This study examines Parsons' and Bales' proposition that a universal feature of social structure is gender sex role specialization of tasks. Results suggest that women contribute substantially to the subsistence economy across many domains, casting doubt on such universality.

This article presents a series of tests done to determine which geometric patterns in the features of masks, classical ballet, and 17th-century Dutch art evoke emotions of threat. Results suggest that diagonal and angular forms evoke emotions of threat.

This study tests the claim that male and female investment in the socioemotional and economic aspects of family life are inversely related. Results suggest that this hypothesis is not supported, although a significant inverse relationship between male and female infant care does exist.

While not itself a cross-cultural study, the present work makes a significant contribution to cross-cultural research by providing an updated coding system and scores on parental nurturance (based on the past 25 years of attachment theory) for all societies of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS) . Aronoff describes the existing literature and coding systems as they inform and relate to the development of his own coding scheme. Subsequently, Aronoff presents the multi-leveled coding system that integrates several conceptions of parental nurturance, as well as codes for the SCCS societies.

This article studied the effects of common law in Sub-Saharan Africa on property rights of women and its relationship to intimate partner violence. The authors first compared intimate partner violence (IPV) in 593 ethnic groups with a separate marital property regime against groups with a community marital property regime. Then, the authors examined the correlation between women who justify IPV and the presence of a separate marital property regime. They found that separate marital property both increased the likelihood of intimate partner violence and the justification of IPV when compared to a community property regime. The authors use these findings to advocate for marital property rights reform to help reduce partner violence cases.

After noticing that recent archaeological research has found evidence that women in pre-history were probably hunters, the authors use the ethnographic record from 63 foraging populations to explore the role of women in hunting. They explore what proportion of societies expect women to contribute to hunting, if women hunt, what proportion was opportunistic or intentional, whether women hunters were skilled, and whether women hunted with children.

Cultures vary widely in regards to beauty standards for female body fat: while industrialized nations typically prefer thinness in women, ethnographic reports indicate that plumpness is valued in many small-scale societies. Here the authors evaluate several hypotheses that relate variation in female body fat preference to variation in socioecology such as food storage, climate, male social dominance, valuation and restriction of women's work, and female stress during adolescence.

The article discusses the role of toys and tools in the development of skills and cultural transmission in hunter-gatherer societies. The authors present a cross-cultural inventory of objects made for and by hunter-gatherer children and adolescents, finding that toys and tools were primarily handled outside of explicit pedagogical contexts, and there is little evidence for formalised apprenticeships. The authors suggest that children's self-directed interactions with objects, especially during play, have a critical role in early-age enskillment. Both boys and girls tend to use objects in work and play that emulate the gendered division of labor in their communities, and many objects made by and for children had full-scale counterparts. Finally, the authors argue that the peer group is crucial to skill acquisition in hunter-gatherer societies.

This study explores predictors of variation in two dimensions of marital residence patterns among hunter-gatherers: 1) the tendency toward patrilocality versus matrilocality and 2) the tendency toward unilocality versus bilocality.

The present research investigates food sharing and labor sharing practices of 98 nonindustrial societies. The aims are to: 1) document the frequency and scope of sharing, and 2) test the theory that greater sharing is adaptive in societies subject to more resource stress (including natural hazards).