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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 168 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 168, October 1993.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Women in Prehistory
Margaret Ehrenberg
British Museum Publications £9.95
It looks quite promising when the blurb on the back states that a central theme of this book is ‘the relationship between the role of women and economic production’. And, indeed, this book largely lives up to that promise.
Ehrenberg puts forward three main arguments. Firstly, the part played by women in prehistory (that is, before the advent of written records) was much greater than mainstream archaeology has usually acknowledged. Secondly, for most of the time that human beings have existed, until only a few thousand years ago, there was almost certainly equality between women and men. As Ehrenberg herself puts it: ‘So, throughout human history, the great majority of women who have ever lived had far more status than recently, and probably had equality with men.’ Thirdly, women’s status in any society depends largely on their economic role. The more important and independent their economic role, the higher their status.
For most of prehistory, humans lived by gathering plants and hunting wild animals. Because women would often be breast feeding young children or pregnant, it would be difficult for them to hunt large animals. Therefore it seems that in most hunter-gatherer societies, women tended to do the gathering and men the hunting. But this did not mean inequality for women, because their gathering would usually provide more than half of the food consumed. Their important economic role was a basis for their equality with men, in societies which were generally egalitarian.
The development of agriculture (the domestication of plants and animals) about 10,000 years ago brought about tremendous social changes. But in the early stages of agriculture women continued to have high status. Women probably developed cultivation out of their gathering role, and they would have done the early cultivating themselves using the ‘horticultural’ technology of hoes and digging sticks, while men carried on hunting.
When hoes were replaced by large ploughs pulled by oxen, when people began to keep large herds of animals, often some distance from the home base, and when raiding became common, men began to take over the dominant economic role.
These economic changes not only led to women losing out, they also paved the way for the development of class divisions. Agriculture created a surplus which enabled a ruling class to live in luxury on the backs of the majority.
Ehrenberg tends to talk vaguely about inequality and stratification rather than class and exploitation. She also fails to discuss the extent to which war and trade might have contributed to men becoming dominant. But despite its weaknesses, this book is full of ammunition for Marxists.
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