Who Farms, Who Processes? Men or Women?
In my earlier post I suggested that traditionally farming was men’s work and post-harvest processing women’s work.
That may be the general pattern. There are lots of exceptions though. Women do a whole lot of farming, including the staples in many societies. Men do a lot of post-harvest processing, threshing of grains, for example. In Hawaii men traditionally cooked the sacred staple, taro. Preparing was forbidden to women, though in fact they apparently did so when there were no men about.
In Mexico, though, although women helped farm, men did not grind. Absolutely not. The women who taught me to grind progressed from amazement to nervous titters to outright hilarity when men friends of mine tried their hand at it.
