this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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I heard from an Aboriginal tour guide that in native populations everyone just did the role they wanted / were good at, and it was only from the introduction of Christian missionaries that such a division of labour was encouraged.
Buffalo bird women (native American) considered it boys work to hunt ,and girls to tend the fields.
Interesting. My source is obviously anecdotal and from another country. Is it verified that Buffalo tribes always thought this vs. being influenced by European colonisers?
(I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking older civilizations didn't have the same gender hang-ups as modern ones.)
It seems likely that every human culture has had some concept of gender and norms related to it. Those roles can be permissive or strictly enforced. They can match the expectations our culture gives us, or they can be surprising to us. Beside average size, and childbearing, there is unlimited flexibility in how a culture might define the roles and how they might enforce them.
While it is a tempting thought, it seems unlikely that we, here and now, have somehow managed to create the absolute worst human culture in the millions of years we have been at this. I agree that we should be watchful of that pitfall. Western self loathing, is in itself another way of assuming that we must be the main characters in the human story.
Many gender norms come from the fact that if your nonmodern society is to survive, all women need to be pregnant or nursing a baby from their late teens until they are 40. (Or more likely until she dies in childbirth). Pregnant and nursing a baby put some restrictions on what a woman can do, which in turn will influence culture .
It is hard to know. 'Buffalo bird women' was the name of a specific person who grew up just before Europeans arrived (but smallpox arrived before she was born, and probabchanged culture). If you google you can find interviews with her as an old Lady. She gives a picture of how things changed over her life ,but not so much before.
Unfortunately north America in general doesn't have easy access to materials that survive for centuries and so there is limited archeological evidence to work off. (Not zero, but we know little about culture because they couldn't leave much evidence of it behind).