We don't know, of course. That was my main point, that trying to make hard conclusions from scanty evidence is tricky and unsure. It's a fair assumption I think, given the overarching priority for small and independent groups to maintain their populations, that birthing and caring for children would be the MOST important long-term challenge and job for the group. Immediate food procurement and processing was more important in the short term, and I have little doubt it was "all hands to" when bountiful opportunities were present, but men and boys were almost certainly more expendable to the group than were women and girls.

Given that women could produce children and men couldn't, that women could feed infants and men couldn't, it's hard to believe that our quite intelligent ancestors would not have understood these basic realities and built cultural norms to best utilize them.