ÜDS-2010-Spring-16

ÖSYM • osym
March 21, 2010 1 min

The Agta Negritos of the Philippines, a present-day tribal people, are an example of a culture whose women and men share all subsistence activities. Most interestingly, the Agta Negritos women hunt large game with bows, arrows, and hunting dogs. The women are prevented from hunting only during late pregnancy and the first few months after giving birth. Teenagers and women with older children are the most frequent hunters. The women space their children to allow for maximum mobility. They keep their birth rate down through the use of herbal contraceptives. By studying these ethnographic examples and by questioning the assumptions that have been made about female and male roles in prehistory, anthropologists have concluded that Western society’s traditionally low view of women’s status is by no means universal.


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