Women were hunters in most societies studied, NOT just gatherers.
"Dr. Wall-Scheffler and her students found evidence of women hunting in 50 of the 63 societies they studied; moreover, 87 percent of that behavior was deliberate. In cultures where hunting was the most important means of finding food, women took an active role 100 percent of the time."
"Often, the oldest women participated the most. (In one bow-and-arrow culture, for example, a grandmother was prized for having the best aim.)"
it reminded me of this article I read a while back
"Wall-Scheffler and her collaborators combed through accounts from as far back as the 1800s through to present day. And rather than relying on summaries of those accounts – as scientists often do when analyzing large numbers of them – Wall-Scheffler notes "our goal was to go back to the original ethnographic reports of those populations and see what had actually been written about the hunting strategies."
Their findings — published in the journal PLOS One this week — is that in 79% of the societies for which there is data, women were hunting.
Moreover, says Wall-Scheffler, this wasn't just opportunistic killing of animals that the women happened upon. The vast majority of the time, she says, "the hunting was purposeful. Women had their own toolkit. They had favorite weapons. Grandmas were the best hunters of the village."
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