Men throughout history: hunters, protectors, providers, fighters, teachers of strength and independence.
Women throughout history: gatherers, protected, nurturers, healers, teachers of caring and inclusion.
Which sex do you think has an easier time taking on the opposite role or combining the two? Why?
This is a completely gendered question, and the answer of course is that it is not universally easier for one gender to take on roles associated with the other. It is completely relative culturally, socially and individually.
Let’s not forget that in some tribal and/or industrialized societies women did the hunting, as it is with some species (lions for example) and men are the healers. These evolutionary roles are dominant, but not universal either.
No one I know has ever had to even do some of these tasks, such as gathering and hunting and many people I know of all genders have combined these behaviours to varying degrees at different moments in their lives.
The idea of a partnership or living in collectivity is that we remove the reliance for such essentialist gender roles so that everyone has more freedom to partake in the roles they are comfortable in.
Though most divisions of labour (and I unclude teaching, healing and providing in this as well) are based on a binary model of gender, it is more helpful, in my view, to think of socio-economic roles than to think of gendered roles specifically, particularly in industrialized societies.
A male farmer will do more gathering than I ever do as a woman, and a male nurse will do more healing than I ever do as a woman. Conversely, a female police officer will do more fighting and protecting than my bf ever will as a man, and a deer-hunter will do more hunting than he ever will as a man too.
As a woman, at different moments in my life, I have protected my younger brother, taught my peers about caring and independence, have provided food and means to subsist for myself and have nurtured and healed others when I can.
Humans are primarily social, not gendered, animals that rely on each other in groups, not in pairs, in order to organize their collectivities. Though history attests to a heavy reliance on gender to organize this labour, it is important to remember that humans societies were built and able to strive on the notion that we are able to supersede these gender roles in order to protect the society as a whole. If all the men died, women would protect the survivors. If all the women died, men would heal the wounded.
The bottom line is, we are all capable of all those things to varying degree, and gender is not a pre-determined characteristic to assess the value or the ability of an individual’s participation in society.
EDIT: Eohan- I beg to differ. There are many single mothers out there who do a fine job of caring for and nurturing their children while providing for them also - sometimes with the help of the father, but in most cases without. I’m sure there are many single fathers out there who would do just as well. We do what we can to survive.
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I probably not going to answer your question but take the opportunity to make a point. And that is that we are moving toward a society - maybe we are already there - where the traditional “evolutionary roles” for women work better than do the traditional evolutionary roles for men. For women, then, there is not necessarily a strong push to take on the evolutionary roles of men. Physicians are a good example. Many more women are becoming physicians and doing so taps into the traditional healer role. The same phenomenon is evident with psychologists - a profession that has gone from male dominated to female dominated. Woman have always been providers for their children, so moving into the provider role is also not so much of a stretch. For men, the evolutionary roles have been devalued. Fighters, for example, are in much less demand than in the past. Strength is not as important as it once was. So, the situation is actually easier for women, because more aspects inherent to their nature are valued in today’s world - well at least in “western” society. Men must scramble to either find uses for the devalued aspects of masculinity or to move toward the feminine. At this point, the task is more complicated for men.
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realistically….here in the western world when was the last time one of us had to kill to eat? had to gather berries and nuts? had to fight off wild animals to protect the kids?
The world has changed….and human are changing with it.