Female competition: causes, constraints, content, and contexts

Journal of Sex Research, Feb, 2004 by Anne Campbell

In this article I offer an interpretation of female competition from an evolutionary perspective. First, it is useful to briefly review prior social science research (not informed by such a perspective) to indicate the richness of the qualitative observations and the alternative positions taken to their interpretation.

Despite a recent surge of popular journalistic books (e.g., Fillion, 1997; Simmons, 2002; Tanenbaum, 2002), academic interest in competition among women was almost nonexistent until the 1980s. Initial research (Gilligan, 1982; Goodwin, 1980; Lever, 1976) found that girls tended to avoid competition in favour of tactics that diffuse conflict and preserve interpersonal harmony. When competition is made inevitable, girls used apologies and excuses to mitigate their behaviour (Hughes, 1988) or "double voicing" to promote their own cases while simultaneously taking into account the positions of their rivals, thereby preserving their relationships (Sheldon, 1992). This attenuation of competition in favour of sustaining positive relationships is thought to reflect socialisation into cultural norms against the overt expression of conflict among females (Miner & Longino, 1987; Tracy, 1991) and the greater centrality of intimate friendships to girls than to boys (Brown, 1998).

Research that has examined the focus of female competition identifies appearance, popularity, and preservation of a "good" sexual reputation as central (Brown, 1998; Eder, 1985; Merten, 1997; Simmons, 2002; Tanenbanm, 2002). These are intimately connected since popularity (which consists of "visibility" rather than liking; see Eder, 1985; Merten, 1997) is associated with physical attractiveness to the opposite sex (often reflected, in the United States, in achieving cheerleader status) but highly selective sexual availability. Girls, it is argued, come to "ventriloquise" patriarchal male attitudes about appropriate female appearance and behaviour (Brown, 1998), resulting in "raging misogyny." As Tanenbaum (2002, p. 47) puts it, "Many women compete over things they think men value, such as looking sexy.... The most dangerous outcome of this is self hatred; girls and women disparage themselves and dissociate from other females."

The present article sees competition as an inherent part of our biological status and women's lesser willingness to escalate competition to direct aggression as arising out of their particular biology rather than from conformity to cultural expectations of femininity. Because the vast majority of research has been done on young women in the United States and Europe, we lack the data to examine the cultural specificity or generality of female competition. Certainly sex differences in aggression are universal (Daly & Wilson, 1988), but competition can take other forms. Some work suggests that competition is more direct and physical among poor and minority women than among their middle-class White counterparts (Brown, 1998; Eder, 1990). However, this could be due to culture-specific gender expectations or greater competition resulting from higher levels of resource scarcity (as I discuss later). Although there is academic agreement on the foci of female competition, women's concern with relative attractiveness might result from the internalisation of patriarchal values or from mate competition. Again, cross-cultural data are needed. Problematically, men (and women) universally seem to agree on standards of female facial beauty, making it hard to choose between the two accounts (Langlois et al., 2000). Research certainly suggests that the current fashion for slimness is not imposed on women by men because men prefer plumper figures than do women (Anderson, Crawford, Nadeau, & Lindberg, 1992; Cohn et al., 1987; Fallon & Rozin, 1985; Furnham & Radley, 1989). Women also care more about other women's opinions of attractiveness than those of men (Graziano, Jensen-Campbell, Shebilske, & Lundgren, 1993), suggesting that within-sex competition can take on a dynamic of its own. Similarly, with regard to sexual conduct and reputation, a recent review concluded that women are stronger enforcers of the double standard than are men (Baumeister & Twenge, 2002), casting doubt on the proposal of internalisation of male values.

I turn now to an evolutionary approach to the understanding of female-female competition. Conflict can and does occur between the sexes; indeed women's rates of aggression (excluding homicide) toward partners equal those of men (Archer, 2000). Because the theoretical predictions and the loci of conflict are quite different, I do not consider them in the present article.

CAUSES OF FEMALE COMPETITION

Sex differences in parental investment form the backbone of evolutionary accounts of sexual selection (Williams, 1966). Parental investment is any investment by the parent in an offspring that increases the chance of its survival at the cost of the parent's ability to invest in other offspring (Trivers, 1972). The higher investing sex becomes the resource for which the other sex competes. In 95% of mammals, females provide all the parental care (Clutton-Brock, 1991). Consequently, males compete vigorously for status and resources attractive to females.