For a hunter gatherer society that is pretty much true, well except the stupid and irrational part. Even a small man is usually stronger then most women.
Also for a society, the most expendable members are young men (18-45). Women bear children, the elderly can be used in childcare and have vital knowledge and skills.
Women could be targets, but were not allowed to learn how to defend ourselves.
How does that protect anybody is beyond me.
Sorry, what? For most of history, no one, women or man who was untrained could have a hope of defending themselves on the battlefield. Which is why the trains and wagons were kept back.
As for not using women as fighters; well now, 100 men plus 20 women is not superior to 100 men, it just simply has a large weak component which will break easily and lead to a rout.
Women did particpate in battle through out, in sieges, the whole population did.
Interestingly, the ancient Eurasian nomadic peoples known as the Scythians had warrior women. They are believed to be the source of the Greek “Amazon” legends. Archaeologists have apparently uncovered numerous graves of these female warriors.
Should? In modern first-world countries? No.
Will they? Yes.
“Protect the women” is a deeply ingrained evolution-driven instinct. We are the descendants of the hominids who successfully protected their women. Those who didn’t, didn’t survive. The archeological record is littered with them. Now that we’re 7 billion strong, arguably that it isn’t necessary anymore. But unconscious instincts don’t disappear overnight. It’ll be with us indefinitely.
There are a lot of unsubstantiated assumptions and cultural prejudices masquerading as facts here. Simply, we really do not know a lot about the cultural and practices early humans; we can make inferences based on the information we do have, but they will also be colored by our current values and prejudices.
So, while it makes sense to us now that probably fertile women would have been more highly valued, I don’t know of any archeological evidence that this is the case. (I am also not aware of any that women were swanning about picking berries with their underdeveloped musculature while men were building biceps hunting bison, but I am open to it.)
According to what I learned in my introductory Anthro class, it’s herding and farming cultures (not gather-hunting) that tend to be the most patriarchal, with strictly separated gender roles. In these societies, people try to have as many babies as possible, which requires women to be treated as baby factories.
In gather-hunting cultures, a very high birth rate is not desirable, because it’s hard to find enough food to feed children. Women practice extended breastfeeding, which suppresses fertility, and unwanted babies will often be left out in the wilderness to die. These societies do not have a particularly strong separation of gender roles.
I read something similar. However, I have also read opposition to these thesis. As they don’t explain all agricultural societies. And, that Anthropologists have put their own interpretation on gender roles and Patriachy.
That’s interesting, and makes sense, and actually would make fertile women more valuable, since they would tend to have even fewer children.
AK’s point that anthropologists cannot avoid observing through the lens of their own culture is still valid, of course.
My point, though, is and always has been that we really don’t know what early humans did, because we weren’t there.
This feels like one of those arguments where no evidence would lead you to the opposite conclusion. If they have a ton of children, they are more valuable because they need to have a ton of children, so you can’t risk them. Now, with this theory that they had few children, they are more valuable because they have so few, so you can’t risk them.
And even when you can think of a sort of animal husbandry take on the value of women, the OP’s question is not about whether you can make an argument for greater quantities of women being necessary for the survival of the species, but rather “Is or should men’s deaths/injuries be considered less tragic than women’s deaths/injuries?”
We are socialized that women are passive and helpless, that they are more akin to children than to male adults. Of course a death is more tragic if you make believe that the victim is helpless and innocent.
In 1840 in the Americas a white person’s death was “more tragic” than a black person’s death to the greater society. You don’t need to trot out any just-so stories about how we needed more white people for biological reasons to make that make sense. All you have to do is think about how people are socialized.
Because, of course, men are naturally funnier than women. It comes from our expendableness, which self-aware male humans realize when they think about it (exceptions include Donald Trump), coupled with higher primates love of slapstick humor. Other intelligent mammals like it, too, but apes really like it. And porn.
While I agree that female casualties are treated as more tragic on a community level, I don’t think this is the case at all when we drill down on a family or individual level. In my experience, the deaths of sons, brothers, and fathers causes as much grief as deceased daughters, sisters, and mothers.
This makes me think that cultural bias has more to do with this than some biological imperative. My theory is that patriarchal societies depend on a large suppy of men who define their worth based on how macho, badass, brave, and fearless they are, i.e., not afraid of being hurt and dying. These men are needed as soldiers who will leave home to fight the wars started by the rich and powerful men. There is no better way to motivate the soldiers than appeal to chivalrous ideas of protecting women and children. This appeal only supplements the machismo that encourages men to put themselves in harm’s way to reinforce their masculine ego.
If we started treating the deaths of male soldiers as horrible tragedies, then the macho programming gets fucked up. Who then will be willing to fight the wars that the leaders need to stay in power? If we stopped hyping the tragedy of dead female citizens, then soldiers may stop seeing dead women as the stimulus that keeps them motivated to fight back.
Very good point. And I think that plays into my thoughts about the helplessness/innocence trope. A woman you know is a real person. A man you know is a real person. A woman or a man you don’t know is an often silly stereotype.
Incorrect.
While there is a difference in physical strength potential between human men and women it is nowhere near as great a distinction as that between humans and chimpanzees. There are, indeed, women who are stronger than weak men.
And not a small number, either.
These don’t seem like very well-thought-out or well-supported objections. You seem to be imagining scenarios with standard all-male-warfare environments which suddenly have a handful of raw female recruits thrown into the mix. That doesn’t sound like a plausible way for a mixed-gender fighting force to evolve. Nor would women, as I already noted, be competing with men for fixed number of vacancies in a standard battalion or whatever.
Rather, I suspect groups of female soldiers would have been deployed much as groups of child soldiers are in many conflicts nowadays: not necessarily standing shoulder-to-ribcage with adult males in hand-to-hand combat with adult male enemy troops, but in various kinds of auxiliary combat roles. (And I think you’re too ready to dismiss the military advantage they could provide; the very scanty evidence we have about the rare female troops that did exist in pre-modern warfare, such as the female warriors of Dahomey, suggests that they were not known for being particularly “breakable”.)