Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

Sexual Division of Labor in Agriculture

“…The dependent variable, total female contribution to agriculture (Ag'Tot), is a sum of four tasks from Murdock and Provost (1973): soil preparation, crop tending, crop planting, and crop harvesting. Each is coded on a five-point scale, so the resulting scale ranges In our Africa study (White, Burton, and Dow 1981) we found significant autocorrelation by language family, which was almost entirely accounted for by membership in the Bantu language family.…”

Sex Differences in Sports Across 50 Societies

“…The reason is that this hypothesis was developed by evolutionarily oriented scholars in reference to warfare and cooperatively hunting large game (e.g., Chick et al, 1997;Lombardo, 2012;Sipes, 1973), and females rarely participate in these activities in any society (Adams, 1983;Gat, 2006;Keeley, 1996;Marlowe, 2007;Murdock & Provost, 1973). Nonetheless, if this hypothesis is conceived more broadly, namely that sports foster skills for physically or socially demanding activities, then it becomes quite plausible (see Schlegel & Herbert, 1989).…”

Entailment Theory and Method: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Sexual Division of Labor

“…However, if the society is nomadic, females tend to do the housebuilding (Murdock and Provost 1973a). In addition, if females make houses, they also collect wild vegetables (#44) and prepare them for cooking (#50).…”

“…The full list of fifty tasks coded by Murdock and Provost (1973a) is given in Table 1, in descending rank order of male participation. The number of societies for which the particular activity is coded is given under the columns marked M (exclusive male participation), N (predominant male participation), E (equal or equivalent participation), C (predominant female participation), and F (exclusive female participation).…”

“…Indeed Pasternak, Ember, and Ember (1976) argue that social organizations tend to adapt to the need for alternative caretakers to the mother, so that societies in which women perform roles which are inconsistent with child care tend to develop extended families. Murdock and Provost (1973a) have argued that in addition to the constraints placed on women's activities and mobility by childbearing, nursing, and child care, the greater physical strength of men causes the assignment of certain tasks to males. While we do not deny that humans exhibit sexual dimorphism, this constraint must be considered to be highly probabilistic, since (a) there is great plasticity in the development of physical strength, allowing for large cross-…”