Staying alive: Evolution, culture, and women’s intrasexual aggression

Staying alive: Evolution, culture, and women’s intrasexual aggression
Anne Campbell; 1999


Abstract

Females’ tendency to place a high value on protecting their own lives enhanced their reproductive success in the environment of evolutionary adaptation because infant survival depended more upon maternal than on paternal care and defence. The evolved mechanism by which the costs of aggression (and other forms of risk taking) are weighted more heavily for females may be a lower threshold for fear in situations which pose a direct threat of bodily injury. Females’ concern with personal survival also has implications for sex differences in dominance hierarchies because the risks associated with hierarchy formation in nonbonded exogamous females are not offset by increased reproductive success. Hence among females, disputes do not carry implications for status with them as they do among males, but are chiefly connected with the acquisition and defence of scarce resources. Consequently, female competition is more likely to take the form of indirect aggression or low-level direct combat than among males. Under patriarchy, men have held the power to prop- agate images and attributions which are favourable to the continuance of their control. Women’s aggression has been viewed as a gender-incongruent aberration or dismissed as evidence of irrationality. These cultural interpretations have “enhanced” evolutionarily based sex differences by a process of imposition which stigmatises the expression of aggression by females and causes women to offer exculpatory (rather than justificatory) accounts of their own aggression.

Co-ruminating increases stress hormone levels in women

Co-ruminating increases stress hormone levels in women
Jennifer Byrd Craven et al.; March 2008
Hormones and Behavior


Abstract

Same-sex friendships are an important source of social support and typically contribute to positive adjustment. However, there can be adjustment trade-offs if the friends co-ruminate (i.e., talk excessively about problems) in that co-rumination is related to having close friendships but also to increased internalizing symptoms. The current study utilized an experimental manipulation that elicited co-rumination in young women and thus mirrored an everyday response to stress. Observed co-rumination was associated with a significant increase in the stress hormone, cortisol (after controlling for self-reported co-rumination and for cortisol levels assessed before the discussion of problems). These findings suggest that co-rumination can amplify, rather than mitigate, the hormonal stress response to personal life stressors.

[Möglicherweise erklärt das auch, weshalb mancher Mann die  'gesunde Verdrängung' der Ko-Rumination vorzieht.]

Women in Science

Women in Science: Biological Factors Should Not be Ignored
Kingsley R Browne; 2005
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=877664 (full download)


Abstract

Harvard President Lawrence Summers was repeatedly denounced for suggesting that innate sex differences might be causally related to the scarcity of women in certain scientific fields. Yet data from a variety of fields reveal that Summers's tentative suggestion could legitimately have been stated with much greater force. Sex differences exist in mathematical, spatial, and verbal abilities; "people versus thing orientation;" competitiveness; dominance-seeking; risk preference; and nurturance. These differences appear to be at least in part products of different selective pressures acting on the sexes during our evolutionary history and are proximately mediated by sex hormones acting primarily during fetal development and at and after puberty. 

Cognitive and temperamental sex differences appear to play a substantial role in observed workplace outcomes. The more spatial, mathematical, and abstract a field, the lower the frequency of women tends to be. Moreover, fields in which women are scarce tend to have the lowest social dimension, while those attracting larger numbers of women tend to have higher social content. An analysis that takes into account biological sex differences provides a richer and more plausible account of occupational distributions than one that assumes that no such differences exist.

Height among Women is Curvilinearly Related to Life History Strategy

Height among Women is Curvilinearly Related to Life History Strategy
Thomas V Pollet at al.; 2009


Abstract

It was hypothesized that women of medium height would show a more secure, long-term mating pattern characterized by less jealousy, less intrasexual competition and a “slower” life history strategy. In three samples of female undergraduate students clear support was found for these hypotheses. In Study 1, among 120 participants, height was curvilinearly related to well-established measures of possessive and reactive jealousy, with women of medium height being less jealous than tall as well as short women. In Study 2, among 40 participants, height was curvilinearly related to intrasexual competition, with women of medium height being less competitive towards other women than tall as well as short women. In Study 3, among 299 participants, height was curvilinearly related to the Mini-K, a well-validated measure of “slower” life history strategy, with women of medium height having a slower life history strategy than tall as well as short women. The results suggest that women of medium height tend to follow a different mating strategy than either tall or short women. Various explanations and implications of these results are discussed.

Is there an early-30s peak in female sexual desire? Cross-sectional evidence from the United States and Canada

Is there an early-30s peak in female sexual desire? Cross-sectional evidence from the United States and Canada
David P Schmitt et al.; 2002


Abstract

This research explored whether women experience a "sexual peak" during their early 30s and, if so, whether such a peak might have an evolved function. In Study 1, results from a cross-sectional sample of US college students (N=803 women, 415 men) revealed that women between 30 and 34, relative to older and younger women, described themselves as more lustful, seductive, and sexually active. In contrast, men did not experience a sexual peak between 30 and 34. In a 2nd study (N=611 women, 329 men), findings of an early-30s peak in women were replicated among married and single individuals from Canada. Using new measures of human sexual strategies, the authors were able to test 2 hypotheses about the possible functions of an early-30s peak in female sexual desire. One hypothesis is that an early-30s peak increases reproduction in monogamous, long-term relationships. A 2nd hypothesis is that women's early-30s peak in sexual desire increases reproduction through promiscuous or extra-pair copulations. Overall, the hypothesis that the peak is designed to increase women's reproduction in monogamous, long-term relationships received the most support. Discussion focuses on limitations and alternative explanations of the current findings and on areas for future investigation.

Women in Science and Technology:

>Although women’s representation in many scientific fields is lower than that of men, it is not uniformly low. Rather, it varies widely from field to field. It is a reasonably accurate generalization to say that the ‘softer’ the scientific field, the higher the frequency of women. In the U.S., for example, women in 2002 earned 16 per cent of physics doctorates, 18 per cent in engineering, 29 per cent in mathematics, 34 per cent in chemistry, 45 per cent in biology, and 67 per cent in psychology (National Science Foundation, 2003). In the social sciences, women are relatively scarce in economics but abundant in anthropology and sociology. Even within fields, there is marked differentiation by subfield.Women earn relatively few doctorates in mining/mineral engineering, biophysics, and psychometrics, but considerably more in bioengineering, nutritional sciences, and developmental and child psychology.

... The fields in which women are scarce tend to have the lowest social dimension, while those attracting larger numbers of women tend to have a higher social dimension. Lubinski, Benbow, and Morelock (2000) have characterized this distinction as being between the ‘organic’ and the ‘inorganic.’ The fields avoided by women tend also to be the most mathematically and spatially demanding. Given the relative positions of the sexes on the ‘people-things’ dimension and the abundance of men at the highest levels of mathematical ability, it would be surprising not to find differing sex ratios in these widely differing fields, at least if people sort into occupations based upon their interests and abilities.<

K. R. Browne, Evolved sex differences and occupational segregation, 2006
http://faculty.law.wayne.edu/browne/Documents/Articles/Evolved%20Sex%20Differences%20and%20Occupational%20Segregation_Browne.pdf

Women & Relationships:

>The result is fairly clear that women more than men are relationship specialists. Women's interpersonal sensivity has been examined by looking at the ability to read non-verbal information from other's behaviour such as posture, vocal inflection and facial expression. Many studies have examined sex differences in accuracy and the result clearly favour women (Hall 1984; Hall et al. 2000). This difference in the accuracy of facial expression processing is allready apparent in infacy (McClure 2000). As well as decoding emotion, women seem to be more effective senders of signals that foster intimacy and closeness. They demonstrate greater involvement in the conversation and a greater interest in tracking the state of the other person's mind than do men by smiling more, gazing more, displaying greater facial expressiveness, reflecting their own emotional state more clearly in their facial expression, using more hand gestures and approaching others more closely. In short women seem keen to establish a mutuality in their conversation by engaging and monitoring their partner's state of mind.<

Anne Campbell, A mind of her own - The evolutionary psychology of women, 2002
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