Paper short abstract:

Laughter and rough bodily provocation during maitoko initiation is crucial for Hadza women and girls in asserting gender egalitarianism. As girls 'hunt' men over several days of sport, they re-present an earlier 'matriarchal' moral order.

Paper long abstract:

Among about 1000 Hadza speakers in northern Tanzania, perhaps one to two hundred still maintain a hunting and gathering lifestyle in bush camps. Hadza women are known among neighbouring groups for their robust and vocal resistance to attempts at male domination. Woodburn (2005) has highlighted ritual as a pathway for incipient hierarchy in immediate-return egalitarian societies, with attention to Hadza epeme, under the control of men. Yet he acknowledges that men gain no effective day-to-day control over women by these means. Men's ritual claims over epeme are countered in vivid, hilarious and dramatic performance during the female initiation maitoko. Over several days of sport, women and girls reverse gender relations by 'hunting' the hunters. The girls of maitoko bleed, run, hunt, hit, fight, dance and sing together to reclaim time and space from the men and youths. The mood of laughter and rough playfighting - mimicked by small girls' and boys' playfights - is underpinned by serious intent. The younger reproductive generation emerges militant - an armed body of women - to reprise the story of women's original ownership of epeme. Evolutionary anthropologist Boehm has argued that collectively exerted 'reverse dominance' is the source of the moral community. Maitoko initiates act as a reverse gender dominant moral community.