Entailment theory and method: A cross-cultural analysis of the sexual division of labor

The purpose of this paper is to explore a more precise form for theoretical propositions in certain types of cross-cultural problems and to develop and explicate an accompanying statistical method. An inductive application of the method for entailment analysis has led us to formulate a new and powerful theory of the sexual division of labor. [Accepted for publication: June 1976.) Division of labor has long occupied a prominent place in sociology and anthropology as the foundation of the processes of economic specialization and exchange in human society. In a recent study, Murdock and Provost (1973a: 203) refer to the sexual division of labor as the "most fundamental basis of marriage and the family and hence the ultimate source of all forms of kinship organization. " Other recent theorists (e.g. Sanday 1973) have emphasized the importance of sexual division of labor to the status of women. In developing the present model of sexual division of labor, we have tried to veer from the shoals of extreme functionalist assumptions, which, when linked to sex differences, have led to the conclusion that men and women universall