Plowing is recognized across many rural societies as a gendered activity, with men controlling the plow .  Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn (2013) have suggested that there exists a strong correlation between the suitability of soils and climate for the plow and the likelihood that a social group from that region, centuries later, will be less favorable to women across a range of rights and responsibilities.  They follow Boserup in arguing that the technology of the plow favored persons with upper body strength: the plowman must bear down on the plow as the oxen pull it through the soil.  Because the plow had such enormous potential to raise productivity (oxen and plowman could do in one day what previously might have taken weeks), men reaped disproportionate rewards following its introduction.  These rewards were, the argument goes, not shared with women, but rather used to cement structures and norms of male dominance.

I noted recently that Michael Pollan has a new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.  The blurb: “The premise of this book is that cooking — defined broadly enough to take in the whole spectrum of techniques  people have devised for transforming the raw stuff of nature into nutritious and appealing things for us to eat and rink — is one of the most interesting and worthwhile things we do.”  So… since women are masters of cooking like men are masters of plowing, are gender rights better in places where cooking would yield relatively high returns?