More Evidence of Equality

As I have written about before, the widely held belief that men have historically hunted and women gathered is proving to be more fiction than fact as a new study from Seattle Pacific University finds. Indeed, not just historically but even now.

Despite what modern gender stereotypes would have you believe, a new analysis of a broad range of foraging societies within the past century has revealed a number of their hunters were female

The data review, led by Abigail Anderson of Seattle Pacific University, considers 63 modern foraging societies, including those in the Americas, Africa, Australia, Asia, and the Oceanic region. Close to 80 percent of those societies show evidence of female hunting in ethnographic reports from the past 100 years.

In the majority of those cases, there was clear documentation describing women stalking and hunting game intentionally, not just killing an animal if the opportunity arose. Among societies where hunting was the most important source of food, women actively participated in hunting 100 percent of the time.

We need a reality check on stereotypes. Women are perfectly capable of wielding weapons and hunting. Men are perfectly capable of gathering and taking care of babies.