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On the Origins of Gender Inequality
In our fast-paced world of technology and conveniences, the biological origins of women's inequality can be forgotten. This book offers a richer understanding of gender inequality by explaining a key cause-women's reproductive and lactation patterns. Until about 1900, infants nursed every fifteen minutes on average for two years because very frequent suckling prevented pregnancy. The practice evolved because it maximized infant survival. If a forager child was born before its older sibling could take part in the daily food search, the older one died. This practice persisted until the modern era because until after the discovery of the germ theory of disease, human milk was the only food certain to be unspoiled. Lactation patterns excluded women from the activities that led to political leadership. During the twentieth century the ancient mode declined and women entered the labor market en masse. Joan Huber challenges feminists toward a richer understanding of biological origins of inequality-knowledge that can help women achieve greater equality today.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 8, 2009
I am ashamed to admit that this book is the first book I’ve read in a really long time; I am not ashamed to admit that this book is the first book I’ve read in a really long time. I stumbled across it while putting together a “For Further Reading” list for a book on male and female roles, and just thought that the summary looked pretty interesting.
It’s a skinny little thing, and I am shocked to learn that it costs more than $60, but I do know that academic books are priced for a different market than regular books. I didn’t buy it–-it’s on loan from the library–-but I was surprised by its page count. Let me assure you, however, that the author packs it with substance. I tend to indulge my inner bombast and let my sentences overwrite themselves, but the prose in this book is to. the. point. So much to the point, in fact, that it’s off-putting for a few pages until you get into the rhythm of it. Actually, I can see how that would be a relief to any student or researcher sitting down to extract information from it–-there is a lot of opaque academic writing out there. But this book is short because it contains absolutely nothing but content. The author put in like one personal anecdote, and even that was in the introduction!
Long Story Short
Gender inequality originated in the biological fact that women bear children and nurse them. Nursing babies takes too much time, and put women in a very dependent role so long as she had babes in arms.
Short Story Longer
So maybe I am of the lucky generation of mothers who already knew all that stuff about lactation and nursing that the book spent a good chunk of time explaining. Huber emphasizes that only recently have people discovered that for most of human history, babies were worn like shirts and nursed a couple minutes at a time in ten- to fifteen-minute intervals for three years or so. There were explanations about the contents and benefits of breast milk, and how the baby suckles and how it affects mothers and babies, and pretty much everything that I’d gleaned from baby classes and online stuff I was looking up a few years ago when Fella not nursing enough was an actual issue. I am sure, however, that such information is revelatory to, well, lots and lots of people, especially those who spend a good deal of time focusing most of their energy on narrow fields of research. The author also touched on the effects of postmodernism thought eschewing the biological sciences, and how feminist scholars decided that gender differences were cultural–-not physiological–-and developed anthropological theories to support their agenda. Huber put more finesse and shades of gray into these arguments than I am doing, and she was not utterly dismissive of the findings of previous decades, but in general people were sticking with one or two studies of hunter-gatherer peoples and taking them sort of at face value instead of performing additional research (because the best part of postmodernism, we all know, is thinking your way to the desired conclusion rather than from the data).
Don’t take anything I say about postmodernism seriously. I don’t know anything. I am not an academic. You can debate with me, if you want, but I won’t be any good at it. Of course, that will show you as the winner!
So my experience reading the first half of this book was basically the author saying in one sentence that women had to spend so much time breastfeeding and all the other pieces falling into place. I could have independently come up with the same conclusions (less all the supporting evidence that the author cites), and it wasn’t wowing me, but it wasn’t something I didn’t know anything about in the first part. I totally skimmed the actual chapters about the mechanics of nursing, and almost gave up the book as a good tutorial for everyone else but me, except them I got to the part about how agriculture and technology and population growth sort of latched on (ha!) to this latent separation of gender roles and institutionalized them and made it very easy for men to take advantage of women’s involuntary preoccupation with the needs of children. This was told in the same straightforward academic language with no interesting turns of phrase, but it was still depressing and fascinating to read all at the same time.
Basically, domesticating animals and growing crops made it more possible for people other than the mother to feed a baby (regardless of whether animal milk or grain-based “pap” was good for the baby). That freed up women to labor to some extent, but it also disrupted the contraceptive benefits of regular nursing, so women were pregnant more often. As technology advanced and larger machines and heavier animals were required to do the important work (women could still weed and schlep stuff, but a mother with small children can’t drive oxen carrying a plow), it became easier and easier for men to take control of the important resources and then writing made it easier for them to codify ideas that justified their authority. I probably don’t have to spell it out for you. This all changed basically in the 20th Century, with the advent of public health projects, germ theory, and the development of safer baby formula that meant a baby could have access to clean bottles and nutritional substitutes to breast milk (combined with reliable contraception) that meant mothers could free themselves from the tasks of feeding babies without consigning them to early deaths. Voila! Gender equality! I bet the people who wanted clean water never saw that coming. Ultimately, the book was very optimistic about the role of women and the future of male/female interactions. That is, it seemed optimistic to me.
It’s a skinny little thing, and I am shocked to learn that it costs more than $60, but I do know that academic books are priced for a different market than regular books. I didn’t buy it–-it’s on loan from the library–-but I was surprised by its page count. Let me assure you, however, that the author packs it with substance. I tend to indulge my inner bombast and let my sentences overwrite themselves, but the prose in this book is to. the. point. So much to the point, in fact, that it’s off-putting for a few pages until you get into the rhythm of it. Actually, I can see how that would be a relief to any student or researcher sitting down to extract information from it–-there is a lot of opaque academic writing out there. But this book is short because it contains absolutely nothing but content. The author put in like one personal anecdote, and even that was in the introduction!
Long Story Short
Gender inequality originated in the biological fact that women bear children and nurse them. Nursing babies takes too much time, and put women in a very dependent role so long as she had babes in arms.
Short Story Longer
So maybe I am of the lucky generation of mothers who already knew all that stuff about lactation and nursing that the book spent a good chunk of time explaining. Huber emphasizes that only recently have people discovered that for most of human history, babies were worn like shirts and nursed a couple minutes at a time in ten- to fifteen-minute intervals for three years or so. There were explanations about the contents and benefits of breast milk, and how the baby suckles and how it affects mothers and babies, and pretty much everything that I’d gleaned from baby classes and online stuff I was looking up a few years ago when Fella not nursing enough was an actual issue. I am sure, however, that such information is revelatory to, well, lots and lots of people, especially those who spend a good deal of time focusing most of their energy on narrow fields of research. The author also touched on the effects of postmodernism thought eschewing the biological sciences, and how feminist scholars decided that gender differences were cultural–-not physiological–-and developed anthropological theories to support their agenda. Huber put more finesse and shades of gray into these arguments than I am doing, and she was not utterly dismissive of the findings of previous decades, but in general people were sticking with one or two studies of hunter-gatherer peoples and taking them sort of at face value instead of performing additional research (because the best part of postmodernism, we all know, is thinking your way to the desired conclusion rather than from the data).
Don’t take anything I say about postmodernism seriously. I don’t know anything. I am not an academic. You can debate with me, if you want, but I won’t be any good at it. Of course, that will show you as the winner!
So my experience reading the first half of this book was basically the author saying in one sentence that women had to spend so much time breastfeeding and all the other pieces falling into place. I could have independently come up with the same conclusions (less all the supporting evidence that the author cites), and it wasn’t wowing me, but it wasn’t something I didn’t know anything about in the first part. I totally skimmed the actual chapters about the mechanics of nursing, and almost gave up the book as a good tutorial for everyone else but me, except them I got to the part about how agriculture and technology and population growth sort of latched on (ha!) to this latent separation of gender roles and institutionalized them and made it very easy for men to take advantage of women’s involuntary preoccupation with the needs of children. This was told in the same straightforward academic language with no interesting turns of phrase, but it was still depressing and fascinating to read all at the same time.
Basically, domesticating animals and growing crops made it more possible for people other than the mother to feed a baby (regardless of whether animal milk or grain-based “pap” was good for the baby). That freed up women to labor to some extent, but it also disrupted the contraceptive benefits of regular nursing, so women were pregnant more often. As technology advanced and larger machines and heavier animals were required to do the important work (women could still weed and schlep stuff, but a mother with small children can’t drive oxen carrying a plow), it became easier and easier for men to take control of the important resources and then writing made it easier for them to codify ideas that justified their authority. I probably don’t have to spell it out for you. This all changed basically in the 20th Century, with the advent of public health projects, germ theory, and the development of safer baby formula that meant a baby could have access to clean bottles and nutritional substitutes to breast milk (combined with reliable contraception) that meant mothers could free themselves from the tasks of feeding babies without consigning them to early deaths. Voila! Gender equality! I bet the people who wanted clean water never saw that coming. Ultimately, the book was very optimistic about the role of women and the future of male/female interactions. That is, it seemed optimistic to me.
November 20, 2012
Reads a bit like a thesis, but excellent, interesting information. Feel like I really need to read it 2-3 times to absorb everything. Revealing look at why men have traditionally held seats of power, as well as interesting info on the origins of birth control, changing roles of the sexes throughout history, and how the church has influenced land ownership and inheritance.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews