Description
This essay discusses the role of women in human evolution and the various theories that have been put forward to explain gender differences. The authors argue that women have been underrepresented in human prehistory and that this has had a significant impact on the way that human evolution is studied. They suggest that women should be given a more central role in the field and that more work needs to be done to redress the imbalance.
Women in Human Evolution challenges the traditional invisibility of women in human prehistory, rejecting the conventional relegation of women to the realm of reproduction in order to ask what
else our female ancestors were doing.Raising key questions about both the existing archaeological evidence and the theoretical models which influence its interpretation, the contributors discuss the evolutionary models used to explain gender differences. They suggest reinterpretations of existing evidence to construct a model of human evolution which places women in a more central role. Shifting their focus to the nature of the discipline itself, they ask what impact women paleoanthropologists have had on the field's theoretical assumptions and what work remains to be done.
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