The atrocities committed in war generate intense intergroup hatreds that themselves are potent inducements to hostilities independent of the original stimuli of land expropriation, raiding, and control of trading activities. The sedentary life, then, commonly eventuates in a state of chronic hostilities. At this point, I wish to speculate on the social implications of recurrent wars. One is the longer duration of war party leadership, by way of perpetual preparedness. 6 Another, of greater interest here, is the increasing rigidity of the sexual division of labor.
Any society using women warriors incurs a significant disadvantage in the long run.
That is, the death of a male warrior is but the loss of one man, but the death of a female is the death not of one woman alone but of the children she might have borne had she lived. Given the long-standing patterns of hostilities, the more Amazonian groups would reproduce defense forces less efficiently than those relying exclusively or nearly exclusively on male warriors. Through time, the more Amazonian groups would eventually be cut off from their land bases and be less and less able successfully to carry out raids. Those societies that excluded women from the war parties began to crystallize the division of labor in such a way as increasingly to sequester women from participation in the public life, even from determining the character of their own personal lives. Weapons in the hands of men are as easily turned to encouraging compliance with newer customs in their interest as to external offense and defense.