Gender and Economy
Jose Morton
February 28, 2011
Gender and Economy The role of women in foraging and horticultural based societies: The women are the primary food gathers which will allocate for 80% and the men will gather the other 20% of the meat diet. In certain arctic regions, there is little food to gather during the arctic winter, so men gather all the food and other items the people may need. The gathering of fruits, nuts, and other vegetation is extremely important. Birth spacing is also an important factor in controlling the growth of the population. Infanticide, or the killing or abandonment of newborn babies, is a form of birth spacing that women use when a baby is born deformed, when a new mother is already breastfeeding a young baby, or in times of starvation. That to me sounds extremely harsh, but if that’s the way these people live, who am I to judge. We all have our faults and down falls. How a woman’s status is impacted by her participation in food procurement: The technology employed by foragers is simple but effective. Even though the technology is simple, it requires knowledge to find and fashion the appropriate tools. The most basic tool is something called a "digging stick," used by women to dig up root products such as tubers. Woman play an important role, they are the most active when it comes to food procurement. They’re role as the gather of food has changed over the years. How a woman’s status in these societies, compares to that of women in American society today: Modern–day hunters and gatherers probably do not live in the environments they would have exploited a millennium ago. Pushed by more dominant, powerful cultures into very marginal environments, modern foragers have been able to maintain their sociocultural patterns in a relatively isolated existence. When they desire outside contact, foragers have been able to moderate the communication mostly on their terms. However, foragers today face many new challenges to their
February 28, 2011
Gender and Economy The role of women in foraging and horticultural based societies: The women are the primary food gathers which will allocate for 80% and the men will gather the other 20% of the meat diet. In certain arctic regions, there is little food to gather during the arctic winter, so men gather all the food and other items the people may need. The gathering of fruits, nuts, and other vegetation is extremely important. Birth spacing is also an important factor in controlling the growth of the population. Infanticide, or the killing or abandonment of newborn babies, is a form of birth spacing that women use when a baby is born deformed, when a new mother is already breastfeeding a young baby, or in times of starvation. That to me sounds extremely harsh, but if that’s the way these people live, who am I to judge. We all have our faults and down falls. How a woman’s status is impacted by her participation in food procurement: The technology employed by foragers is simple but effective. Even though the technology is simple, it requires knowledge to find and fashion the appropriate tools. The most basic tool is something called a "digging stick," used by women to dig up root products such as tubers. Woman play an important role, they are the most active when it comes to food procurement. They’re role as the gather of food has changed over the years. How a woman’s status in these societies, compares to that of women in American society today: Modern–day hunters and gatherers probably do not live in the environments they would have exploited a millennium ago. Pushed by more dominant, powerful cultures into very marginal environments, modern foragers have been able to maintain their sociocultural patterns in a relatively isolated existence. When they desire outside contact, foragers have been able to moderate the communication mostly on their terms. However, foragers today face many new challenges to their