.[45] These combined conditions are rare in nonhuman vertebrates but common to currently-existing populations of human foragers, which, thus, gives rise to a potential factor for the evolutionary divergence of social behaviors in Homo.

See also

References

  1. Marlowe, Frank. "Hunting and Gathering: The Human Sexual Division of Foraging Labor." Cross-Cultural Research. 41.2 (2007): 170-95. Web.
  2. Zihlman, A., and NM Tanner. "Gathering and the hominid adaptation." Anthropology Origins. 10.99 (2001): 163-194. Web.
  3. Marlowe, Frank. (2010). The Hadza: the Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania. University of California Press.
  4. Su, Rong; Rounds, James; Armstrong, Patrick Ian (Nov 2009). "Men and things, women and people: a meta-analysis of sex differences in interests". Psychol Bull. 135 (6): 859–884. doi:10.1037/a0017364. PMID 19883140. S2CID 31839733.
  5. Bird, R. "Cooperation and conflict: the behavioral ecology of the sexual division of labor." Evolutionary Anthropology. 8.2 (1999): 65-75.
  6. Dahlberg, F. (1983). Woman the Gatherer. Yale University Press. p. 120. ISBN 9780300029895. Retrieved 2015-07-12.
  7. Biesele, Megan; Barclay, Steve (March 2001). "Ju/'Hoan Women's Tracking Knowledge And Its Contribution To Their Husbands' Hunting Success". African Study Monographs Suppl.26: 67–84
  8. Wrangham, Richard (2009). Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01362-3.
  9. Bradt, Steve; Sciences (2009-06-01). "Invention of cooking drove evolution of the human species, new book argues". {{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  10. Rehg, Jennifer (2018-04-11). "Review of "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human"". The Councilor: A Journal of the Social Studies. 71 (1).
  11. Herculano-Houzel, Suzana (2016-04-29). "The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable". The MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262034258.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-262-03425-8. {{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  12. "Ill-Fated Interview Part I | Psychology Today". psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 2015-07-12.
  13. Kuhn, Steven L.; Stiner, Mary C. (2006-12-01). "What's a Mother to Do? The Division of Labor among Neandertals and Modern Humans in Eurasia". Current Anthropology. 47 (6): 953–981. doi:10.1086/507197. ISSN 0011-3204. S2CID 42981328.
  14. Stefan Lovgren. "Sex-Based Roles Gave Modern Humans an Edge, Study Says". National Geographic News. Retrieved 2008-02-03. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061207-sex-humans.html Archived 2011-06-04 at the Wayback Machine
  15. Reskin, B.F. (2001). "Sex Segregation at Work". International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: 13962–13965. doi:10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/03994-2. ISBN 9780080430768.
  16. MAIR, JANE (4 October 2016). Subjectivity, Citizenship and Belonging in Law (1 ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. p. chapter 11. ISBN 978-1-317-30814-0.
  17. Fry, Richard; Kennedy, Brian; Funk, Cary. "STEM Jobs See Uneven Progress in Increasing Gender, Racial and Ethnic Diversity". pewresearch.org. pew research. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  18. "Women are well-represented in health and long-term care professions, but often in jobs with poor working conditions". OECD. March 2019. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  19. "The proportion of female doctors has increased in all OECD countries over the past two decades Data - OECD". www.oecd.org. OECD.
  20. Lee and I. Devore, "What hunters do for a living, or How to make out on scare resources," in Man the Hunter. pp. 30-48. Chicago:Aldine
  21. Hawkes, K, and Bird Bliege. "Showing off, handicap signaling, and the evolution of men's work." Evolutionary Anthropology. 11. (2002): 58-67. Web.
  22. Hawkes, K. "Why do men hunt? Some benefits for risky strategies.." E. Cashdan. (1990): 145-166. Web.
  23. Wood, B., and K Hill. "A Test of the "Showing-Off" Hypothesis with Ache Hunters." Current Anthropology. 10.99 (2000): 124-25. Web.
  24. Shuttleworth, Sally (1990). Female Circulation: Medical Discourse and Popular Advertising in the Mid-Victorian Era." *Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 47–70.
  25. Marlowe, F. "Hunting and Gathering: The Human Sexual Division of Foraging Labor." Cross-Cultural Research. 41.2 (2007): 170-95. Web.
  26. Marlowe, F. "A critical period for provisioning by Hadza men: Implications for pair bonding." Evolution and Human Behavior. 24. (2003): 217-29. Web.
  27. Porter, C. (2007). "How Marginal are forager habitats?." Journal of Archeological. 34. (2007): 59-68. Web.
  28. Wrangham, R, J.D. Jones, G Laden, and D Pilbeam. "The Raw and the Stolen." Current Anthropology 40.5 (1999): 567-94.
  29. Corley, DeFries, Kuse, Vandenberg. 1980. Familial Resemblance for the Identical Blocks Test of Spatial Ability: No Evidence of X Linkage. Behavior Genetics.
  30. Julia A. Sherman. 1978. Sex-Related Cognitive Differences: An Essay on Theory and Evidence Springfield.
  31. University, K.W.S.P.P.P.S. (2005). Developmental Influences on Adult Intelligence : The Seattle Longitudinal Study: The Seattle Longitudinal Study. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 68. ISBN 9780198035602. Retrieved 2015-07-12.
  32. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns
  33. Chrisler, Joan C; Donald R. McCreary (11 February 2012). Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology. Springer, 2010. ISBN 9781441914644.
  34. Ellis, Lee, Sex differences: summarizing more than a century of scientific research, CRC Press, 2008, ISBN 0-8058-5959-4, ISBN 978-0-8058-5959-1
  35. Halpern, Diane F., Sex differences in cognitive abilities, Psychology Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8058-2792-7, ISBN 978-0-8058-2792-7
  36. Wiedenbauer, Gunnar; Jansen-Osmann, Petra (February 2008). "ERIC - Manual Training of Mental Rotation in Children, Learning and Instruction, 2008-Feb – Experiment of Wiedenbauer, Gunnar; Jansen-Osmann, Petra (2008)". Learning and Instruction. eric.ed.gov. 18 (1): 30–41. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2006.09.009. Retrieved 2015-07-12.
  37. "Article by Claude Steele, "A Threat in the Air - How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance" in 1997, "American Psychologist"" (PDF). users.nber.org. Retrieved 2015-07-12.
  38. Catherine Vidal (2012). "The Sexed Brain: Between Science and Ideology". Neuroethics. 5 (3): 295–303. doi:10.1007/s12152-011-9121-9. S2CID 145584327.
  39. David C. Geary. Sexual selection, the division of labor, and the evolution of sex differences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 21. (1998): 444-447. Web.
  40. Stefan Lovgren. "Sex-Based Roles Gave Modern Humans an Edge, Study Says". National Geographic News. Retrieved 2008-02-03.
  41. Lerner, Gerda (1986). The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. Chapter 10.
  42. Fine, Cordelia (2010). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. W. W. Norton. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001005.g001. ISBN 978-0-393-06838-2.
  43. Halperin, R. "Ecology and Mode of Production: Seasonal Variation and the Division of Labor by Sex Among Hunter-Gatherers." Journal of Anthropological Research. 36 (1980): 379-399. Web.
  44. Wrangham, R, J.D. Jones, G Laden, and D Pilbeam. "The Raw and the Stolen." Current Anthropology 40.5 (1999): 567-94. Web.
  45. Hurtado, A. M., Hill, K., Kaplan, H., & Hurtado, I. (1992). Trade-offs between female food acquisition and child care among Hiwi and Ache foragers. Human Nature. 3.3. (1992): 185 – 216.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.