It is a common misperception that people in "traditional" cultures don't
have to have much brain power to live their lives.  In fact, it takes just
as much, if not more, brainpower and wits to do the sorts of work that women
do in Mali as it does to do the typical housework of an American housewife.

And we have been talking about the fogginess of the first several days after
birth, not once the US woman goes back to work at 6 weeks postpartum as a
physicist or stockbroker or college professor.  Granted, that may take a
sharper mind than doing the laundry, doing the dishes, learning how to
breastfeed and diaper and comfort a baby.

Women in traditional cultures are often experts in topics such as the
weather, soil conditions, agriculture for a wide variety of crops, animal
husbandry for a wide variety of animals, sicknesses and healing for both
humans and animals, where to find safe water, how to avoid poisonous snakes,
etc.  The typical Malian woman knows far more, detailed, information about
illnesses and healing, and many other topics, than the typical American woman.

Kathy Dettwyler

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