Woman the Hunter: Why the Theory That Men Hunt and Women Gather Is Wrong

Join The Cornell Club New York & the Notre Dame Club of New York as we host Notre Dame Anthropology Professor Dr. Cara Ocobock to present on the topic of "Woman the Hunter," which made the cover of Scientific American in November 2023. 

Even if you're not an anthropologist, you've probably encountered one of this field's most influential notions, known as Man the Hunter. The theory proposes that hunting was a major driver of human evolution and that men carried this activity out to the exclusion of women. It holds that human ancestors had a division of labor, rooted in biological differences between males and females, in which males evolved to hunt and provide and females tended to children and domestic duties. It assumes that males are physically superior to females and that pregnancy and child-rearing reduce or eliminate a female's ability to hunt. Man the Hunter has dominated the study of human evolution for nearly half a century and pervaded popular culture. It is represented in museum dioramas and textbook figures, Saturday morning cartoons and feature films. The thing is, it's wrong.

Dr. Ocobock is the Director of the Human Energetics Laboratory at Notre Dame. Her research program integrates human biology and anthropology, with a focus on the interaction between anatomy, physiology, evolution, and the environment. She explores the physiological and behavioral mechanisms necessary to cope with and adapt to extreme climate and physical activity. Ocobock's research is at the intersection of metabolic physiology, evolution, culture, and behavior. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Human Biology, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Anthropologist, Science Advances, and Anthropology News. More information here: https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/cara-ocobock/