The fact that “work” became a male thing and “home” a female one is an accident of history: The domestication of cattle and the invention of the plow made food gathering a task that benefited from male muscle power. In societies where the land is tilled by hand, women do most of the work. The industrial revolution reinforced the trend, but the post industrial revolution—the recent growth of service industries—is reversing it again. Women are going “out to work” again as they did when they sought tubers and berries in the Pleistocene period.
