Group Structure and Female Cooperative Networks in Australia’s Western Desert

@article{Scelza2008GroupSA,
  title={Group Structure and Female Cooperative Networks in Australia’s Western Desert},
  author={Brooke A. Scelza and Rebecca Bliege Bird},
  journal={Human Nature},
  year={2008},
  volume={19},
  pages={231-248}
}
The division of labor has typically been portrayed as a complementary strategy in which men and women work on separate tasks to achieve a common goal of provisioning the family. In this paper, we propose that task specialization between female kin might also play an important role in women’s social and economic strategies. We use historic group composition data from a population of Western Desert Martu Aborigines to show how women maintained access to same-sex kin over the lifespan. Our results… 
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