Division of 'labor has long occupied a prominent place in sociology and anthropology as the foundation of processes of economic specialization and exchange in human society.Division of labor by sex has gained specific recognition as a major cause of marriage and of social organization. Murdock (1949), drawing on his pioneering study of sexual division of labor (Murdock 1937), attributes the universality of marriage and the nuclear family to the sexual division of labor, which binds husband and wife into mutual dependencies; Murdock thus supports Durkheim's concept of organic solidarity. In a more recent study, Murdock refers to sexual division of labor as "the most fundamental basis of marriage and the family and hence the ultimate source of all forms of kinship organization" (Murdock and Provost 1973:203). Recent theorists (Sanday 1973) have also emphasized the importance of sexual division of labor for the status of women and place importance on some aspects o f women's contributions to subsistence that had been neglected by earlier anthropologists. For example, women in hunting and gathering societies are now known to make a valuable contribution to subsistence through their gathering activities.Attempts to explain sexual division of labor have tended to focus on physical strength and on the burdens of childbearing and child care. For example, Murdock says: Man, with his superior physical strength, can better undertake the more strenuous tasks, such as lumbering, mining, quarrying, land clearance, and house building. Not handicapped, as woman, by the physiological burdens of pregnancy and nursing, he can range farther afield to hunt, to fish, to herd, and to trade (Murdock 1949:7).A more recent formulation emphasizes the constraints of child care: the degree to which women participate in subsistence activities depends upon the compatibility of the latter with simultaneous childcare responsibilities. Women are most likely to make a

Division of labor has long occupied a prominent place in sociology and anthropology as the foundation of the processes of economic specialization and exchange in human society. In a recent study, Murdock and Provost (1973a: 203) refer to the sexual division of labor as the "most fundamental basis of marriage and the family and hence the ultimate source of all forms of kinship organization." Other recent theorists (e.g. Sanday 1973) have emphasized the importance of sexual division of labor to the status of women.In developing the present model of sexual division of labor, we have tried to veer from the shoals of extreme functionalist assumptions, which, when linked to sex differences, have led to the conclusion that men and women universally * Douglas White received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, and has done research in Mexico, Ireland, and the United States on cross-cultural methodology, mathematical anthropology, and social networks. Michael Burton received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and has done research in Kenya and the United States on cognitive anthropology, social structure, and quantitative methods. Lilyan Brudner received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and has done research in Austria and Ireland on sociolinguistics and social organization.

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