Science - sex differences and human behavior

National Review, April 19, 1999 by John O. McGinnis

Unnatural Selection

The feminists' unconvincing biology.

Mr. McGinnis is a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.

A specter is haunting feminism-the specter of Darwinism. Biological learning has undermined the feminist mantra that disproportionate male representation in the highest-ranking positions of corporate and political life is evidence of patriarchy, or even of discrimination. Instead, biological theory and research suggest that patterns of representation are a natural outgrowth of the fact that men, on average, are more aggressive than women, more concerned with status, and more inclined to take risks, while women, again on average, are more nurturing and empathetic.

The feminists' first response to the rise of this inconvenient biology was to deny its relevance. Yet this is no longer possible, when even popular magazines routinely discuss the biological basis of human behavior, as in the notorious Time headline, "Infidelity: It May Be in Our Genes." This spring will see the publication of no fewer than three books that try a different tack-offering biological evidence of female traits that are more to the liking of feminists. New York Times science reporter Natalie Angier has already outlined part of her book in that paper's Sunday magazine, and Barbara Ehrenreich has offered a preview of them all in another Time story, breathlessly titled "The Real Truth About the Female."

Feminist biology is mostly wishful thinking. As Kingsley Browne of Wayne State University points out in his excellent new work, Divided Labours, women, like females of other species, are more invested in children because eggs are a scarcer resource than sperm and the female contribution to the creation of a child is far more time consuming. On this theory, one would predict that women would be more selective than men in their partners, as they have more to lose in the event of a wrong choice. They would also be more supportive of their offspring.

Men and other male animals, by contrast, have no such limits on their reproductive opportunities. One would therefore predict that they would be more aggressive and undertake more risks to acquire mates and resources; they, after all, can more easily translate these mating opportunities and resources into limitless progeny. Consistent with these predictions, polygyny (an arrangement wherein one man lives with many women) has been common throughout history, whereas polyandry (one woman, many men) has been extremely rare.

Because of their different reproductive strategies, men and women have evolved different hormonal processes that generate different dispositions. Testosterone and other hormones that trigger the development of male physical characteristics also organize personality traits. We know this in part because these traits appear in an unusual degree among girls who, because of a genetic defect, are exposed in utero to these hormones. Psychological studies also suggest that men and women have different predispositions from the beginning. Even before children understand that trucks are associated with boys and dolls associated with girls, girls tend to like dolls and other toys that lend themselves to nurturing and empathy, while boys reach for the Tonka Trucks.

Against the combined weight of this evidence (and this is a mere sample of what Browne and others have collected) the new feminists have embarrassingly little to offer. As evidence of female aggressiveness, Ehrenreich cites studies that claim primitive women gathered as much as 70 percent of their tribes' plant food. But evolutionary biologists have never said that women were not important contributors to the food supply. Indeed, if our female ancestors concentrated on gathering plant food while men engaged in the more dangerous enterprise of hunting, it suggests precisely that men and women evolved temperamental differences. Ehrenreich also speculates that the aid of post-menopausal grandmothers may have made it unnecessary for primitive women to bond in pairs with men, hence debunking the idea of female dependence. But the notion that in an era of early death and debilitating disease elderly women could have performed defense and other necessary tasks better than young men seems laughable.

Natalie Angier, in turn, tries to poke holes in traditional evolutionary biology by focusing more on mating than on work. She observes that female primates often choose to couple with members outside their troops-supposedly evidence of female promiscuity. But evolutionary biology never predicted that women would lack a strategic mating sense. Indeed, being extremely careful about choosing a mate might sometimes require searching widely for Mr. Right. Angier is correct that a sexually adventurous strategy may make sense for some women in some circumstances, but this does not show that on average they will act as promiscuously as men. The new feminist biology misses the mark again and again because it fails to appreciate that evolutionary biology suggests only median differences between the sexes in temperament and preferences.