Human Bodies & Behaviours

Part 1:Human Bodies Are Dimorphic: What

has Anthropology made of these differences?
Part 2: Gender Differences Hypothesis vs
Gender Similarities Hypothesis

REQUIRED READING:
The Fashioning of Women in GCCP (p.68-80)
Woman the Hunter: the Agta in GCCP (p. 159-168) 1
Testable Videos
• Slide 46 ‘The Sexes Come Down to Earth’ (4 min)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDMHoXN4d9c

• Slide 56 ‘Are brains male or female?’ (14 min)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYpDU040yzc

2
Outline
• Part I: Human bodies are dimorphic: What has Anthropology
made of these differences?
• Sex role s vs Gender roles
• Man the Hunter
• Vs. Task assignment in a contemporary hunter-gather
society
• To read about: Case study: The Agta: Women as Hunters
• Vs. Men as Active Caregivers in prehistory
• Vs. Task assignment in a prehistory society
• To read about: Case study: The Fashioning of Women

• Part II: Problem: Assuming a direct correlation between body

dimorphism and behavioural differences is problematic
• We need other ways to investigate the importance (or not) of
behavioural differences between the sexes
• Investigate the Gender Differences Hypothesis vs Gender
Similarities Hypothesis in the Present : Hyde (2005) & & 3
Carothers & Reis (2013)
• Sex Differences in the brain? Watch the Tedx talk ‘Are brains
male or female?’
Part I
• Traditionally, Anthropology has said that Biology
Matters – that dimorphic human bodies are
important in explaining behavioural differences

• Biological Asymmetry Argument: In all human

populations there are consistent morphological
and physiological differences between the sexes

• These differences impact what tasks men and

women can do = Sexual Division of Labour
4
Sexual Division of Labour
• Assumes certain
tasks are
universally
“female” or
“male”

• Males are
producers (e.g.
hunters)
5
Sexual Division of Labour

• Females are
reproducers (e.g.
pregnancy, childcare
responsibilities):
Persistent thinking: In
our ancestors’ past,
pregnancy &
childcare would have
severely limited the
types of tasks that
women could do
6
• Definitions:
• Sex Roles (Sexual Division of Labour): The
differential tasks/jobs women and men do
that are biologically determined

• VS

• Gender Roles (Gender Division of Labour):

the differential tasks/jobs that men and
7
women do are culturally prescribed
Sex vs Gender Roles?
• Take the example of care-
taking of children

• Is it a sex role?

• Smith (2007) considered

caretaking to be a sex role:
“Caretaking is considered to
be a sex role related to
biological factors.”
8
• Or a gender role?
• In contrast, Rider (2005)
considered caretaking to be
a gender role:
• “Gender roles are culturally
prescribed behaviors and
traits that dictate how
males and females should
act [An example of a gender
difference is] the amount of
time men and women spend
caring for children. This
gender difference may be
associated with sex; after all,
only women can breast-
feed. But aside from
providing milk, men can care 9
for children as well as
women”
• If we think a task is a Sex Role it shapes
our ideas about society in a different way
than if we think a task is a Gender Role

10
• What has Anthropology said about our
Dimorphic Bodies?
• Focus in on: The Man the Hunter model

11
Human Origins Narratives

• Reconstruction of past human life ways

• Hallmark of models: task assignment & different

values assigned to different tasks

• ‘Man the Hunter’ Model

12
‘Man the Hunter’ Model
• ‘Man the Hunter’ Model originated in the 1960s

13
‘Man the Hunter’ Model

• “To date the hunting way of life has been the

most successful and persistent adaptation man
has ever achieved.” (Lee and Devore, 1968: p. 3)
and “Hunting is so universal and so consistently
a male activity that it must have been a basic
part of the early cultural adaptation” (p.7).

14
15
16
 17

Caption: “Man the Hunter. Stone Age men move in to kill a horned creature
caught in a pit. Original artwork from Treasure no. 391 (11 July 1970).”
Implications of the ‘Man the Hunter’ Model on
our way of thinking about the world
• The Problem: It set the stage for us to think that
men and women always did very different tasks
among our earliest ancestors

1) Importance of Men’s Hunting (Production)

--Men hunt (highly valued), women gather (less
valued)
2) Women’s Roles (Reproduction)
--Limited by biology
• Women stayed back at ‘home’ base
• Provisioned by men
• Supposedly gave rise to (1) Monogamy:
Predominant ‘Sharing’ Pair-Bond = Male/ 18
Husband shares food/meat exclusively with
Female /Wife & (2) Nuclear Family
• But….the Man the Hunter model has been largely
discredited in the recent anthropological literature! --
read about a few of the critiques in “The Fashioning
of Women” in GCCP & see slides 20-24, 25-30 & 63

• Not required reading, but for a very different perspective

on human evolution—humans as prey, rather than hunters,
read: Man The Hunted by Hart & Sussman (2009; expanded
edition)
• Also not required, but for a fascinating look at the links
between the stories we tell ourselves about “the hunting
hypothesis” (aka Man the Hunter and its earlier
incarnations ) and the stories we tell ourselves about our
“control over nature”, read: A View to Death in the
Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History by Cartmill
(1996)

• New thinking: task assignment around the world is 19

much more varied = now we speak about a Gender
Division of Labour not a Sexual Division of Labour
Gender Division of Labour
Case study: Task assignment in a present-day hunter-
gather society
• Case Study: “Women
the Hunter: The Agta”
in GCCP (p. 159-168)

• Hunter-Gatherer
society found in
Northwest Luzon,
Philippines
Agta woman hunting: Caption read: “Here
a woman of Nanadukan waits in ambush
• Why are the Agta
by the side of a river, hoping an animal
important? will come to water. She is carrying the 20
standard hunting gear, a bow and several
arrows.” Photo: P. Bion Griffin
To read about: overlapping tasks
among the Agta
• Both men and women:
• 1. trade with farmers
• 2. fish (underwater spear fishing—people swim
under water and spear fish & group fish in fish
drives, where fish are driven by vines and
banana leaves)
• 3. collect plant foods
• 4. hunt game animals
21
To read about: hunting by women
• In some groups:
1. women do not hunt or kill the animal
per se, but participate in the hunt in
other ways
-women help carry game out of the
forest
-handle the dogs
2. But in at least 2 groups studied by the
authors women do hunt (Dianggu &
Malibu women; refers to geographic 22

location)
To read about: pregnancy/childcare and
hunting
• Some lifecycle dynamics of female hunting among
the Agta:
• 1) Agta women do not hunt during late pregnancy
and for the first few months of nursing, they do
hunt at other times
• 2) Some nursing mothers hunted by giving their
children to their mothers or oldest female siblings
to care for
• 3) Women with young children hunt less than
teenagers and older women
23
Take Home Points
• The Agta are not unique. We
now know that women hunt
in many other historical &
contemporary hunter-
gatherer societies (e.g. the
Mbuti in Zaire; Siberian
hunters; First Nations & Inuit
in North America)

• Women are not totally

unaffected by pregnancy and
childcare; but not
24
immobilized by it either Agta
woman
Men as Active Care-Takers in Prehistory?
• The flip side of women as capable
hunters (in past & contemporary
societies), is men as capable care-givers
of children

• Gettler, L. 2010. Direct male care and

hominin evolution: why male-child
interaction is more than a nice social
idea. American Anthropologist 112(1):7-
21.

• “Humans give birth to incredibly

Museum diorama representing an
early man and child
dependent infants. Historically, the idea
that men were out clubbing large
animals and women were staying
behind with babies has been largely
discredited. The only way mothers
could have highly needy offspring every
couple of years is if they were getting 25
help.” Lee Gettler quoted in NY Times
Sept 2011
Men as Active Care-Takers in Prehistory?

26
**you don’t need to know this chart for the test

27

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-family-tree
Men as Active Care-Takers in Prehistory?
• Modelling the estimated reproductive energetic costs
incurred by females in early Genus Homo vs females in
other genera (e.g. Australopithecines), Gettler (2010)
points out an important factor about Genus Homo that
differs from other early hominins (eg Genus
Australopithecines)

• **Genus Homo seems to have a shortened interbirth

interval compared to other hominins. Shortening the
interbirth interval would (potentially) allow for greater
fertility (total births per female)

• Also when we compare modern Genus Homo, to living

apes (eg. chimpanzees, gorillas), humans have relatively
high fertility rates
28

• How do you shorten the Interbirth Interval?

Gettler (2010): Males helped reduce the energetic burden on
mothers by carrying young, (which freed up calories for
females, energy that could go back into reproduction) which
reduced the interbirth interval

Gettler writes (p. 14):” “Although…the estimated difference

between relevant activity expenditures for males and females is
relatively small….The costs of infant transport are robust.
29
Because these costs [of infant transport] are transferrable to
another individual, unlike lactation expenditures, they represent
a likely candidate for intervention on the part of males.”
• Take-home point: Gettler’s research shifts the
discussion from pregnancy itself being a
burden – to childcare being the issue– and
childcare is less a biological issue and more of a
social organization/ societal issue

• Challenging the idea that women are

automatically burdened because of pregnancy
(one of the main tenets of the Biological
Asymmetry Argument see slide 4)
30
• Take home point: Assuming a direct
correlation between body dimorphism (male
body vs female body) and behavioural
differences is problematic

• In other words, just because someone has a

male body doesn’t mean they always do
certain tasks or have certain roles, or behave in
certain ways, and vice versa for females

31
• Take Home Point: When talking about a
Division of Labour in the past, as well as in
contemporary society, we need to “ground”
research in archaeology & anthropology –
methodically collect the data and see what
it tells us--rather than make assumptions
about what we think men and women are
capable of based on body dimorphism

• Keep these ideas in mind when reading

Adovasio et al: The Fashioning of Women In
GCCP (p.68-80)
32
• Use slides 60-63 to steer your reading
Part 2:
• We need other ways to investigate the presence
(or not) of behavioural differences between the
sexes
• Investigate the Gender Differences Hypothesis vs
Gender Similarities Hypothesis in the Present
• Hyde (2005)
• Carothers & Reis (2013)

33
• Gender Differences Hypothesis
Carothers 2013: “Men and women are so
different they might as well be from separate
planets, so says the theory of the sexes famously
explicated in John Gray’s 1992 best seller, “Men
Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.”
Indeed, sex differences are a perennially popular
topic in behavioral science; since 2000, scientific
journals have published more than 30,000
articles on them.”

34
• Gender Similarities Hypothesis
How Do You Determine a Sex Difference in Behaviour?

 There is no clear biological divide about how to

quantify/ identify a sex difference in behaviour
(McCarthy et al 2012)

35
 A sex difference is “one that exists along a
continuum in which males or females can fall at
any point but the average differs between the
sexes” (McCarthy et al 2012)
How different are men and women?
• Hyde (2005) conducted a “Meta-meta analysis” on studies that
had compared women vs men on a number of traits
• Meta-meta analysis = A large number of separate meta-analysis
on the same topic were brought together

• Hyde included 46 meta analysis of gender differences, which

included over 5,000 research studies, which in turn were based
on the testing of about 7 million people!!

• The research covered cognitive variables, communication, social

and personality variables, psychological well-being, motor
behaviors, amongst other topics

• Each meta-analysis is taken as one data point—a standardized

gender difference from each study is calculated (known as ‘d’) =
‘d’ =known as the “effect size” (close-to-zero to small, moderate; 36
large/very large )
• The Gender Similarities Hypothesis predicts that:
• 1. Most differences are in the close-to-zero (d ≤ 0.10)
or small (0.11 ˂ d ˃ 0.35) range
• 2. A few are in the moderate range (0.36 ˂ d ˃ 0.65)
• 3. And very few are large (d 0.66 –1.00) or very large
(d 1.00) (Hyde 2005)

• A d value in the close-to-zero range (≤0.10) is

interpreted as being trivial, as being a gender
similarity (Hyde 2005)

• The Gender Similarities Hypothesis does not assert 37

that males and females are similar in absolutely
every domain (Hyde 2005) are
- they doesn't indicate tht men and femaleds are same , they say that the
similar - they do hav some diferences
 • Let’s look at 4 of the 126 traits Hyde (2005) included in
her meta-meta analysis:
- all protraits implies gender similaritieds

• Sex difference in:

• COMMUNICATION?: Included studies that looked at
talkativeness, interruptions while talking, use of facial
expressions, differences in language use, etc.
• CARE ORIENTATION?:Defined as maintaining
relationships; responding to the needs of others; a
responsibility to not cause harm.
• LEADERSHIP?: E.g. studies that assessed if men and
women have different leadership styles; or were rated as
more or less effective in their leadership
• HAPPINESS? Feelings of happiness? How often one
experiences happy feelings? 38
• In the paper, the overall finding is simply stated:

• “The striking result is that 30% of the effect sizes

are in the close-to-zero range (i.e. gender
similarity), and an additional 48% are in the small
range. That is 78% of gender differences are
small or close-to-zero” (Hyde 2005)

• Supports the _____________________________

that men and women are more similar then different - gender similarity hypotheesis
39
The exceptions—areas in which differences between men
and women are moderate or large in magnitude:
• From Hyde (2005)’s paper:

• 1) The largest differences are in the domain of motor performance,

particularly for measures such as grip strength, throwing velocity (d
=2.18) and throwing distance (d= 1.98)

• 2) A second area in which differences are found is some— but not

all—measures of sexuality. Differences are large for attitudes about
sex in a casual, uncommitted relationship. (d=0.81) In contrast, the
difference in reported sexual satisfaction in their relationship is close
to zero. (d=.06)

• 3) As per several other meta-analysis, physical aggression shows

differences that are moderate to large in magnitude (d=.40 to .84). 40
“Men and Women Are From Earth”

• Carothers & Reis, 2013. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, Vol 104, No 2, p. 385-407

• Looked at psychological data sets where, based on mean/

average scores, differences between men and women had
been found

• Are differences between men and women categorical (by

kind) or dimensional (by degree, along a continuum)?
they are category- class
- can have number which are speard out
- femake custer around the mean- cdategorical 41
- dimensional- averageds are in middle- spread around between 2 points- it is continuum
 Categorical Differences
• If differences are categorical; then knowing only that
a person was male, would mean that certain
behaviours should always co-occur in members of
that group (male)
-between sex variabilithy is higher than within sex variability

• Carothers & Reis (2013) write: “In other words, most men
would score similarly to each other, as would women, with
little overlap between the two groups (sexes).”

42
 Dimensional Differences
• If differences are dimensional; then knowing only
that a person was male, wouldn’t tell you anything
about which behaviours you should find in members
of that group (male)
- dimension diffcerences , within sex variability is high than in sex - females have a lot of varibaility which overlap -

• Paraphrasing Carothers & Reis (2013) from the previous slide:

In other words, most men would NOT score similarly to each
other, NOR would most women, we WOULD expect to find
overlap between the two groups (sexes).
43
• 122 unique traits; 13,301 participants; 13 studies
• Conducted a series of analyses in four specific areas:

• 1) Sociosexual Orientation: for ex, types of questions posed to

participants included questions like, “willingness to have sex outside
of a committed relationship” or # of one-night stands, # of partners
expected in next 5 years -
• 2) Interpersonal Orientation: ex, Surveys to measure the
importance of relationships to a person’s sense of self
• 3) Gender-Related Dispositions: ex, Surveys that measured the “big
5” personality traits (commonly assumed to be gender related):
extraversion, openness, agreeableness, emotional stability,
conscientiousness
• 4) Intimacy: ex, Surveys that get at measures of assessing close
relationships (with friends, family, partners).
• 5) And then conducted an analysis combining all of the psychological
data sets 44
 Findings

• Were differences Dimensional or Categorical?

• 1) Sociosexual Orientation:_________________
Dimensional

• 2) Interpersonal Orientation:________________
Dimaensional

• 3) Gender-Related Dispositions:_____________
Dimensuinal

• 4) Intimacy:__________________
Dimensional

• 5) All of the psychological data sets:____ ______

Dimensional

- cannot categorize women or males based on these traits

45
• Their Conclusion:
• “The Sexes Come Back To Earth”

• (1) The traits examined are overwhelmingly better described by a

dimensional model

• (2) Supports the Gender Similarities Hypothesis

• Carothers (one of the authors of the study) wrote in the New York
Times: “The Mars/Venus view describes a world that does not
exist, at least here on earth. Our work shows that sex does not
define qualitatively distinct categories of psychological
characteristics. We need to look at individuals as individuals.”
46
-men and women are differnt then they are same

• Do sex differences in the brain exist?

• Are there female brains & male brains?

-

47
Part I of the Answer
• On one hand: “Sex differences in brain structure are
indeed well documented” (Joel 2011).

• In an important paper on the topic, titled Sex

differences in the brain: the relation between structure
and function, de Vries & Sodersten (2009) write:
- yes, u can find a lot of sex brain differences

• “Currently, thousands of studies have documented sex

differences in the brain in practically any parameter
imaginable.” BUT….
48
 Part I of the Answer
• The authors continue: “Remarkably in most
cases we do not understand how, or even
whether, these sex differences contribute to
sex differences in behavior.”
- structural differences

49
Part II of the Answer
• Sex differences in brain structure can exist, but that is not the
whole story. A few of the problems cited by Joel et al 2015:

1. Lack of consistency in the literature on what are the sex

differences in brain structure (see slide 51)

2. The possibility that sex differences in the adult brain may be

the result of differences in life experience (e.g. neuroplasticity:
the brain’s ability to reorganize and make new connections over
an individual’s lifetime)
**For example, the longer mathematicians study math,
the more neural branches sprout in the area of the brain used for
math (Aydin et al 2007. Increased gray matter density in the
parietal cortex of mathematicians. American Journal of
Neuroradiology. 28: 10. p. 1859-1864)

3. Sex differences in the brain may not be permanent!

50
-see Tedx talk slide 56 (Other papers Byne et al 1988; Rogers
2001; Fitch & Bimonte 2002; De Vries 2004; Hines 2004; Vidal
2005; Jordan& Young 2010)
1. Lack of consistency in the literature on what are
the sex differences in brain structure

Two recent meta-analysis in the field of neuroscience do not

support earlier papers that claimed a sex difference in two
commonly studied areas of the brain:

• Hippocampus - part of the brain involved in memory, spatial

navigation & stress regulation
• Tan et al (2016). The human hippocampus is not sexually-dimorphic:
Meta-analysis of structural MRI volumes. NeuroIimage. 124. 350-366
(Not required reading)

• Amygdala—part of the brain that participates in “the processing of

all types of emotions, facial recognition, aggression, sexual arousal,
anxiety and fear conditioning”
• Marwha et al (2017). Meta-analysis reveals a lack of sexual dimorphism
in human amygdala volume. NeuroImage 147. 282-294 (Not required
reading) 51

- meta- analysis - are changign how wse perceive gender

Part II of the Answer
• The brain is highly variable: Recent papers are starting to
question the male/ female brain idea—perhaps brains
cannot be divided into “male” brains or “female” brains

• Perhaps what we are dealing with is a “multi-morphic”

brain or “mosaic” brain, rather than a “dimorphic” brain
(i.e. little overlap between the forms of male and female
brains):

• “That is different individuals will have different

combinations of “male” and “female” brain
characteristics. In this sense brains are neither “male” or
52
“female”, they are “mosaic” (Joel 2011)
• One of the most comprehensive papers on sex
differences in the brain is Joel et al (2015). Sex beyond
the genitalia: The human brain mosaic. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences (see next slide)

• The authors write: “Whereas a categorical difference in

the genitals has always been acknowledged, the question
of how far these categories extend into human biology is
still not resolved.”

• Study included an analysis of 1400 human brain scans 53

**you don’t need to read the abstract for the test

54
What did they find?
• "This is the first study to look at the brain as a whole and ask
whether brains are of two types. The answer is no," said lead
author of the study Daphna Joel

• Joel and colleagues write: “Most brains are comprised of

unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females
compared with males, some more common in males
compared with females, and some common in both females
and males…Our study demonstrates that although there are
[some] sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do
not belong to one of two distinct categories: male
brain/female brain.”

• “Sex/gender”:” We use the term sex/gender to indicate that

studies typically assess subjects’ sex (i.e. whether one is male
or female) but observed differences may reflect the effects of
both sex and gender (that is, the social construction of sex).: 55
Part II Cont.: Male brains and Female brains?

• A “multi-morphic”/ “mosaic”?

• Blurb from Tedx talk: “Professor Daphna Joel explores

the mistaken concept that brains can be either male or
female, thus providing an explanation for why men and
women are different. She disputes the theory, displays
the neurological data and proves that our brains are
really a unique mosaic of male and female
characteristics.‘”

• This Tedx talk was followed up with the paper cited on

slide 54 (Joel et al 2015. Sex beyond the genitalia: The
human brain mosaic. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences)
56
• LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYpDU040yzc
 Things to watch for in the Ted talk:
• Sex differences in the brain exist, but that is not the whole story

• “Sex is important”; but it is the interaction between sex &

environment (e.g. dendritic spines study – dendritic spines are
found on neurons, they receive & transmit inputs to the
neuron’s cell body-- & other studies she mentions)

• “So what is the meaning of talking about the sex of the brain if
simple manipulations can reverse what is female and male?”

• What does she mean when she says: “Brains do not have a
sex”? 57
• Not required reading-- but further reading on this
topic if you are interested: (1) Joel et al 2015 Sex
beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2)
Joel & Yankelevitch-Yahav (2014) Reconceptualising
sex, brain and psychopathology: interaction,
interaction, interaction. British Journal of
Pharmacology. (3) Joel (2011) Male or female? Brains
are intersex Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience (4)
paper cited in the Tedx talk: Shors et al (2001) Sex
differences and opposite effects of stress on dendritic
spine density in male versus female hippocampus (5)
Lise Eliot. The trouble with sex differences. Neuron.
(2011) 58
Take home points:
Why would the sexes be more similar than they
are different?
• 1) Evolutionary theory predicts relatively few sex
differences –both males and females needed similar traits
to survive!
• 2) Sexual Selection Theory/ Parental Investment Theory
predicts relative, not absolute differences btw the sexes
• 3) If men are/have been active care-givers in our species’
evolutionary history; then it suggests both men and
women have high levels of parental investment;
“smoothing” out/ reducing even further any differences
between the sexes
59
• 4) Multi-morphic brain rather than male brains vs female
brains
To help steer your reading of :The
Fashioning of Women In GCCP
• This chapter is a case study of task
assignment in a prehistoric society

• Some hints on reading this chapter

• The chapter starts with an

interpretation of what life may have
been like at Dolni Vestonice I (Czech
Republic) 26,000 years ago (p. 68-71)
and more generally in Europe during
the Upper Paleolithic (Ice Ages)
• One of the first archaeological finds
discovered at Dolni Vestonice I: the
“Vestonice Venus” figurine – the
interpretation of what life may have
been like (p. 68-71) is centred around
this find 60
• The authors ask: “What’s Right About
that Picture?” (p. 71)
Vestonice Venus
 To read about: 3 main topics covered in this
chapter
• 1. Venus Figurines P. 76 – 80
• Discovery of different forms of clothing or cloth decoration on
female figurines (e.g. woven hat, not hair in the figures below)
• Female figurines, not male figurines, wear apparel (p. 79)
• Not everyday wear—signs of status? (p. 79-80)
• Who do the authors suggest likely carved/created the Venuses?
(p. 69, 71 & 80)

Picture of
From Soffer et al. Current Anthropology 2000
the Venus
of
Willendorf
discussed
61
on p. 76
To read about: 3 main topics covered in this
chapter
• 2. This finding of apparel on the figurines is
important because it suggests the String
Revolution was already underway in the Ice Ages
(p. 72-75)
• What is the String Revolution?
• Why was it important?
• Implications of the knowledge of weaving/
cordage/ knots for net hunting? (p. 75-76)
• Social implications of net hunting? (p. 75-76)
62
To read about: 3 main topics covered in this
chapter
• 3. Putting all of this together (plus some other
pieces of information presented on pages 72-73)
= Critique of the image of Man the Hunter in
the Upper Palolithic/ Ice Ages (top p. 73)

63