Women invented the division of labor. And we wonder why the division of labor is so often skewed against us. Let's go back a few thousand (or hundred thousand) years ago and see what happened.

I learned in my college anthropology course that in pre-agricultural societies there was a clear division of labor between men and women. Men hunted and women gathered. Today, in a paper just published in "Current Anthropology" Steve Kuhn and Mary Stiner of the University of Arizona, proposed that this division of labor happened early in the species history, and that it is what enabled modern humans to expand their population at the expense of Neanderthals.

It appears that Neanderthals developed little or no specialisation skills and no division of labor. This means that they weren't able to capitalise on converting the skins of the big game they hunted into making clothing for themselves. It means that they did not hunt and eat small game, nor did they collect nuts and grains. According to Kuhn and Stiner, signs of the division of labor come only with the arrival of modern humans into Europe 40,000 years ago. It is commonly understood that the men were stronger and faster -- thus the hunters. Women were occupied with child rearing.

If it were the division of labor that gave humans the evolutionary edge over Neanderthals and it was women who multi tasked between gathering plants, hunting small game and making clothing and shelter during the colder times of the year which is clearly specialisation--- it isn't much of a leap to concur with Kuhn and Stiner to "assign to women the main role in establishing the antecedents of modern economics, and thus launching the process of growth that continues to this day."