Evolution and Gender

Why It Matters for Contemporary Life

Rosemary Hopcroft (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

254 Seiten

2015
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-138-95616-2 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

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

Zusatzinfo	4 Tables, black and white; 22 Line drawings, black and white; 5 Halftones, black and white; 27 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	362 g
Themenwelt	Studium ► 1. Studienabschnitt (Vorklinik) ► Med. Psychologie / Soziologie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Evolution
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	1-138-95616-3 / 1138956163
ISBN-13	978-1-138-95616-2 / 9781138956162
Zustand	Neuware