Teacher get's death threats and racist hate mail for banning God Bless America.

[Kralizec]

How do you know Hunter-gathere societies were "egalitarian" - they left no written records and the only reports come from Western observers.

That being said - what reports we have indicate a basic division, men hunt and women gather. This would generally extend to "men go to war (because it's like hunting)" and "women stay home".

It's a tiny step from that to reaching a position where only men are involved in decisions about when to hunt or fight and then you have your basic Patriarchy.

As I said, in era where families were more self sufficient the "economics" engaged in by women were home-based, brewing, weaving... etc.

It's simple - women get pregnant, and it takes nine months for women to procreate, ergo women cannot do physically strenuous jobs or travel long distances while "procreating", men can. Gender roles are based on this simple truth, they have not "developed", i.e. fundamentally changed, in most societies all that has happened is that they have adapted to different economic models.

This happens even today - men go back to work much sooner after the baby is born (in general) whilst women stay home to take care of it, whether they can go back to work later depends on whether they can afford childcare (economics) much more than personal preference. Those who can afford childcare are no different from medieval ladies who hired wetnurses and nanies.

Which just proves that, really, we are all stinking rich in the modern West.

About the hunter-gatherers, I read about it a long time ago but I forgot where. It makes sense though, the returns on hunting and gathering varies with the seasons and you can't adhere to a strict sexual division in labor for something as essential as food supply. The only exception being that the riskier hunting jobs are left to the men, since a tribe's ability to sustain its population depends more on women than men. But let's leave this to the anthropologists.

Wetnurses and nannies are full blown surrogate mothers, taking care of a small number of kids or even one. Childcare is much less than that, and cheaper by any standard. For some societies, Saudi Arabia comes to mind in particular, childcare would be financially viable for the bulk of the population and would enable a lot of women to work. But cultural taboos prevent this.