Hunters, Gatherers, and Women Warriors

At Cassandra Capital, we believe that women have earned the right to be called warriors. They have played a vital role in world wars, from being enlisted in active duty, operating as spies, or even non-military women taking up arms against militias.

These might be unique examples, and are directly related to conflicts, but women engage in “warfare” every day. On an almost daily basis, women show courage in meeting and overcoming the obstacles that serve as barriers to their progress and advancement – both personally and professionally.

Why is this so? Because we continue to work in a legacy leadership model that favors the dominant gender – men? Because we all take for granted that existing standards and cohesion are perfect, with no room for improvement? Because when the narratives of our culture are only told by one group (men), we’re only exposed to that line of thinking?

In any context, measuring everyone against one set of established criteria leads to a homogeneous skill-set and cultivation of one type of leader. So…

When the Best Man for the Job is a Woman?

This past week I had the pleasant surprise of stumbling across a few articles exploring the “hunter vs. gatherer” narrative. So, here’s three insights on “women as warriors” that I explored this week:

1. ​Men are Hunter. Women are Gatherers. That was the assumption… A new study upends it. by NPR “… Specifically, the new research upends one of the key strands of evidence that scientists have relied on to infer what life was probably like during the period that started roughly 200,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens first emerged as a species…. “No one,” says Kelly, had done a systematic “tally” of what the observational reports said about women hunting.”
2. ​Early Women were Hunters. Not just Gatherers, study suggests. by Smithsonian Magazine “… Regardless of maternal status, women hunted in almost 80 percent of recent and present-day foraging societies in a new study…. Their analysis revealed that regardless of maternal status, women hunted in 50 of these societies—or about 79 percent. And more than 70 percent of female hunting appeared to be intentional—rather than opportunistically killing animals while doing other activities, per the study. In societies where hunting was the most important activity for subsistence, women participated in hunting 100 percent of the time.”
3. ​The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts by Plos One Journal “… Evidence from the past one hundred years supports archaeological finds from the Holocene that women from a broad range of cultures intentionally hunt for subsistence. These results aim to shift the male-hunter female-gatherer paradigm to account for the significant role females have in hunting, thus dramatically shifting stereotypes of labor, as well as mobility.”

So, what do these insights mean for women’s investing mentality?

According to an investing profile test by Moneymax: HUNTERS are highly educated, above-average income earners, mostly women. This group tends to be impulsive in spending and investment decisions, trusting to luck.

But, I’m curious what YOU think… As always, wendi@cassandracapital.co​