Reject gender stereotypes for better economic outcomes
- The paradigm of man the hunter and woman the gatherer has fallen apart as archaeological evidence shows that big-game hunting and even warfare had no gender gap in olden times.
The paradigm of man the hunter and woman the gatherer, suggesting a gendered pattern of subsistence roles in pre-historic times, is a long-standing hypothesis. However, recent archaeological discoveries and meta-analyses of ethnographic data have revealed evidence of considerable subsistence flexibility, challenging that gender stereotype of labour.
In 2013, when an adult individual was exhumed alongside a hunting toolkit from a 9,000-year-old burial site in the Andean highlands of Peru, many researchers presumed it to be the remains of a “high-status hunter, a big man." After a protein analysis of teeth confirmed that this hunter was female, some dismissed it as a one-off case. But then, a 2020 study evaluating reports of 107 contemporary hunter-gatherer societies across the Americas, of which 27 showed evidence of big-game hunting, revealed that of all the skeletons found with such hunting tools, about 41% were of women. The study concluded that females made up a “non-trivial" number of big-game hunters, and that the “practice was gender neutral, as against the common perception that men exclusively hunted."
Further, a global project that scrutinized the ethnographic data of 391 foraging societies from across the world—from the 1800s to the present day, with a focus on 63 of them with explicit data on hunting—highlighted the fact that even in more recent times, “regardless of maternal status, instances of women hunting were found in 50 of such societies (about 79 percent), and more than 70 percent of such female hunting appeared to be intentional, rather than opportunistic killing of animals."
The lead researcher of the project from the University of California noted that “these findings underscore the idea that the gender roles that we take for granted in society today may not be as natural as some may have thought." Other academics in the field opined that “early subsistence economies would have encouraged participation from all able individuals because of ecological conditions." An anthropologist from the University College of London observed that the latest findings indicate that “equality between the sexes may have been a survival advantage."
Other recent archaeological studies attest to women’s prowess at warfare in antiquity and earlier. Greek historian Herodotus’s account suggested that women (5th century BCE) in Scythia (modern Iran and Eastern Europe) were “not just supportive warriors, but had a tradition of female sovereignty." Archaeological discoveries in 1993 at Tuva in the Altai mountains validated his claim; a rich Scythian female as the central figure (with status markers such as being surrounded by six saddled horses) was located in the burial site of a 9th century BCE Scythian settlement.
Amid such revelations, a researcher lamented that “for a long time, prehistory was written from the male point of view." A French author in a book titled The Woman in PreHistory notes that “the advanced studies of bones, graves, art and ethnography, are now debunking the simplistic division of roles," while a professor in pre-history at the Université Jean-Moulin-Lyon III, writes in the book’s preface that “ever since women have begun to enter the ranks of prehistorians, a different picture has gradually emerged." Gender constructs, thus, are being challenged like never before.
Unfortunately, gender stereotyping is a reality both in ‘public ’and ‘private ’spheres of work. On average, women in the labour market earn 23% less than men, and women spend about three times more time in unpaid domestic and care work than men (UN Women), resulting in a significant loss of global income (Ferrant and Kolev in 2016 placed it at 16%). Women are over-represented in part-time jobs and low-productivity sectors, and gender disparities remain wide on various measures.
Claudia Goldin, this year’s Nobel prize winner in Economics, linked women’s engagement in paid employment to “a changing economic structure and evolving social norms on women’s responsibilities for home and family," and much of the gender pay gap to “educational and occupational choices, and, for men and women in the same occupation and education, to the birth of the first child."
In India, the recently released State of Working India 2023 report by Azim Premji University divulged that women continue to remain over-represented in waste management and sewerage sectors, while the norms of ‘male breadwinner’ still hold back women from paid employment in rural areas and in low-income families (with monthly earnings of around ₹40,000) in urban areas.
By an estimate of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, reducing discrimination in social institutions could lead to an annual average increase of 0.03-0.6 percentage points in the world GDP growth rate by 2030.
To end all gender discrimination (SDG-5), we need a multi-pronged approach. We should adopt gender-sensitive policies, increase women’s representation in leadership positions at financial institutions and in labour markets, redistribute unpaid care work through affordable and reliable childcare services, raise investment in the human capital of women and revamp the education system and curriculum to make them gender-neutral and inclusive.
