Evolution and Gender

Offering new research and analysis on the relation between gender and evolution, this book explains conflict between the sexes and the frequent emergence and stubborn continuation of patriarchal regimes that serve to control the behavior of women in societies around the world, both past and present. Women and men are different, on average. But that does not mean they are unequal. Indeed, understanding average differences is key to the full realization of equality in health care and other dimensions of social life. Hopcroft shows that gender differences in physiology, psychology, and behavior can be traced to slight differences in evolved traits between men and women. These differences exist because of sex differences in investment in offspring, which meant that, in the environment of evolution, some adaptive problems were more important for men to solve than for women, and vice versa. For men, the most important adaptive problem to solve was that of finding a mate. Men who did not solve this problem are not our ancestors. For women, the most important adaptive problem to solve was that of successfully bearing and raising children. Women who did not solve this problem are not our ancestors. These small differences underlie all the differences described in the book, including sex differences in mate preferences, physiology, cognition, aggression, status striving, and emotional experience. It can also help explain the differential treatment of children by parents, the differential success of boys and girls in modern schools, and sex differences in style of communication.

Rosemary L. Hopcroft is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has published widely in the areas of comparative and historical sociology and evolution, biology, and society in journals that include the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces. She is the author of Sociology: A Bio-Social Introduction (Paradigm 2010).

Part I: Introduction Chapter 1: Evolutionary theory and the Sociology of Gender- A bad beginning Part II: Sex Differences in Evolved Mating Strategies Chapter 2: Gender and evolution Chapter 3: Women's evolved long term mating strategies Chapter 4: Men's evolved long term mating strategies Chapter 5: What is beauty? Why do we want it? Chapter 6: Sex differences in short term sexual strategies Part III. Women and Men Chapter 7: Evolutionary origins of patriarchy: Societal control of women through the ages Chapter 8: Physiological differences between the sexes Chapter 9: Cognitive differences between the sexes Chapter 10: An evolutionary view of the reproductive lifecourse of women Chapter 11: Sex differences in aggression and criminality Chapter 12: Sex differences in status striving Chapter 13: Gender and emotion Part IV. Implications of Sex Differences Chapter 14: Parental strategies: Differences by child's gender Chapter 15: Boys and girls in school Chapter 16: Conflict between the sexes Chapter 17: But can they talk it out? Problems of communication Chapter 18: Conclusion