Voir aussi la page [Division du travail]
=> Commentaire à Ocobock et Lacy, 2023 : Melanie Martin et al., Can women hunt? Yes. Did women contribute much to human evolution through endurance hunting? Probably not, American Antrhopologist, 2024 [Texte]
« we strongly disagree with a central premise that appears to motivate this scholarship: that the idea of evolved gendered subsistence activities derives largely from incorrect assumptions extrapolated from patriarchal norms today and/or rationalizations of “implicit male superiority” based solely on anatomical gender differences.«
=> Réponse d’Ocobock et Lacy : l’éditeur ayant choisi de ne laisser qu’une fraction du texte, sous un format très pénible à lire et à copier, je me contente de donner le lien : [Extrait]
Sarah Lacy, Cara Ocobock, Woman the hunter: The archaeological evidence, American Anthropologist, 2023 [Abstract]
« Considering that there is little evidence for a sexual division of labor until the Upper Paleolithic—and even in the Upper Paleolithic, the evidence is spotty—along with the minimization of female hunting among recent foragers in the literature, the arguments for a sexual division of labor in deep history are largely unsupported. The gender-role assumptions of researchers whose worldviews rest within recentWestern patriarchy should not be accepted as the default social organization for peoples living 100,000 years ago or more. All sexes contributed equally to life in the past, and research going forward should assume this as the default.We are not arguing men did not hunt.We are challenging the assumption that women did not also participate, as there is physiological data to support that women are actually well adapted to endurance activities like persistence hunting (see Ocobock and Lacy, this issue), and the archaeological and anatomical data mostly supports a lack of sexed/gendered labor roles. By failing to challenge the idea that only one sexwas a capable hunter in the past, our discipline, perhaps unintentionally, supports a narrow conception of human bodies and their capabilities today.«
Cara Ocobock, Sarah Lacy, Woman the hunter: The physiological evidence, American Anthropologist, 2023 [Abstract]
« The combination of a wider pelvis, greater proportion of Type I fibers, greater fatty acid oxidation during exercise, increased insulin sensitivity, greater intramuscular fatty acid stores, attenuated cellular damage in response to stress, greater fatigue resistance, and potentially better mental pacing during exercise means that females are well suited for endurance and burdened exercise.«
Hoffman et al., The Ecological and Social Context of Women’s Hunting in Small-Scale Societies, Hunter-Gatherer Research, 2023 [Texte] « When women hunted, they did so in a fundamentally different manner than men, focusing on smaller game and hunting in large groups near camp, often with the aid of dogs. There was little evidence to suggest that women only participed in hunting during non-reproductive years ; instead, allocate networks were a prominent strategy for mitigating tradeoffs betwing hunting and childcare responsibilities. Woment commonly fulfilled crucial informational, logistical, and ritualistic roles. Cultural restrictions limited women’s participation in hunting, but not to the extent commonly assumed. »
Anderson et al. The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts, PlosOne, 2023 [Texte]
« Of the 63 foraging societies with clear descriptions of hunting strategies, 79% of them demonstrated female hunting. The widespread presence of female hunting suggests that females play an instrumental role in hunting, further adding to the data that women contribute disproportionately to the total caloric intake of many foraging groups. Additionally, over 70% of hunting done by females is interpreted as intentional, meaning that females play an active and important role in hunting—and the teaching of hunting—even if they use different tools and employ different acquisition strategies. For example, among the Aka, women’s participation in net-hunting was required, whereas men’s participation was not. »
=> Commentaire à Anderson et al., 2023 : Vivek Venkataraman et al., Female foragers sometimes hunt, yet gendered divisions of labor are real: a comment on Anderson et al. (2023) The Myth of Man the Hunter, Evolution and Human Behavior, 2023 [PDF]
« We have outlined several conceptual and methodological concerns with the analysis of Anderson et al. (2023). Specifically, the Anderson et al. (2023) analysis is not reproducible because their sampling criteria are not clear and 35% of the societies in their sample do not come from D-PLACE, the database they claim was the source of all the societies in their sample. Moreover, these 35% were heavily biased toward societies that they coded as ones in which women hunt. Many other societies with extensive information on hunting are also not in D-PLACE yet were not included in their analysis, and authoritative sources on hunting in the societies in the Anderson et al. (2023) sample were not consulted. Additionally, there are at least 18 societies in D-PLACE with information on hunting that were inexplicably omitted from their analysis, none of which provide evidence for women hunters. Finally, there were numerous coding errors. Of the 50/63 (79%) societies that Anderson et al. (2023) coded as ones in which women hunt, for example, our recoding found that women rarely or never hunted in 16/50 (32%); we also found 2 false negatives. Overall, we found evidence in the biased Anderson et al. (2023) data set that in 35/63 (56%) societies, women hunt “Sometimes” or “Frequently”. Moreover, compared to the 17/63 (27%) societies in which women were claimed to hunt big game regularly, our recoding found that this was true for only 9/63 (14%). A precise estimate of women’s hunting in foraging societies must await a future thorough and unbiased analysis of the ethnographic record (see, e.g., Hoffman, Farquharson, & Venkataraman, 2024), but it is certainly far less than the Anderson et al. (2023) estimate and is very unlikely to overturn the current view that it is relatively uncommon.«
Haas et al., Female hunters of the early Americas, ScienceAdvances, 2020.
« Theoretical insights suggest that the ecological conditions experienced by early hunter-gatherer populations would have favored big-game hunting economies with broad participation from both females and males. Such models align with epistemological critiques that reduce seemingly paradoxical tool associations to cultural or ethnographic biases. WMP6 and the sum of previous archaeological observations on early hunter-gatherer burials support this hypothesis, revealing that early females in the Americas were big-game hunters. »
Reyes- Garcìa et al., “Hunting Otherwise”. Women’s Hunting in Two Contemporary Forager-Horticulturalist Societies, Human Nature, 2020 [Texte]
« Across societies, subsistence hunting is an activity led and practiced mostly by men; nevertheless, a rich body of literature shows that in many small-scale societies women also engage in hunting in many different and sometimes inconspicuous ways, often displaying hunting patterns that differ from those displayed by men (e.g., Biesele and Barclay 2001; Bliege Bird and Bird 2008; Bliege Bird et al. 2012; Noss and Hewlett 2001). However, while there is an increasing acknowledgment of the many ways in which women in small-scale societies participate in subsistence hunting, the characteristics of women’s hunting trips as well as the social, cultural, and economic importance of women’s hunting continue to be understudied. »
Gurven & Hill, Why do men hunt ?, Current Anthropology, 2009 [PDF]
« The signaling model suggests that women avoid hunting because it provides low unpredictable payoffs. We have shown that hunting yields comparable or higher caloric returns and more favorable nutrient content than collecting in several societies. The Agta of the Philippines are often cited as evidence that women can hunt as proficiently as men, despite encumbrances of childcare. In fact, many forager women, including Ache and Hiwi, participate in hunting activities. However, women rarely make kills of medium-sized or large game; instead, they engage in activities that help men hunt successfully. In contrast, Agta women hunt with bows and arrows and kill the same prey as do men. The Agta data are important because they indicate conditions under which women may actively hunt. However, fewer than 100 Agta women claimed to have ever hunted from a population of about 9,000 on Luzon Island (P. B. Griffin and T. Headland, personal communication). […] and available data suggest several patterns relevant to women’s hunting: (1) carbohydrate resources provided low returns and were rarely encountered; (2) meat was traded for carbohydrates at a favorable rate; (3) fertility and ratios of dependent children to adults were low, with high availability of alloparents; (4) women who hunted were often sterile or postre productive; (5) all women’s kills resulted from hunting with dogs; and (6) women’s hunting always took place less than 5 km from camp, allowing rapid return to dependent offspring (Estioko-Griffin 1985, 1986; Goodman et al. 1985). The first three points may explain why African Pygmy women participate in communal net and bow hunting activities. Dogs immobilize Agta prey, perhaps explaining why they regularly dispatch prey without men whereas Hiwi and Ache women rarely do. No study of Agta women hunters has examined whether active hunting is related to women’s reproductive status at the time of hunting, but anecdotes suggest that women hunted infrequently or not at all when pregnant or lactating (Estioko-Griffin 1986, 42). Brown (1970) proposed that women do not hunt because it is incompatible with childcare demands rather than because of strength demands or physical constraints such as endurance or spatial abilities (see also Hurtado et al. 1992). Keeping offspring alive is a top priority for forager women, and it precludes hunting in most environments. Nursing women adjust gathering rates according to the age of the youngest child with them at the food patch, and as infant age increases, collection rates increase substantially (Hurtado et al. 1992). Mothers obligatorily care for infants because on-demand lactation occurs frequently throughout the day. Women would often lose prey were they to interrupt hunting pursuits to meet immediate childcare demands. Infants cry and fuss for many reasons, and failure to react to distress calls lowers infant viability. The situation is quite different for sessile-collected resources and some small vertebrates, where pursuit can be interrupted at any time without loss. Hunting is also dangerous for infants because of long distances traveled under arduous conditions and dangers inherent in rapid burst pursuits. Males experience higher accident rates than females among Ache foragers (Hill and Hurtado 1996) and higher death rates from animal attacks and snakebite among Tsimane (Gurven, Kaplan, and Zelada Supa 2007). Because maternal loss is more detrimental than paternal loss (Sear and Mace 2007), women may be more averse to risk of injury than men. Finally, successful hunting requires at least 15–20 years of experience to obtain maximum return rates. Boys who miss sensitive-period skill development rarely become proficient hunters (Gurven, Kaplan, and Gutierrez 2006; Kaplan et al. 2000; Walker et al. 2002). The steepest gains in men’s hunting returns occur during the years when women experience high fertility and are constrained from hunting. This may explain why postreproductive women, free from childcare constraints, do not hunt in most societies. »
Bliege Bird & Bird, Why Women Hunt. Risk and Contemporary Foraging in a Western Desert Aboriginal Community, Current Anthropology, 2008 [PDF]
« An old anthropological theory ascribes gender differences in hunter‐gatherer subsistence to an economy of scale in household economic production: women pursue child‐care‐compatible tasks and men, of necessity, provision wives and offspring with hunted meat. This theory explains little about the division of labor among the Australian Martu, where women hunt extensively and gendered asymmetry in foraging decisions is linked to men’s and women’s different social strategies. Women hunt primarily small, predictable game (lizards) to provision small kin networks, to feed children, and to maintain their cooperative relationships with other women. They trade off large harvests against greater certainty. Men hunt as a political strategy, using a form of “competitive magnanimity” to rise in the ritual hierarchy and demonstrate their capacity to keep sacred knowledge. Resources that can provision the most people with the most meat best fit this strategy, resulting in an emphasis on kangaroo. Men trade off reliable consumption benefits to the hunter’s family for more unpredictable benefits in social standing for the individual hunter. Gender differences in the costs and benefits of engaging in competitive magnanimity structure men’s more risk‐prone and women’s more risk‐averse foraging decisions. »
Bliege Bird & Bird, Why Women Hunt. Risk and Contemporary Foraging in a Western Desert Aboriginal Community, Current Anthropology, 2008 [PDF]
« An old anthropological theory ascribes gender differences in hunter‐gatherer subsistence to an economy of scale in household economic production: women pursue child‐care‐compatible tasks and men, of necessity, provision wives and offspring with hunted meat. This theory explains little about the division of labor among the Australian Martu, where women hunt extensively and gendered asymmetry in foraging decisions is linked to men’s and women’s different social strategies. Women hunt primarily small, predictable game (lizards) to provision small kin networks, to feed children, and to maintain their cooperative relationships with other women. They trade off large harvests against greater certainty. Men hunt as a political strategy, using a form of “competitive magnanimity” to rise in the ritual hierarchy and demonstrate their capacity to keep sacred knowledge. Resources that can provision the most people with the most meat best fit this strategy, resulting in an emphasis on kangaroo. Men trade off reliable consumption benefits to the hunter’s family for more unpredictable benefits in social standing for the individual hunter. Gender differences in the costs and benefits of engaging in competitive magnanimity structure men’s more risk‐prone and women’s more risk‐averse foraging decisions. »
Isabelle Ecuyer-Dab & Michèle Robert, The Female Advantage in Object Location Memory According to the Foraging Hypothesis: A Critical Analysis, Human nature, 2007 [PDF]
« Hunting with projectile weapons (e.g., arrows and spears) is usually engaged in by men, large-game hunting being their almost exclusive domain (Hawkes et al. 1997; Kaplan and Hill 1992; Murdock and Provost 1973; Webster 1981). Relying on stationary implements like traps, snares, and nets, women’s involvement in the capture of small prey is nonetheless frequently encountered. Such meat procurement by women occurs among the Bushmen (Silberbauer 1981), the Aché (Kaplan and Hill 1992),the Tiwi (Goodale 1971), the Chipewyan (Jarvenpa and Brumbach 1995), and the Matses from Peru (Romanoff1983). […] This does not mean however that women are unfit for hunting medium-size and large game, wielding the same weapons as men. Women engage in such hunting among the Agta (Estioko-Griffin and Griffin 1981,1985) as well as the Ojibwa(Landes 1938) and the Kaska (Honigmann 1964) from North America. What is more, these women have significant success. »
Steven L. Kuhn & Mary C. Stiner, What’s a Mother to do, The Division of Labor among Neandertals and Modern Humans in Eurasia, Current Anthropology, 2006 [PDF]
« Among high latitude hunter-gatherers, widowed women or daughters in families without sons could become successful and habitual hunters (e.g., Briggs 1970; Jenness 1922; Landes 1938). In tropical situations, individual women’s decisions about whether to participate in group hunts may be related to the availability of better economic options (Bailey and Aunger 1989). »
Singh, Gender roles in history: women as hunters, Gender, Technology and Development, 2001 [PDF]
« There is also a parallel ritual hunt called desua sendera (hunt of the country) practiced by the Hos, both women and men, on certain occasions. To us, it appears that these ritual hunts are the surviving portions of a strong tradition that existed among the Oraons and Munda indigenous people, reflecting the historical memory of women’s role in hunting which was diluted and eroded over time. »
Noss & Hewlett, The Contexts of Female Hunting in Central Africa, American Anthropologist, 2001 [Abstract]
« This article examines female hunting among a group of Aka forest foragers (“pygmies”) of the Central African Republic1 where women net-hunt more frequently than men. The study aims to understand the contexts of female hunting and allay the paucity of descriptive and systematic studies of women hunters and gender task allocation among foragers. Contexts predicted from human behavioral ecology and cultural anthropology are considered and evaluated. Most of the contexts for female hunting predicted by the evolutionary and cultural theoretical orientations occurred among this group of Aka: game were relatively abundant, and women received relatively high caloric returns from hunting; game animals were acquired synchronously; hunting took place with other adults; Aka women had access to the means/technology of efficient hunting; Aka male ideological/political control of women was minimal; and cultural precedents existed that enabled women to obtain knowledge of and experience in hunting. Modifications to both evolutionary and cultural theories that deal with female hunting and gender task allocation among foragers are suggested, and an integrated approach is described.«
Lynn Wadley, The invisible meat providers, In Susan Kent, Gender in African Prehistory, 1999 [Google books]
Brumbach & Jarvenpa, Woman the hunter : Ethnoarchaeological Lessons from Chippewyan Life-Cycle Patterns, In Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica, 1997. [Google books]
Barbara Bodenhorn » I’m Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is »: Iñupiat and anthropological models of gender, Inuit Studies, 1990 [PDF]
« When a man has killed an animal, its soul, its iñua, must be treated correctly. Marine animals should be offered a drink of fresh water by a woman, for instance, and land animals should have their heads severed in order to allow the soul to escape. The hunter’s wife butchers the animal and shares at least some of the meat; the animal’s spirit recognizes her generosity, is pleased, and offers itself up to the hunter again. Just as the carcass is transformed into food, so, customarily, the hide might be transformed into a « second skin » for the hunter, clothing skillfully sewn to please the animals and thus attract them Chaussonet 1988). The woman’s needle according to some, « makes the hunter » (Johnston 1988: 168; see also Briggs 1974). »
Goodman et al., The Compatibility of Hunting and Mothering among the Agta Hunter-Gatherers of the Philippines, Sex roles, 1985 [PDF]
Steven Romanoff, Women as Hunters Among the Matses of the Peruvian Amazon, Human Ecology, 1983 [PDF]
« On hunts with their husbands, adult women spot game, take part in the chase, retrieve arrows, bring water to flood armadillo holes, encourage dogs, strike animals with sticks or machetes, participate in orienting the party, and carry meat home. On long hunts involving a forest camp, they pack food to the base, butcher and smoke meat, and carry meat home. While living in the longhouse, they catch frogs, fish, and small animals that blunder near a house; with children, they set garden traps for immature rodents. As is the case in many Amazonian groups, women participate in fishing expeditions.
Wendy Wood & Alice H. Eagly, A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Behavior of Women and Men : Implications for the Origins of Sex Differences, Psychological bulletin, 2002 [PDF]
D’après : George P. Murdock & Caterina Provost, Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, Ethnology, 1973 [Texte]
Judith Brown, A Note on the Division of Labor by Sex, American Anthropologist, 1970 [Abstract]
« That women can be proficient at these activities (Jenness [1923] reports women seal hunters among the Copper Eskimo; Forde [1934] reports that women herd reindeer for parts of the year among the Tungus) is evidence that the division of labor by sex is not based entirely on immutable physiological facts of greater male strength and endurance. However, it is easy to see that all these activities are incompatible with simultaneous child watching. They require rapt concentration, cannot be interrupted and resumed, are potentially dangerous, and require that the participant range far from home. »
Hitoshi Watanabe, Subsistence and Ecology of Northern Food Gatherers with Special Reference to the Ainu, in Richard Lee & Irven DeVore, Man the Hunter, 1968.
« The development of meat-eating and the establishment of a hunting way of life are regarded as important ecological factors in hominid evolution (Washburn and Avis, 1958; Washburn and Lancaster, Chapter 32, this volume; Zuckermann, 1933). A related problem is the consistent allocation of hunting to males and collecting to females. Sex differences in psychology and physiology alone would not be sufficient to explain this division of labor. The problem will be further pursued by making reference to data from modern hunter-gatherers.
[…]
Hunting of small animals by women is not a rare phenomenon. Among such peoples as the Shoshoni (Steward, 1938) and the aboriginal Australians (Berndt and Berndt, 1964; Spencer and Gillin, 1927), it is, in fact, a woman’s occupation.
In case of relatively large mammals there is information from various peoples that women take part in communal hunts (Turnbull, 1965a, 1965b). Occasional cases are not unknown of women hunting large mammals alone. Some Copper Eskimo women (Jenness, 1922) hunted seal and the caribou occasionally ; Ainu women and children (Watanabe, 1964a) sometimes hunted deer with sticks, ropes, and/or dogs when they had opportunities. But there is no society in which individualistic or noncommunal hunting of larger mammals is the socially recognized regular occupation of women. It is this individualistic hunting of larger mammals that is invariably the task of males. Communal hunts, however, do not always exclude females.
Among modern hunter-gatherers, exclusion of females from the individualistic hunting of larger mammals seems to be closely related to the making and using of hunting weapons and associated economic and/or religious ideas. Women have no weapons of their own which are specially made to hunt animals. If they want to hunt they must do so without weapons or otherwise with some provisional weapons such as sticks. Rarely do they use specially made hunting weapons such as harpoons or spears, although these might be borrowed temporarily from males. Under these restrictions women’s hunting activities are confined to small animal hunts, communal hunts in which they take part in driving, and, very rarely, individual hunts of larger mammals. »
Discussion sur Twitter
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Un point important à considérer : si les femmes participent à la chasse dans un groupe donné, il faut pouvoir quantifier leur participation. Le thread ci-dessous donne une idée, même si les chiffres sont possiblement biaisés en défaveur des femmes, sans qu’il soit possible de savoir si ce biais est important.
Anthropogoniques 