The !Kung San people of Botswana and the Bofi, living in Central African Republic (C.A.R.), are among 12 communities on the African continent that researchers studied to determine that women also hunt within their cultures, despite long-standing assumptions about the division of labor in hunter-gatherer societies.
They’re among 63 separate communities studied around the world, including Asia, South America and Australia. Women’s participation in hunting was evident in 79% of them where clear definitions about hunting existed. The Aka of Congo-Brazzaville and the C.A.R. are one example, with women required to participate when hunting with nets but also carrying spears, machetes, and cross bows.
In some cases, including among the Aka, women hunt with their children and carry them on their backs. The Aka and the Hadza people of Tanzania take children as young as age 3 with them on about 15% of their hunting trips.
Women hunt alone but also with their husbands, other women, and sometimes with dogs. The data suggests that females are skilled in the practice of hunting and often demonstrate greater flexibility in their hunting strategies when compared to men.
“The idea that women are hindered by childcare and thus cannot hunt is an area where increasing data collection and thoughtful interpretation is lending a much richer lens to our understanding of human mobility strategies,” note the authors from Seattle Pacific University in the United States. Their work was published this week in the journal PLOS ONE.