On the Origin of the Division of Labor Between Sexes.

What is the origin of the division of labor between the sexes? The division between the domestic (for women) and the non-domestic (for men). I would argue it stems from child rearing. In the natural world there tends to be two ways mammals are conceived and born: The pregnancy is either long and the child is born able to be somewhat self sufficient or the pregnancy is short but the child is useless when born. Humans fall in the latter. A newborn, if not constantly taken care of, will die within a day. They need constant care, to be fed and monitored. Human children tie someone down, because so much energy is required there is little left over for activity elsewhere. Another consideration for humans as opposed to the other great apes is that human babies are not able to cling naturally to their parents. If a mother wants to take their child somewhere, they have to be the one holding them. This means that humans need a domestic space where mothers and children can stay. So why are women in the domestic sphere and not men? Put bluntly, because a newborn needs their mother, they do not need their father. Mother’s are the ones that provide milk which is essential to a newborns development. If the mother were to die, the child would die soon assuming no other lactating mother is available. If the mother dies and there is another woman able to take care of the child, that puts extra strain on a person already pushed to exhaustion. But there is still work to be done outside of the home base. Food must be hunted and resources are to be gathered, this is necessarily dangerous work and as such it is the domain of the parent whose life or death does not significantly impact the physical development of the child.

Assuming this is the origin of the division of labor between sexes, then we can understand that this division is not some eternal state of human nature, but rather is the result of the conditions of the prehistorical age.