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What Explains Differences in Men’s and Women’s Production?

Determinants of Gendered Foraging Inequalities among Martu

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Abstract

Researchers commonly use long-term average production inequalities to characterize cross-cultural patterns in foraging divisions of labor, but little is known about how the strategies of individuals shape such inequalities. Here, we explore the factors that lead to daily variation in how much men produce relative to women among Martu, contemporary foragers of the Western Desert of Australia. We analyze variation in foraging decisions on temporary foraging camps and find that the percentage of total camp production provided by each gender varies primarily as a function of men’s average bout successes with large, mobile prey. When men target large prey, either their success leads to a large proportional contribution to the daily harvest, or their failure results in no contribution. When both men and women target small reliable prey, production inequalities by gender are minimized. These results suggest that production inequalities among Martu emerge from stochastic variation in men’s foraging success on large prey measured against the backdrop of women’s consistent production of small, low-variance resources.

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Notes

  1. These data refer to the time McCarthy and McArthur (1960) spent at Fish Creek. Their detailed narrative covers observations on subsistence activities for fourteen days from October seventh to October twentieth. Men’s and women’s relative contributions were calculated by extracting the time each forager spent searching, pursuing, and transporting resources and the weight of resources acquired. When two or more individuals participated, the total was divided by the number of foragers. Weight was converted to kilocalories following Brand-Miller et al. (1993). Complete information was available for a total of 30 bouts (12 women-only, 14 men-only, and 4 mixed-gender groups). The results show that men’s foraging time accounted for 55% of the total foraging time for that period, during which they contributed 72% of the total kilocalories acquired.

  2. One reviewer of this paper asked whether Martu women’s hunting might be better considered collecting, given that sand monitor hunting frequently involves digging prey from subsurface dens. We have dealt with this issue extensively elsewhere (Bliege Bird and Bird 2005, 2008; Bird et al. 2009). Martu women’s small game hunting is hunting because it involves a non-zero probability of pursuit failure owing to the prey’s mobility, and furthermore, it is emically defined as such (wartilpa, hunting, as opposed to nganyimpa, collecting). Even though sand goanna are seasonally burrowed, they do not become the animal equivalent of an underground plant storage organ: tubers don’t dig and move to elude capture, nor can they escape the hunter from a “pop hole.” When summer arrives, sand monitors must be tracked on the surface like any other mobile prey, and they are faster than humans over short distances (see Bird et al. 2009 for detailed description and analysis).

  3. The adoption of technology that increases encounter rates may have a more profound effect on men’s relative contribution than changes in projectile technology. McCarthy and McArthur (1960) provide detailed data for 7 kangaroo hunting bouts around Fish Creek. These data show that men hunting kangaroo (M. rufus) on foot and with spear throwers had an average pursuit success rate of 0.25 and an average bout success rate of 0.86 (failing on only one of the seven bouts for which “focal follow” data was available). Martu men hunting kangaroo (M. robustus) on foot but with .22 gauge rifles have a similar pursuit success rate per focal follow (0.31) but a lower bout success rate (0.22; see Bird et al. 2009). Although the difference in bout success rates may be due to interspecies or ecological variation leading to differences in prey abundance, the similarity in pursuit success rates suggests that using rifles over spear throwers does not significantly increase pursuit success. When asked, Martu men even go so far as to suggest that more encounters end in success when a skilled hunter uses a spear thrower.

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Acknowledgments

We owe an immense debt of gratitude to all Martu out at Punmu, Kunawarritji, and Parnngurr and the surrounding deserts, and especially to the Taylor and Morgan families. This paper benefited tremendously by suggestions and comments from James Holland Jones, Ian Robertson, Sarah Robinson, Eric Alden Smith, and two anonymous reviewers. Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, the Stanford Archaeology Center, and Stanford’s Department of Anthropology. Any mistakes in fact or judgment are the sole responsibility of the authors.

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    Rebecca Bliege Bird, Brian F. Codding & Douglas W. Bird

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Bliege Bird, R., Codding, B.F. & Bird, D.W. What Explains Differences in Men’s and Women’s Production?. Hum Nat 20, 105–129 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-009-9061-9

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