Chapter 10

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1 Chapter 10: UNDERSTANDING WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURES

Chapter 10: UNDERSTANDING WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURES

OVERVIEW

Being a woman is a terrible difficult trade, since it consists principally of dealing with men.

Joseph Conrad (quote from Winokur, 1989)

Man is for woman a means: the end is always the child.

Nietzche (quote from Winokur, 1989)

As we have seen in earlier chapters women are reproductively more "valuable" than men. Being viewed by males as a valuable reproductive resource is a double-edged sword--it offers women both advantages and disadvantages. It can give women special perks and sexual leverage over men, but it also means having to deal with male jealousy and sexual proprietariness, as well as male sexual harassment, as men attempt to access and control female reproduction.

And, as we have see, sex can at times ahve have profoundly different meanings for women. Until fairly recently, if a woman had sex, she risked pregnancy. If sex historically could be "free" for males, it was never so for females. A woman consenting to copulate was literally risking one of her few opportunities to become pregnant and she was symbolically telling her male partner that she was willing to have his child. If men puzzle over why women often require a relationship, or some type of commitment, before consenting to copulate, they might do well to understand that women today are the progeny of mothers who made cautious and considered reproductive choices.

Further, women often have little to gain from copulating with many different males (except, perhaps, genetic variability in their offspring). The reproductive variance of females is generally far less than that of males. Successful reproduction is more of a "sure bet" for females than it is for males, although the maximum potential reproductive payoff is much less.

And, unlike males who suffer from paternity insecurity, women do not have to worry about their genetic maternity.

However, females do face substantial reproductive problems. Their reproductive strategies, as well as their emotional and psychological predispositions, have evolved to help them solve these problems. Females are burdened with the arduous task of provisioning and protecting offspring, which are helpless for many years. Females often can gain valuable resources and protection from a mate to help in this endeavor.

Also, females do have to deal with men -- which also can sometimes be an arduous task in itself. They must divert unwanted male sexual advances and aggression, attempt to mate with the most genetically and socially valuable male, and pursue their own optimal reproductive strategy, which is sometimes in conflict with the reproductive interests of men. Further, since males have politically controlled most societies, they not only have to deal with men on a personal level, but also on a social one (e.g., living in a "man’s" world).

Before we examine the evolved psychological mechanisms females have evolved to solve their reproductive problems, we will first investigate some of the more unexpected and surprising aspects of human female morphology.

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