At dinner tables and parties, conversations about gender often circle back to some version of the same refrain: men and women are just “naturally better” at different things—just look at hunter-gatherers. But a recent study revealing that women were hunters upended this narrative, seemingly rewriting history. Or did it? By diving deeper into this revelation, we begin to uncover a more complicated reality that eventually leads to a bigger question: why do we look to hunter-gatherers to understand how we should live today?
Aru Nair (she/they) is a coterminal master's student on the journalism track from Laramie, Wyoming. She spent her undergraduate degree studying Human Biology and Comparative Literature in concentrations that center on understanding humans and how we interact with both each other and the world around us. Aru is also a producer at the Stanford Storytelling Project and loves working alongside other students to create audio stories about culture and identity for the podcast State of the Human. Storytelling in all its forms (audio, video, writing) is one of their biggest passions because of its incredible power to bring people together. In her free time, Aru loves watching live music, hiking and playing board games.
