Week 11 Discussion — Who Does the Work, and Who Decided? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

Think about a job in your own family, team, or workplace that always seems to land on the same kind of person, and ask whether biology or a group's habits put it there. This week you met sex, gender, and sexuality as three separate ideas, gender roles as culturally organized, the gendered division of labor and the debate over who hunted, documented gender diversity in communities' own terms, Mead's 1935 study and its critics, and the question of who moves at marriage.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: How often women hunted in foraging societies is debated. One side holds that many recorded foraging societies did divide labor with big-game hunting done mainly by men and gathering mainly by women, so the classic model sums up a real, widely recorded pattern. The other side points to the many documented exceptions and to reflexivity: an observer's own position, including gender, shapes what they record, so older accounts may have missed women's hunting. Which side's case do you find stronger at this point, and why? Use the gendered division of labor, the man-the-hunter model as a model, and reflexivity, state the other side at its strongest, and say what kind of evidence would change your view.

Option B: At the running fieldwork site, an illustrative weekly farmers' market of 24 stalls, the family-run stall has 6 working roles: the founding grower directs, her son drives the truck and restocks, his wife runs the card reader, her daughter keeps the books, her granddaughter restocks and weighs produce, and her grandson handles online orders. Some would say the stall divides its work mainly by gender, because 4 of the 6 working roles are held by women. Others would say it divides its work mainly by generation, because the oldest member directs, the middle generation runs the business, and restocking crosses the gender line. Which reading do you find more convincing, and why? Use the gendered division of labor and keep sex and gender apart, describe the family by roles, not names, and say what you would need to observe or ask, with consent, to settle it.

There is no single right answer. Both questions are open, because how work is divided, and how much a record can show, depend on the evidence you weigh. Pick the option you actually care about, and tell us your reasoning.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Working on your own: this version of the discussion is written entirely from your own reasoning, in your own words.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say which side of the debate over women's hunting has the stronger case so far, treating the classic model as a model; for Option B, say whether the family-run stall divides its work mainly by gender or mainly by generation, describing the family by roles.
• Keep sex and gender apart, and use the gendered division of labor and reflexivity correctly.
• Give your judgment, with a reason, and give the other reading its strongest case.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: point out where a classmate treated the classic model as a rule for every society or one family's jobs as a rule, offer the strongest case for the reading they did not take, or name the evidence that would settle their case. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option B. At the stall, 4 of the 6 working roles are held by women, so a gender pattern looks plausible at first. But the founding grower directs, the middle generation runs the truck, the card reader, and the books, and restocking is shared by the son and the granddaughter, a man and a teenage girl. So I read the stall as divided at least as much by generation as by gender. The other side is fair to say that 4 women and 2 men is still an uneven split. I would want to ask the family, with consent, why the grandson took the online orders before I called it a rule.

Notice how it names people by their roles, uses the week's terms precisely, gives the other reading its due, and says what it would still check. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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