Bird Rebecca Bliege, Bird Douglas W
Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall Building 50, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Curr Anthropol. 2008 Aug;49(4):655-93.
An old anthropological theory ascribes gender differences in hunter-gatherer subsistence to an economy of scale in household economic production: women pursue child-care-compatible tasks and men, of necessity, provision wives and offspring with hunted meat. This theory explains little about the division of labor among the Australian Martu, where women hunt extensively and gendered asymmetry in foraging decisions is linked to men's and women's different social strategies. Women hunt primarily small, predictable game (lizards) to provision small kin networks, to feed children, and to maintain their cooperative relationships with other women. They trade off large harvests against greater certainty. Men hunt as a political strategy, using a form of "competitive magnanimity" to rise in the ritual hierarchy and demonstrate their capacity to keep sacred knowledge. Resources that can provision the most people with the most meat best fit this strategy, resulting in an emphasis on kangaroo. Men trade off reliable consumption benefits to the hunter's family for more unpredictable benefits in social standing for the individual hunter. Gender differences in the costs and benefits of engaging in competitive magnanimity structure men's more risk-prone and women's more risk-averse foraging decisions.
女性从事与照顾孩子相兼容的任务，而男性则必然要为妻子和后代提供猎杀的肉类。这一理论几乎无法解释澳大利亚马尔图人的劳动分工，在那里，女性广泛参与狩猎，觅食决策中的性别不对称与男性和女性不同的社会策略有关。女性主要猎杀小型、可预测的猎物（蜥蜴），以供养小型亲属网络、喂养孩子，并维持她们与其他女性的合作关系。她们权衡了大量收获与更高确定性之间的关系。男性将狩猎作为一种政治策略，采用一种“竞争性慷慨”的形式在仪式等级制度中提升地位，并展示他们掌握神圣知识的能力。能够为最多人提供最多肉类的资源最符合这一策略，因此导致对袋鼠的重视。男性为了个体猎人在社会地位上更不可预测的利益，而牺牲了对猎人家庭可靠的消费利益。参与竞争性慷慨行为的成本和收益方面的性别差异，构成了男性更倾向于冒险和女性更规避风险的觅食决策。
