“When you see pictures of what these women can do, they’re pretty strong,” Adrienne Zihlman tells me. In her chapter in the 1981 book Woman the Gatherer, she includes a striking image, shot by anthropologist Richard Lee, showing a seven-month pregnant !Kung woman striding through the Kalahari like an athlete. She’s supporting a three-year-old child on her shoulders, brandishing a digging stick in one hand, and hauling the food she’s gathered on her back to take home.
