

View Full Document

Unformatted Document Excerpt

Hi let me start by saying that I am sorry I have not posted anything until now I was having trouble, I guess you could say that I over extended myself. My daughter asked me to watch my grandson for a few days and it took more energy than I even realized it would. I forgot how time consuming a toddler can be; it has been a while since my children were young. I guess that it does take a whole village to raise a child, moving on to our discussion now. Gender and Economy DQ 1 ANT 101 What role do women play in foraging and horticultural based societies? 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 thats the way these people live, who am I to judge. We all have our faults and down falls. How is a womans status 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. Theyre role as the gather of food has changed over the years. How is a womans status in these societies, compares to that of women in American society today? Modernday 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. In my personal opinion though women and men are hardly treated equally, I mean in less than modern times women were treated like they were second class citizens and as if they were not as important as men were. Dont get me wrong we have come a long way but even today not all people are treated equally still. I mean I would have thought that the children of yesterday would have learned something from their parents mistakes why does history seem to keep repeating the bad parts in time?... View Full Document

End of Preview

Sign up now to access the rest of the document