Sexual division of labour during human evolution

Many scientists believed in sexual division of labor during human evolution where men were mainly hunters and women were mainly gatherers. Nobody can debate the acumen of females in identification of different varieties of colours of objects. This expertise of women prompted researchers to believe that during the course of human evolution, women were mainly gatherers and indulged in foraging activities due to which they achieved this skill. This view was further propagated by some researchers that it was due to the fact that women were mainly busy in child rearing activities.

This hypothesis was challenged in 2020 by Randal Haas and his team of researchers from different Universities in the United States. What exactly did they say? They studied 9000 year old Andean excavated burial sites and found an assemblage of projectile stone tools and animal processing tools purposely placed there alongside. This was a pointer to the fact that the person must have been a hunter. Detailed analysis revealed that this was an adult female who was a hunter and mainly survived on plants and animals diets. Many burial sites showed similar findings of female hunters. A comparison of materials obtained from male burial sites and female burial sites had a lot of similarity suggesting that there was not much sexual division of labour.

To understand the role of sexual division of labour in modern day foraging societies, Abigail Anderson and her colleagues from United States provided data in 2023, on 63 such societies and found that in 79% of these societies, women were also hunters. Upon further analysis whether the hunting by females in these societies was purposeful or opportunistic, in 87% of these groups it was found that women hunted purposefully. In those societies where hunting is a major source of subsistence, women participated in 100% of such activities. The hunting activity by women among these societies was happening in spite of their being engaged in the child rearing activities also.

The above findings are reinforced by a recent analysis of large number of studies on sports persons conducted throughout the world which have indicated that women outperform men in ultra-long distance running. This is because of their estrogen hormone which keeps them going in such races. It is assumed that during the course of evolution homo erectus used to live in grasslands and would hunt animals by exhausting them after chasing them over long distances. Since women are natural long distance runners, therefore they are supposed to have participated in hunting also during evolutionary history, thereby demolishing the myth of sexual division of labour that women were mainly gatherers.