Week 11 — Who Does Which Job? Gender, Generation, and Who Moves

Assignment 10 of the term — work four short problems from the market's family stall and the kinship set, read them as an anthropologist, and explain gender and the division of labor to someone who has them mixed up.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into a clear, evidence-based report. You remain the author. The coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Ethnography Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together. It builds on Week 9's kinship set and its lesson that matrilineal is not matriarchal, on Week 10's residence rules, and on Week 2's idea that culture is learned, shared but never uniform, and changing.

The task

The running fieldwork site is an illustrative, unnamed weekly neighborhood farmers' market of 24 stalls. The kinship set is a three-generation diagram centred on ego, constructed for this course and describing no real family. Kin-type strings read outward from ego, so FZH is father's sister's husband. From the market and the set:

• at the family-run stall, the founding grower, a woman in her seventies, directs the stall; her son drives the truck and restocks, his wife runs the card reader, and her daughter keeps the books; her granddaughter, the son's daughter, a teenager, restocks and weighs produce, and her grandson, the daughter's son, a college student, handles online orders;
• the founding grower's late husband and the daughter's husband do no stall work;
• field-note entry 6, 8:50 a.m., records an older woman directing a man and a teenager who restock the bins while a younger woman runs the card reader;
• in the parents' generation of the kinship set, ego's father F, his brother FB and sister FZ, and ego's mother M, her brother MB and sister MZ, are each married (FBW, FZH, MBW, MZH, and F and M to each other), so the generation holds 10 positions.

A friend sees your notes and says, "Men's and women's jobs are set by biology, and the man-the-hunter model proves it for every society." Your job is to answer the way an anthropologist would, starting from a few plain numbers.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. At the running fieldwork site, an illustrative farmers' market, the family-run stall has 1 working role in the first generation, 3 in the second generation, and 2 in the third generation. How many working roles does the stall have?
2. The illustrative family-run stall's family has 8 roles across three generations, and 2 of them, the founding grower's late husband and the daughter's husband, do no stall work. How many of the family's roles do stall work?
3. At the illustrative family-run stall, 3 of the 6 working roles sit in the second generation. What percent of the working roles sit in the second generation?
4. In the illustrative kinship set, the parents' generation holds 10 positions, and every position belongs to a married couple of 2 people. Under patrilocal residence the wife moves in every couple. How many women move?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: describe the six working roles by role and by generation, never by name, and explain why counting who does each job is an observation while any rule about why is an interpretation the field notes cannot yet settle.
• Problem 2: count the working roles by gender, 4 women and 2 men, naming each role, and explain why that uneven split does not by itself prove a gender rule, using the restocking job and the fact that one family is one case.
• Problem 3: read generation as a second way the stall divides its work, naming who directs and what the middle generation runs, and keep sex and gender apart by calling the split a gender arrangement the family organizes, not something set by the body.
• Problem 4: state who moves under patrilocal and under matrilocal residence, and explain with the Haudenosaunee or the Trobriand case why matrilineal descent is not rule by women.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your friend thinks men's and women's jobs are set by biology and that the man-the-hunter model proves it for every society. Write a 3–5 sentence message that keeps sex (the body's traits) apart from gender (the roles a culture builds around sex); explains that the classic foraging model has many documented exceptions and that how often women hunted is still debated, with no verdict; and names one limit, such as that the stall is one illustrative family. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a teammate who says that "the newest player always carries the team's equipment because that is how teams work." Model answer: "That is a custom our team learned, not a law of nature. Other teams rotate the job, or give it to whoever lives closest to the field, and our own team could change the rule at the next meeting. Calling it a custom means people taught it and people can rewrite it. One caveat: one team's habit does not tell you how every team handles its gear."

Use that pattern for your friend, with your own wording and evidence.

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft all four answers, the four brief interpretations, and your message to the friend before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Show calculations when asked. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one calculation or explanation, even if your first attempt was correct.
4. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met.
5. Save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your reasoning rather than write the work for you.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful learning coach for an introductory cultural anthropology course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about sex, gender, and sexuality: the three ideas kept apart, gender roles as culturally organized, the gendered division of labor, the man-the-hunter model as a model with many documented exceptions, the debate over how often women hunted, matrilineal descent as distinct from rule by women, and who moves at marriage, with every person described by role, never by name. Do not write my assignment for me, do not invent work I did not show, never invent a statistic, a date, a study, a quotation, or a custom of any real people, never give a verdict or a figure in the debate over women's hunting, never argue a policy question about gender, and never call any people or any gender arrangement "primitive", simpler, earlier, or more advanced.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these four problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. The data: the running fieldwork site is an illustrative, unnamed weekly neighborhood farmers' market of 24 stalls. At its family-run stall, the founding grower directs the stall; her son drives the truck and restocks, his wife runs the card reader, and her daughter keeps the books; her granddaughter, the son's daughter, a teenager, restocks and weighs produce, and her grandson, the daughter's son, a college student, handles online orders. The founding grower's late husband and the daughter's husband do no stall work. Field-note entry 6, 8:50 a.m., records an older woman directing a man and a teenager who restock the bins while a younger woman runs the card reader. The kinship set is a three-generation diagram centred on ego, constructed for this course and describing no real family; in the parents' generation, ego's father F, his brother FB and sister FZ, and ego's mother M, her brother MB and sister MZ, are each married (FBW, FZH, MBW, MZH, and F and M to each other). Course terms: sex is biological traits such as chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy; gender is the roles, behaviors, and identities a culture organizes around sex; sexuality is patterns of attraction and the cultural rules around them; gender roles are the tasks, behaviors, and expectations a culture assigns by gender, learned and changing; the gendered division of labor is the way a society assigns tasks by gender; the man-the-hunter model holds that big-game hunting was done mainly by men and gathering mainly by women, a model with many documented exceptions; patrilocal residence is near the husband's father's kin and matrilocal near the wife's mother's kin; the Haudenosaunee are a documented matrilineal case in which clan membership passed through women and clan mothers held recognized roles, and in the 1910s a Trobriand man's heir was his sister's son; matrilineal is not matriarchal.
PROBLEM P1: At the running fieldwork site, an illustrative farmers' market, the family-run stall has 1 working role in the first generation, 3 in the second generation, and 2 in the third generation. How many working roles does the stall have?
PROBLEM P2: The illustrative family-run stall's family has 8 roles across three generations, and 2 of them, the founding grower's late husband and the daughter's husband, do no stall work. How many of the family's roles do stall work?
PROBLEM P3: At the illustrative family-run stall, 3 of the 6 working roles sit in the second generation. What percent of the working roles sit in the second generation?
PROBLEM P4: In the illustrative kinship set, the parents' generation holds 10 positions, and every position belongs to a married couple of 2 people. Under patrilocal residence the wife moves in every couple. How many women move?
After the four answers, I must briefly interpret each one: for P1, describe the six working roles by role and by generation, never by name, and explain why counting who does each job is an observation while any rule about why is an interpretation the field notes cannot yet settle; for P2, count the working roles by gender, 4 women and 2 men, naming each role, and explain why that uneven split does not by itself prove a gender rule, using the restocking job and the fact that one family is one case; for P3, read generation as a second way the stall divides its work, naming who directs and what the middle generation runs, and keep sex and gender apart by calling the split a gender arrangement the family organizes, not something set by the body; for P4, state who moves under patrilocal and under matrilocal residence, and explain with the Haudenosaunee or the Trobriand case why matrilineal descent is not rule by women. I must then write a 3-5 sentence message to a friend who thinks men's and women's jobs are set by biology and that the man-the-hunter model proves it for every society, keeping sex and gender apart, explaining the classic model as a model with many documented exceptions and the debate over how often women hunted as open, and naming one limit. I must explain technical terms in everyday words.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply: correct computations (40 points), anthropological reasoning (32 points), clarity for a non-expert reader (16 points), and showing work so it can be checked (12 points). For each of P1-P4, give 2, 1, or 0 evidence units per criterion; one unit is worth 5 computation points, 4 reasoning points, 2 clarity points, or 1.5 showing-work points. Sum all four problems within each criterion. Count my message to the friend only with P4, not again with P1-P3.
COMPUTATION UNITS: A correct working-role count, stall-work count, second-generation share, or count of women who move = 2; the right numbers and operation with only an arithmetic slip = 1; a missing figure or the wrong numbers or operation = 0. Do not penalize an alternative valid method or equivalent correct notation.
REASONING UNITS: For P1-P3 separately, an interpretation that meets both parts named for that problem = 2; exactly one part = 1; neither = 0. For P4, BOTH who moves under each residence rule with matrilineal descent explained as not rule by women through a documented case AND a message to the friend that keeps sex and gender apart, treats the classic model as a model with exceptions and the hunting debate as open, and names a limit = 2. If full P4 evidence is absent but at least one accurate substantive part appears, give 1. No accurate reasoning = 0; naming a term alone does not earn a unit, and sex and gender used as synonyms, matrilineal read as matriarchal, the classic model read as every foraging society, a verdict given in the hunting debate, or a person named instead of described by role is not accurate. An arithmetic slip alone is not a reasoning error.
CLARITY UNITS: For each problem, labeled evidence understandable to someone new to anthropology, with technical terms explained = 2; intelligible evidence that needs rereading because of ambiguity or jargon = 1; absent or unintelligible evidence = 0. Include the message to the friend with P4 if submitted. Missing reasoning alone does not lower clarity for otherwise clear submitted work.
SHOWING-WORK UNITS: For each problem, checkable counts, percentages, and steps = 2; a relevant but incomplete number or step = 1; a bare final number or no method = 0. A visible method stays checkable despite an arithmetic slip.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my reply. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. Probe an unsupported claim and ask me to examine its evidence. Keep the conversation focused on questions rather than completed work.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word reply is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied all four answers and their brief interpretations AND written my message to the friend AND revised at least one calculation or explanation AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score; it may end in .5 and must not be rounded to a whole number. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my calculations and reasoning]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work with all four answers, their brief interpretations, and your message to the friend — written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript, or as a labelled chart of the stall's roles described in words with a short explanation; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 11 skills — keeping sex, gender, and sexuality apart, reading the stall's division of labor by gender and by generation, treating the classic foraging model as a model with exceptions, applying the residence rules to who moves at marriage, and keeping matrilineal descent apart from rule by women — for comparable time and effort, about 60 to 90 minutes, the same as the coached route. Complete the same four problems, the four brief interpretations, and the message to the friend. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion, and write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that names one calculation or explanation you changed, the evidence that prompted the change, and one question you still have about gender, work, or who moves at marriage. Submit the revised work, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The calculations, reasoning, revision, and final report must be your own. Do not ask the chatbot to create the assignment or add evidence you did not produce, and do not let it use sex and gender as synonyms, read the stall's jobs as a gender rule, call a matrilineal people matriarchal, settle the debate over women's hunting with a verdict or an invented figure, or invent a custom for any real people. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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