…and this is a 
Gender Bias and Anne Conway
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Posted on: October 5, 2007 11:43 AM, by Blue_Expo
In discussing Soul Made Flesh this past Wednesday morning in PZ's neurobiology class, I brought up what I thought to be an interesting, though somewhat tangential, point. Zimmer mentioned Anne Conway and how ambitious she was in her studies despite not being allowed to attend a university. The fact that females were not given the same opportunities throughout history is something I remember learning about in grade school. But where did the ideology that females are inferior to males begin?
One of my fellow students argued that because females give birth they were probably not expected to hunt and gather food while they were pregnant. I thought about this and although I don't know for sure, in early civilizations females probably tended fields and gathered crop until while pregnant until they were no longer physically able to, returning to the fields as soon as they recovered from the stress of giving birth. Males, meanwhile, tended to be stronger and did not have to give birth to maintain their population.
Another thought that I had on this topic was that male aggression and anger tendencies probably have something to with the ambition to control their domain. Considering male influence in government, it would be interesting to see the effects of a female United States president. There have been several queens as well as kings in European countries over the last thousand years. Is there a difference in how a country operates that is dependent on the gender of its leader?
Things seem to be much different today than they were a hundred years ago. Females driving, voting, becoming doctors, and all these things that would have been unheard of. Are males falling behind and if they do will females dominate males? Is society moving toward a codominance of gender? There is plenty of debate on this topic and I'm sure it won't be resolved anytime soon.
References:
Zimmer, Carl. 2004. Soul Made Flesh. Free Press, New York, NY.
Comments
Also remember that smelling predator blood tends to scare off animals. So one week out of 4 females couldn't hunt, because they scared off the game. I honestly believe this is where the bias started.
Posted by: Brendan S | October 5, 2007 12:39 PM
None of this seems to take into account the few truly matriarchial societies that have existed. It's much more telling that even in matriarchial societies, there tends to be some sort of cultural misogyny. My honest opinion is that the only prerequisite for a cultural misogyny is a cultural bias towards one gender. There have been a few cultures (such as some North American indigenous tribes) that have avoided these issues altogether by focusing on merits rather than weaknesses.
Posted by: Ryan Egesdahl | October 5, 2007 12:46 PM
Not all cultures prior to modernized western culture, considered women "inferior."
In many Native American cultures women were not only equal, but the determiner of family, and at times, tribal policy. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) had female representatives at their council fires at least 500, and perhaps 1000 years ago (actual dates are in dispute). Numerous native cultures were matrilineal (traced descent through their mothers) and/or matrilocal (husbands moved in with the wife's family). In many of these cultures the "old crone," senior female member of the group, held more authority than old men (or young men for that matter).
Early modern Western European (and American) cultures suppressed women's roles, arguably due to Judeo-Christian theology. Prior to the influx of Christianity, numerous pagan European cultures showed evidence of greater equality and authority for women. The last vestiges of feminine power were suppressed in the witch hunts which specifically targeted midwifes and other women that challenged male dominance of the medical profession.
I would argue against the idea that "Ugh" the caveman and his wife established traditional roles for the genders, evidence outside of European dominated cultures suggests this explanation is at best overly simplified, and at worst, a modern construct.
Posted by: dogmeatib | October 5, 2007 12:47 PM
Posted by: Tulse | October 5, 2007 12:50 PM
Yeah, what dogmeatib said. I'm not quite as hot on the Judeo-Christian suppression idea, though I would agree it's probably a factor. Like I said, the most likely cause for cultural misogyny is cultural gender bias. The gender bias was probably around in Hebrew culture well before their myths gelled - they probably even evolved together.
Posted by: Ryan Egesdahl | October 5, 2007 12:57 PM
Piecing together from an old Evolutionary Psychology class:
400 viable human female ova produced in a lifetime.
5,000,000 sperm produced in one male ejaculation.
= human female is a scarce (and therefore, valuable) sexual resource.
Scarce resource --> Competition
Competition --> Stronger, faster, taller, etc., males.
That's part of it anyway. (From what I remember.)
Posted by: Mr. Person | October 5, 2007 1:11 PM
The handful of matrilocal and more (relatively) gender neutral societies fail to undercut the overwhelming majority of societies where human males dominated the society.
I think you may look to some good work being done in social evolution recently which indicates that as humans developed settlement patterns and males had to live with males they weren't related to (i.e., the transition from HG to larger social groupings), males became more possessive of females to ensure their genetic relationship to their children. A handful of cultures developed other ways to deal with this problem--for example, their are a cultures in New Guinea where fatherhood doesn't matter, the woman's brothers raise the children; and other cultures in South America with partible paternity, where any man a woman has sex with before she gives birth is considered partly the father). But these don't seem to be actual exceptions, but rather, evidence that paternity was a "problem" at some point in our evolution.
When you stand back and look across societies, you find that the smaller societies (i.e., hundreds instead of thousands) have a much greater variety of ways of dealing with paternity, such as matrilocality and partible paternity. But the larger the society, the more likely it is to become hierarchal, and the more likely that hierarchy is to be male dominated.
This is where the advent of agriculture is important. Agriculture and the technology to store food meant that more food than necessary could be produced, i.e., a surplus. This meant a dramatic reduction in the labor time necessary to sustain an individual from day to day. In HG societies, women's labor was vital to survival (they were usually the gatherers), and HG societies have a much greater level of equality across the board, not just gender. They tend to egalitarian. But the social environment of a 1) large society, with 2) a surplus of food requiring 3) less labor meant that 4) a division of labor that ultimately removed women from the public sphere and in extreme cases made them chattel to the male hierarchy.
Combine that with the underlying problem of paternity and, voila, patriarchy.
The gradual increasing equality of women in our social hierarchies historically coincides with a shift in our social environment, mainly the development of capiatlism and industrial production, which yet again dramatically increases the surplus and changes the nature of production so that it doesn't require the same kinds of labor. This set the stage for the cultural revolution of humanism, democracy, and secularism which have allowed women to reclaim their place as we move, in an interesting way, back to a kind of egalitarianism.
This isn't a "just-so" story, but rather, it's an analysis of how humans since they became fully modern (about 50,000 ya) interacted in their social environments in response to changes in their physical environments (which they had often wrought themselves), which in turn produces change in their social environments.
Posted by: Todd O. | October 5, 2007 1:12 PM
Interesting topic. I wonder what the evidence shows about about sex roles (if any) among early humans.
The implications that American Indians were "noble savages" who treated women the same as men gets my BS detector's needle twitching. Having women participate in decision-making is an indication, but it doesn't mean they were regarded as equals. Does anyone have trouble thinking of modern counter-examples?
Having a female ruler now and then doesn't mean you regard women as equals or better, either. And matrilineal tracing of descent may just be a pragmatic accommodation to the fact you can be more certain who a child's mother is than who a child's father is.
Again, is there any cogent evidence of relative sex roles and/or relative status of men and women among early humans?
Posted by: Wicked Lad | October 5, 2007 1:13 PM
You're right about pregnancy and work. The myth of the invalid pregnant woman is a product of the rise of capitalism and the middle class. Working class women were never afforded the opportunity to take time off. My grandmother worked in the fields up until the day before my mother was born (60 years ago), so I've never bought into the idea that pregnancy itself was the problem.
Looking at female leaders in the last hundred years or so would probably not be very useful in comparison with males. Females who rise to heights in government often embrace or internalize the attitudes of the dominant masculine culture, so they're not really any different than men in addressing what needs to be done.
It's very interesting to look at misogyny in human culture. Especially when you can compare human behaviour to other primates.
Brendan S.,
Were you trying to be facetious about women's menstrual blood scaring away the game? If not, do you have any evidence that game animals can smell human menstrual blood and that they associate that smell with predation danger? I'd be interested in that information since some of my female friends do indeed hunt and they've never had a problem.
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 5, 2007 1:16 PM
"Early modern Western European (and American) cultures suppressed women's roles, arguably due to Judeo-Christian theology. Prior to the influx of Christianity, numerous pagan European cultures showed evidence of greater equality and authority for women."
The Ancient Greeks were fairly misogynistic, although it would be hard for anyone to top Christianity's view of woman as the ultimate source of all ills. Eve ate an apple and the Christian god hated that so much he killed himself over it because only blood sacrifice would appease his anger and allow him to forgive all humanity for the arguable sins of their ancestors.
Posted by: Samnell | October 5, 2007 1:17 PM
What Todd said. And if I'm interpreting his words correctly, everything is due to changes within the economics of the culture.
So, we know what we must do. Burn the economists for destroying society! (j/k)
Posted by: Shawn Wilkinson | October 5, 2007 1:17 PM
The handful of matrilocal and more (relatively) gender neutral societies fail to undercut the overwhelming majority of societies where human males dominated the society.
Todd,
The problem is that Western European society dominated the rest of the world for the last three hundred to six hundred years (regionally). In doing so they often wiped away previous cultural norms with their own patrilineal, patrilocal culture. It is often difficult to tell what the local culture was because it has been under this dominant culture's influence for hundreds of years. Often the surviving woman dominated (or equal) cultures survive because of their geographic isolation and (often associated) resistance to the dominant culture.
Posted by: dogmeatib | October 5, 2007 1:19 PM
http://cableorganizer.com/power-squid/power-squid-home-theater.htm?src=NMIabPSP1w
Just figured you'd be interested in a blending of one of nature's best and man's technology.
It's a bit lacking in the tentacle department, though.
Posted by: Deebs | October 5, 2007 1:20 PM
One of my fellow students argued that because females give birth they were probably not expected to hunt and gather food ...
Uh, why would any intelligent person, when wondering about the assumptions of his civilization, attempt to provide answers by rewriting "Quest for Fire"? That's not inquiry, that's fan fiction.
The history of misogyny is a pretty well-established field. Go read.
.
Posted by: Grand Moff Texan | October 5, 2007 1:22 PM
Todd O.
Agriculture is actually more labor intensive than hunting and gathering. However, agriculture increases the carrying capacity for humans on a particular piece of land, so it got popular. More food=more people (fewer deaths from malnutrition more people fed from the same plot of land, etc.) but far more labor hours per day. This means that people were willing to work more in return for living in various kinds of settled communities. Control of agricultural surplus is one of the chief driving factors behind the development of ascribed status and true elite classes. You did point out that H. sapiens didn't become fully modern until 50,000 years ago (a date I would disagree with), but that seems irrelevant since agriculture wasn't developed until 10,000 ya and some societies never developed it (they didn't need to or the environment and local cultigens were not conducive to it)
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 5, 2007 1:25 PM
The implications that American Indians were "noble savages" who treated women the same as men gets my BS detector's needle twitching.
I wasn't suggesting anything of the sort. In fact "better" treatment of women itself is subjective and open to debate. Also the group decision to have women fulfill or not fulfill a greater role in the society is generally a pragmatic one, not a noble or ignoble one. I doubt the push to reduce women's roles in European society was a cognisant decision, "let's make sure that only men have a say in how we do things!" [followed by loud cheers and applause] any more than the intent to involve women more was one.
In culture "A" there was an historical/social/economic/defensive benefit to protecting women.
In culture "B" there was more of a benefit to expose the women to possible harm for one reason or another.
Neither decision implies "nobility" or proper/correct/better behavior or decision making. Those tags are a product of modern efforts towards equality.
Posted by: dogmeatib | October 5, 2007 1:26 PM
One other thing, paternity isn't everything. There's wonderful stuff coming out of primate behaviour that shows some species that were thought to be practicing monogamy are not and the males still hang around to take care of babies that aren't their own.
I think it's just as likely that patriarchy (and lifelong monogamy) produced the obsession with paternity rather than the other way around.
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 5, 2007 1:31 PM
"400 viable human female ova produced in a lifetime.
5,000,000 sperm produced in one male ejaculation."
Hmmmmmmmm. I'm pretty sure (not a biologist, I come for the cephalopods and stay for the godlessness) that all eggs bear an X chromosome and that sperm carry either the X or the Y that decides gender. So wouldnt the proportion of X sperm to Y sperm determine scarcity and therefore competition?
Posted by: Abstruse | October 5, 2007 1:33 PM
I read an article by Jared Diamond (author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel")a while back which explored this issue. Diamond argued that pre-agricultural societies were more gender equal because the sexes were able to contribute a similar amount of calories per day to the community.
I can't remember exactly his reasoning, but it was something like Women were better at fishing because they could build better fish-traps. Women could perform these, and other crafting/gathering skills, while pregnant. There were some other merits mentioned, but I can't remember them. I think he based his reasoning partly on his experiences with tribal cultures in Papua-New Guinea.
Furthermore, said Diamond, the advent of agriculture created a need for more hands to tend the field. People began to value children as laborers/calorie multipliers. Women became baby-factories, perpetually pregnant and unable to work in the fields about 1/2 the time. Women were suddenly unable to contribute directly to the food supply. They were also less able to feed themselves independently from a male and family.
Basically, Diamond argued that calorie contribution = power and leverage. A female hunter-gather has the bargaining chip of the food she produces. An agrarian female's contribution is through pregnancy, which immobilizes her and, unfortunately, can be forced upon her.
If I find the article I'll post it.
Posted by: BlockStacker | October 5, 2007 1:38 PM
Brendan S.,
Were you trying to be facetious about women's menstrual blood scaring away the game? If not, do you have any evidence that game animals can smell human menstrual blood and that they associate that smell with predation danger? I'd be interested in that information since some of my female friends do indeed hunt and they've never had a problem.
Actually there is ample evidence that women's menstrual blood can be detected by animals. One prime example is that, in "bear country," menstruating are warned not to camp, etc. Beyond that element I wouldn't comment.
Again, is there any cogent evidence of relative sex roles and/or relative status of men and women among early humans?
Wicked lad,
There is little evidence among early humans, that type of information doesn't preserve well in the archaeological record. When present, the remains of women tend to have "domestic" style burial goods while those of men tend to have "hunting goods," but that doesn't really say one way or the other about their roles. Most of the ideas archaeologists and anthropologists have for how neolithic people lived were developed by traditional westerners who were raised in traditional western nuclear families (a'la Ozzy and Harriet). It couldn't have failed to have an impact on their interpretation of the finds.
Modern anthropologists find, among less developed cultures, a variety of social structures. Problem is, how many of them have already been influenced by Western European "norms?"
Greek culture was provided as an example, but even within a region as small as Greece, you had variations. For example, in Sparta, when a young boy was born, his mother raised him, often with little contact with his father until the state took over at the age of (I believe) 8.
Today's culture would look at the medieval practice of turning young boys over to virtual slavery as apprentices as cruel, but to parents at the time it was the only kind thing they could do. The child would be prepared for their adult life in a trade that, if they were successful, would provide for them long after the parents were dead.
Posted by: dogmeatib | October 5, 2007 1:39 PM
I don't doubt it started as a way to reinforce the status quo when the existing order was male dominated. Whenever women dominated, they probably referred to men as expendable, but perhaps used a kinder word for it.
Posted by: CRM-114 | October 5, 2007 1:42 PM
All I have to add to this thread is Margaret Thatcher. (Get out the crosses and garlic now.)
Posted by: AlanWCan | October 5, 2007 1:44 PM
Whenever women dominated, they probably referred to men as expendable, but perhaps used a kinder word for it.
Perhaps:
"Good for killing spiders and making babies? Don't have any of the former, don't want any of the latter, so get out!"
Has a vaguely familiar ring to it. ;o)
Posted by: dogmeatib | October 5, 2007 1:45 PM
dogmeatib, thank you for the helpful posts at #16 and #20. I found #16 particularly convincing:
Quite so.Grand Moff Texan wrote (#14):This, in contrast, I find patronizing and unhelpful. Like an ID proponent who says he knows a lot more about biology than any evilutionist, but can't make his case, you leave me with the impression you have a prejudice but no evidence. Can you offer us poor, benighted, ignorant skeptics any links to a good summary of this well-established conclusion?
Posted by: Wicked Lad | October 5, 2007 1:51 PM
Okay, I found the Article I was talking about:
"The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race" by Jared Diamond, Discover-May 1987, pp. 64-66 http://anthropology.lbcc.edu/handoutsdocs/mistake.pdf
Turns out only a small portion refers to gender equality:
I must have made the rest of my post up, or gotten it from somewhere else.
Posted by: BlockStacker | October 5, 2007 1:57 PM
Humans are of both common cultural and biological descent. In scattered parts of the world we see groups of people who live, or before interacting with outsiders lived, in patrilocal groups.
It has been construed as "normal" for men to have (what amounts to) a better lot in life than women since before the introduction of agriculture. Once we re-examine this, we see that it has no more foundation than magic men making rain.
Before the Dawn skims over much, but is a good introduction to what we know of these very early social groups.
Posted by: B. Dewhirst | October 5, 2007 2:00 PM
I recall from cultural antropology that if an Apache man married a Navaho woman, they would have no resources. The reason being that Apache women owned the resources, while Navaho men owned the resources. So the couple would have no resources. I probably got the tribes backward, given my present powers of recall.
There is a common story in biology texts explaining the slight excess of male births in western societies. It is that males die off faster than females so there is a 1:1 sex ratio during the best child-bearing years of 20-25. Ain't evolution wonderful. Catch is, according to a paper in Nature some years ago, the birth sex ratio in the few female-more-valued societies is skewed the other way.
Since the early 80's more USA females have obtained Bachlors Degrees than males. I think the present ratio is like 54% to 46%. I'll guess we have more educated females than males in the USA (ignoring educated immigrant males). This is particularly true of black and hispanic minorities. Educated minority females have a problem finding a similiarly educated minority mate. So one can wonder about the societal effects of all that.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | October 5, 2007 2:02 PM
Right, Lad. God (or whatever) forbid that ANY peoples should have had better ideas than the white invaders.
My Racist detector meter is twitching.
The roles women play have been different in a number of societies. In Iroquois culture, clan mothers have as important (or more important) role to play as any man... yes, the roles are DIFFERENT but both male and female roles are HONORED.
You might be interested to look at old Navajo stories. Women in some Navajo myths had to be separated from men, for what we consider primarily male associated traits: insatiable sexual hunger and violence.
I think that the issue may have at first been a biological one. Men don't have to worry about things like maternal investment, and traditionally control reproduction. Let's face it: penis=power. (which is, btw, why birth control and abortion are more about power and subjugation than how many kids to have and the morality of fetal destruction)
Socially, different groups have founded histories, philosophies, and religions which support male dominance. Of course Christianity and Islam are prime examples, where women's roles and the subjugation to males is implicit in the holy texts.
Only advanced, sensible and moral cultures move beyond this behavior and honor women as equals. Is it such a reach to think that there are non-white cultures who have done exactly that, while European Christians were still hanging elderly women for using herbs in medicinal treatments?
Posted by: dorid | October 5, 2007 2:07 PM
Hunter-gatherer women didn't menstruate often, anyway. They were either pregnant or lactating a lot of the time, and in many were most likely experiencing exercise/low body fat induced amennorhea a lot of the rest of the time. This whole one week out a month business is a particular side effect of our current way of life.
Posted by: Carlie | October 5, 2007 2:10 PM
FWIW, the Americans in the incoming class of PhD candidates in the Dev Bio discipline at an Ivy league college were exclusively women; i.e., if the candidate was American born, then the gender was female. There were two guys, one from China, another from Russia, in a class of 45. (43 : 2)
I know this because my significant other (herself an Italian immigrant) is a professor at this college in that program.
So, put 2 + 2 together and ask yourself, where is biotechnology going to get its research staff 10 - 15 years down the road?
Posted by: Onkel Bob | October 5, 2007 2:21 PM
Carlie,
Your argument regarding hunter-gatherer women and menstruation seems quite logical. Also there would likely be a significant benefit to continuing breast feeding (and thereby limiting pregnancy) especially during times of limited resources. But, I don't think women would be hunting while caring for a newborn-toddler, so the argument that women wouldn't be hunting often still remains viable.
Personally I think women were far more valuable to hunter-gatherer societies. They provided a far greater proportion of the food intake, discovered numerous health remedies, and passed on a lot of the collective knowledge.
Though the article doesn't quite support Blockstacker's original position vis a vis agriculture and the dis-empowerment of women, I have heard the hypothesis previously and it has a lot of merit.
Posted by: dogmeatib | October 5, 2007 2:24 PM
Evidence? The warnings aren't evidence; they're probably just scare stories.
On a personal note, my wife and I have been wilderness camping frequently for over 30 years without paying any attention to "that week" and without any problems ... always in black bear country, sometimes in grizzly country. Also, I have not heard even anecdotal evidence of First Nations or other aboriginal people having been concerned on this account.
In short, I don't believe it.
Posted by: Scott Belyea | October 5, 2007 2:37 PM
Blockstacker, that really does sound like Jared Diamond's work, even if it's not in that specific article. Is it somewhere in Guns, Germs, and Steel or Collapse?
Posted by: Cathy W | October 5, 2007 2:46 PM
To add something to the women-in-agricultural-society discussion perhaps -- it seems quite evident from a number of sources (Jared Diamond is only one; the mesolithic-neolithic transition is hevily studied) that an agricultural lifestyle not only meant that there could be a higher population density, but more children per parent became more useful, and thus the frequency of pregnancy in women was doubled or even quadrupled.
What I would disagree with is that this necessarily meant that their "caloric contribution" necessarily went down. Yes, in most agricultural societies women worked in the fields for most of their pregnancy, and returned to the fields not long after the birth. Women and girls were also responsible for looking after the smaller vegetable gardens and less mobile livestock -- chickens, sheep, or young pigs, for example. All in all, the female caloric contribution was probably about the same. It could well be that the caloric contribution was less valued -- as in hunter-gatherer societies, the "big meat" that men bring in is a higher status contribution in itself. In agriculture, too, it tends to be men (with the generally greater shoulder strength) who do the ploughing, which is a lot more dramatic looking than just dropping seeds or weeding, given that ploughing dramatically changes the appearance of a field.
However, there were other effects of pregnancy than just keeping women out of the fields for a few days or a few weeks. Pregnant women are perfectly able to seed and weed, however uncomfortable it might be, but they are arguably a heck of a lot worse at fighting -- and the other thing which accompanied settlements and greater population density was a dramatic increase in organised warfare. The agricultural surpluses which allowed societal specialisation in almost all cases went first to support a warrior class -- and pregnant women in a warrior class? Can't see any early culture really letting that happen.... And because the warrior classes seem to have enjoyed high status from the get-go, and women would have largely been excluded from them, by the evidence, perhaps this provided a downwards push in female status in general.
In many early societies, there was also considerable overlap or a heavy interlinking between the specialised warriors, the head/chief/king/head of the army, and the priesthood. Supporting and being supported by the military was a culturally complex enterprise as soon as standing armies started to flex their muscles. However, if there was already a tradition of excluding pregnant and potentially-pregnant women from the warrior class/standing armies, then there would be considerably less motivation for the warrior class(es) to allow women to govern them -- look at the contempt WE have for politicians who are willing to send people off to die in a war who have never risked their own hide. On this basis, the exclusion of women from governance could be justified, and the erosion of civic status may have been extended.
Now, I admit that my ancient Greek history is rusty in the extreme, but what I recall is that the pre-Classical Greek states were considerably less mysogynistic than after the rise of the warring city-states -- women seemed to enjoy reasonable status from the early Neolithic right up through the Minoans, changing with the Myceneans. This would fit. My ancient Chinese history is even rustier than my Greek, but I believe that there was a similar sort of narrative there. In each case, one of the last places where women held public status was in the priesthood -- in the cases of these cultures a non-fighting class.
It is interesting that where women retained status later in Western Europe was mainly in the Celtic areas -- arguably agricultural, but a lower population density overall, a more tribal culture that was less complex than the highly stratified population-dense cities of other areas, and in which women retained something of a warrior tradition (allowing them voice in governance as well). This is not to say that women enjoyed equal status, but they were property owners with protected rights, and the Picts, Scots and some of the Irish tribes maintained inheritance through the mother up until relatively recent times (the Picts up until their cultural disappearance after 840 AD, and the Scots up until Macbeth was killed by Malcolm Canmore in 1057).
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | October 5, 2007 2:47 PM
There are several threads to this. One is that polygamy was once a much more common form of relationship. Once you get to a point when having a lot of women becomes status, that would seem to me to help change the woman's role, to less than equall. Why would women let this happen? I think a lot of that is due to women being on average a little weaker and therefore men could make them obey physically.
Before contraception paired women tended to be pregnant or caregiving which did not allow them to develop in things like science as easily. Also the death rate for women in childbirth used to be very high so many did not last that long.
It's changing rapidly though, and I see some places where the women are smart educated and employed and the men lime on the street corners.
Posted by: sailor | October 5, 2007 2:47 PM
I understand why this question is interesting, but more recently I cannot but cringe when it comes up. Every theory I have ever heard on this subject reduces to a politically motivated just-so story with very little probing. I am no longer sure anyone is capable of addressing this question independent of an a priori prescriptive conclusion about sexual politics among contemporary humans.
People on all sides are intent on establishing a norm from which specific individuals and cultures can be said to deviate in one direction or another. Based on the limited evidence available to me personally, it seems that for our species the lack of a clear norm is the norm. We are congenitally conflicted on this subject, and any example we can bring to bear is an idiosyncratic precipitate of that internal conflict.
Posted by: Gelf | October 5, 2007 2:48 PM
Cathy W,
I haven't read any of his books. The Ole' Ball-and-Chain read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" though, and we discussed his ideas a lot while she was reading it. She has read a couple of his other articles as well, (she studies Humanities, I'm just a gear-head) and gave me the gist of them. Also, I watched the PBS documentaries. I take no credit for the theory (it's too compelling).
Posted by: BlockStacker | October 5, 2007 2:54 PM
Gelf wrote in #36:
Sad, but compelling. I don't even trust my own perception of what I know of the historic record. I don't know how we come to an accurate, informative, useful view of this. Baseless slurs aside (looking at you, dorid), putting together an unbiased view of the history of sex roles and relative status is a tough, tough problem.Posted by: Wicked Lad | October 5, 2007 3:02 PM
Hmmmmmmmm. I'm pretty sure (not a biologist, I come for the cephalopods and stay for the godlessness) that all eggs bear an X chromosome and that sperm carry either the X or the Y that decides gender. So wouldn't the proportion of X sperm to Y sperm determine scarcity and therefore competition?
No.
Posted by: Mr. Person | October 5, 2007 3:13 PM
dogmeatib -- in modern hunter-gatherer societies, women commonly hunt small game in conjunction with gathering plant foods, and may even bring in more meat calories than the available big game contributions. In these societies, men concentrate on the high-risk, high-reward big game which can include long solitary periods of relatively high-speed travel, and the risk of many meatless days -- and even though this is not as great a caloric contribution to subsistence, it is higher status.
The question of how much and what kind of hunting is/was actually done by women is one of anthropology's "hot topics", though -- check out http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/nmwhomepage/pdfs/AmerAnthr.pdf or the list of papers available here for example.
Gelf -- while I understand your misgivings, and I would be the last to say that there isn't a lot of gender-political nonsense out there, I think you underestimate the field. There are also people out there with good minds and a genuine interest in teasing apart the evidence.
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | October 5, 2007 3:23 PM
Regarding bears and menstrual blood — I knew I had read that this had been at least partly debunked, and a quick Google found this page from the National Park Service:
http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/bears_women.htm
So, in summary:
But if you're up against a polar bear, you're probably in trouble no matter what your gender is (or your point in your ovulatory cycle). And be careful about bears no matter what.
Posted by: Owlmirror | October 5, 2007 3:25 PM
Hm. I misread the context earlier - not bears, per se, but rather prey animals.
I see that this showed up among the hits of my Google search, for whatever it's worth:
Deer, Bears, and Blood: A Note on Nonhuman Animal Response to Menstrual Odor
Posted by: Owlmirror | October 5, 2007 3:36 PM
Gender politics are extremely interesting, although often quite depressing. Or infuriating, like hearing Coulter calling for the disenfranchisement of women.
Simone De Beauvoir - "The second sex" did to my understanding of gender biases (including my own) what Edward Said - "Orientalism" did to my cultural ones.
Posted by: Hank | October 5, 2007 3:37 PM
Among the Agta people, women do hunt, make arrows, etc. E.g.:
MJ Goodman, P Bion Griffin, AA Estioko-Griffin and JS Grove. The compatibility of hunting and mothering among the agta hunter-gatherers of the Philippines, Journal: Sex Roles, Volume 12, Numbers 11-12 / June, 1985. Abstract: Women's hunting is widely held biologically impracticable in foraging societies, chiefly because hunting is presumed incompatible with maternal responsibilities. A three-year study of hunting practices among the Agta Negrito people of northern Luzon reveals women's active participation in hunting, singly and in groups, without detriment to normal fertility and child care.
Also, in TC Llewellen's Political Anthropology: An Introduction (2003), Agta women's hunting is discussed. Excerpt at: http://tinyurl.com/2fbmvg
Posted by: stillwaggon | October 5, 2007 3:38 PM
In her introduction to The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argues that there is no *event* that led to women's objectification, as far as we know. That's why gender roles are so much different from other types of prejudices, like racism, because they are a-historical. Slavery was the arguable beginning of racism. But sexism has no start, and it is ubiquitous. Every society separates people into "men" and "women," and this separation is justified because it is deemed "natural." Whether that particular assumption is true or not is debatable.
Posted by: Courtney | October 5, 2007 3:39 PM
Courtney,
Slavery is hardly the beginning of racism. Institutionalized slavery of Africans could probably be better argued as a result of racism. After all, it took a papal bull for Europeans to decide Africans were human in 1435 and another in the 1500s for Native Americans. Despite the Catholic church officially stating that you could not enslave these two groups because they were rational beings with souls, the Catholic nations did it anyway. Look at C. Loring Brace's Race is a Four Letter Word for a good history of the concept of race and some interesting implications for the history of racism.
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 5, 2007 4:02 PM
Heh,
45 comments, and no one has mentioned the sexual dimorphic trait of physical size.
I'm not an anthropologist, but I can't help but feel that this is a factor. How large a factor probably varies by society, I happen to value brains over any level of brawn. But it is certainly true that from a standpoint of upper body strength and body weight, men have a physical advantage. I don't think this is a pleasant observation, but I don't think it should be glossed over either.
Posted by: Flex | October 5, 2007 4:04 PM
Evidence? The warnings aren't evidence; they're probably just scare stories.
On a personal note, my wife and I have been wilderness camping frequently for over 30 years without paying any attention to "that week" and without any problems ... always in black bear country, sometimes in grizzly country. Also, I have not heard even anecdotal evidence of First Nations or other aboriginal people having been concerned on this account.
In short, I don't believe it.
Our extended family, for some strange reason, was involved, or witnessed two bear attack fatalities, and one incident. The one involved a cousin who was wearing clothing that still smelled of food (took all of the other precautions). The other involved a non-related female who had her throat torn out (disputed reasoning for the attack including the topic of our discussion). The final one involved my uncle in a hunting stand for nearly 48 hours with a bear at the base of the tree (which now that he made it through unharmed paints an amusing portrait).
I'm not saying that the warnings provide any evidence one way or another, but for reasons presented above, our family takes those things seriously. Personally a winter at Fort McCoy for army ROTC cured me of any interest in "camping." ;o)
Posted by: dogmeatib | October 5, 2007 4:12 PM
for the ability to fight and the warrior class, the Irish legends wouldnt tend to support this. To name three of the more famous female characters
Morrigu - depending on the story varies from goddess to warrior, in all a bit of a handful.
Maeb - queen from the cuchulainn cycle
Scathach - again from the cuchulainn cycle she runs a warrior training camp, with the implication being she is mostly retired from fighting but was unmatched in her day.
Posted by: kevinj | October 5, 2007 4:15 PM
Luna,
Reference to your comment #40, my basic stance on the issue is, 'it depends,' so you may have misconstrued my point. I agree completely that women in hunter-gatherer cultures brought/bring in more caloric intake, also I wouldn't dispute that they hunted (and likely still do hunt) small game as well as fish, eggs, and other sources of protein. I would argue that the "status" associated with big game hunting would depend on the culture, on the time, etc. Again, with prehistoric cultures, this isn't the type of activity that is preserved well in the archaeological record. With modern cultures, it is hard to say whether there has been an influence/impact of outside cultures modifying the interaction.
Posted by: dogmeatib | October 5, 2007 4:28 PM
Flex,
True enough. I'm no biologist, but I wonder if the difference in size might not be an effect of gender roles rather than a cause. What would have been the initial utility of men being stronger than women? PZ posted a couple of days ago about genetic differences between women and men, and how the one chromosome is a minuscule difference. It means that women and men are mostly alike, but does it also mean that differences that we DO have could change rapidly due to selection?
For instance, maybe men and women initially had had very similar abilities in terms of strength. then when the transition to agriculture was made, families composed of large strong males and weaker, but more fertile females would have been more successful. Once again, not my area, but I think the change could be created simply by differences in the production of certain hormones during development to make males stronger and females weaker.
To continue rambling, I'm thinking about what robbed cave-fish of their sight (if not the Stonecutters). From my understanding, they no longer grow eyes, or pigment because the resources (energy and proteins?) formerly devoted to the development of those traits have more utility in other areas of the sleek-fishy-body. Likewise, women who are most successful as baby-factories would have developmental rescources shifted away from upper-body muscle development in favor of stronger baby-making parts.
Posted by: BlockStacker | October 5, 2007 4:36 PM
"In these societies, men concentrate on the high-risk, high-reward big game which can include long solitary periods of relatively high-speed travel, and the risk of many meatless days -- and even though this is not as great a caloric contribution to subsistence, it is higher status." In 40.
Is big game hunting a sexual-selection activity?
OK - my cite for this is a recent bar discussion with people well outside my field of expertise, and involving enough alcohol consumption on my part that its a wonder I can remember the argument (hell, it was a wonder I could walk), much less supply a good cite. But it was their field of expertise, more or less. Anyway, supply several grains of salt, at least.
The point was made that the caloric contribution of big game hunting in hunter-gatherer societies was less than the caloric investment, on average, and made no sense on purely a food-supply basis. It was then argued (I think as a hypothesis, not from evidence, but my primary memory of that evening is the subsequent hangover, so...) - anyway, it was argued that high status hunters had better 'choice' of female partners, and more offspring, and that big game hunting was a result of sexual selection (cultural or genetic), rather than essentially a food-gathering activity.
There it is. Have at it, all.
Posted by: Lee | October 5, 2007 4:36 PM
Owl: I worked at a zoo that has polar bears, and was told by the keepers that they are the only bears that will actively hunt down humans. This idea seems to be confirmed by a friend of mine who studied eider ducks in northern Canada; she said they had to be trained to fire a rifle because of the threat of bears. Yikes.
Posted by: LM | October 5, 2007 4:46 PM
LM, True that. Extra care with the Polar bears is warranted, not just because they will actively hunt down humans (that should be enough), but also because of how smart they are. One of my hobbies is learning about polar exploration. More than once, in these histories, it has been mentioned that Polar bears will sometimes cover their nose with a paw while hunting, apparently aware that others might notice the one non-camo spot. Seems they're self-aware and therefore pretty smart as well as built for killing.
Posted by: Dahan | October 5, 2007 5:02 PM
I haven't had time to read all the comments, so this might have been addressed, but I was talking about this with my wife last night (she's taking Women in American History this semester) and my hypothesis is that a major factor in the climate of misogyny is probably that, through most of human history and in most cultures, military forces have been almost invariably all-male, due to the greater physical strength of men and lack of complications from pregnancy and nursing. Consequently, a culture which places a heavy emphasis on militarism and conquest would tend to see males as being more vital and more connected to the things it considered important, and more capable at them, and thus more "valuable." These sorts of cultures tended to be the ones that built empires, and thus influenced the thinking of their neighbors for centuries. I suspect the more pervasive and generalized gender bias partly grew from this.
Now, how to test it...
Posted by: Azkyroth | October 5, 2007 5:03 PM
@51
In the African clade of apes there is sexual dimorphism in every species with respect to both size and strength. Bonobos have less than chimps, who have less than gorillas, but it's a safe bet that the ancestral condition of humanity (especially from the paleontological record) is sexual dimorphism similar to extant chimps. Therefore size and strength dimorphism predate agriculture by several million years.
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 5, 2007 5:06 PM
I seem to recall reading some tentative conclusions that the dimorphism was actually much greater in at least some Australopithecine species, for instance.
Posted by: Azkyroth | October 5, 2007 5:09 PM
LM: Which puts the media frenzy around the polar bear cub Knut into perspective.
Posted by: Hank | October 5, 2007 5:11 PM
Owlmirror,
That was an interesting article about deer. It all makes me wonder though since I now have it on good authority that menstruation is not a barrier to modern deer hunting. (A friend of mine swears she was when she got a buck last year.) from how far away can deer smell menstrual blood and will they shy away from animals that smell of it or just not eat food that reeks of it?
Maybe that's some new anthropological research I could do...get into the experimental side of sociocultural stuff....hmmm....
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 5, 2007 5:11 PM
Azkyroth in #57,
To determine whether they had greater sexual dimorphism we'd have to sort out how many species there were, and that is probably on of the most controversial topics in hominid evolution. Most of the people I know (including me) think the number of species represented by the 6-1.5 mya stuff has been underestimated. The bottom line is that it's difficult to make a meaningful comparisons of the degree of sexual dimorphism in the Pliocene and early Pleistocene hominid stuff because we don't have any OTUs to use. A. afarensis definitely had chimp level dimorphism though. The First Family proves that.
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 5, 2007 5:20 PM
Dahan: I think that the nose-covering behavior is pretty typical of polar bears (at least, that's what we told people at the zoo! - I was an educational interpreter). I can easily see how such a behavior might have evolved, so I don't necessarily think it has anything to do with self awareness, but heck, it might. Bears are pretty bright, in general.
Posted by: LM | October 5, 2007 5:30 PM
Hunter-gatherer societies do surprisingly little hunting. 95% of a Hunter-gatherer's diet is plant matter. Most plant matter is provided by women. Thus women provide the bulk of the diet; women are the providers. I think it has more to do with men having roughly 15x the number of sociopaths than women.
Posted by: Jonathan | October 5, 2007 5:39 PM
The experiment looked to be quite ad-hoc. A more thorough experiment would be one which included human blood which was non-menstrual. Additional protocols could probably be designed as well.
Posted by: Owlmirror | October 5, 2007 5:41 PM
Yet another reason they're Threat #1.
Pygmy Loris, Azkyroth,
Wait, wait... Are you saying that the history of gender relations is, like, complicated or something? Who are you to shoot down my fish analogy with your "facts"?
Seriously, thanks for the info. I guess I'll have to find some other area of study I know nothing about to blow the lid off of.
Posted by: BlockStacker | October 5, 2007 5:44 PM
This was one early hypothesis. However, a recent paper showed that a better explanation is that a particular change in developmental gene expression allows the fish to find food in lightless environments. This change, as a side effect, short-circuits development of the eyes.
Indeed, PZ wrote about this some months ago:
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/01/of_cavefish_and_hedgehogs.php
Posted by: Owlmirror | October 5, 2007 5:57 PM
Double Drat!
Good article, PZ. Thanks for the heads-up Owl. I had a Mexican cave fish for a while, until my landlord threw out my aquarium without calling me first! I will have my revenge.
They're great aquarium fish: easy to care for, unusual, interesting, breeds easily, non-aggressive, but fine on its own.
PZ's article helps explain some of the behavior I observed in my cave-fish. Whenever I'd put food in the water, he'd know it was there within 30 seconds. Then he'd start trolling around the bottom of the tank looking for it. Whenever he would get close to a pellet/flake, He'd get real excited and start circling and grabbing. Unlike the other fish, once he found a flake, he NEVER spit it out. He also seemed very sensitive to sound and disturbances in the water, which I guess was the result of the jaw sensitivity?
Man, I gotta get me another cave-fish.
Posted by: BlockStacker | October 5, 2007 6:17 PM
I never knew eider ducks were so accomplished. "Yikes" indeed. ;-)
Posted by: SEF | October 5, 2007 6:24 PM