Amanda E. Guitar

Empowering Women The Next Step in Human Evolution

In Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy, Melvin Konner argues that male domination is an anomaly of human history, not a natural state for the human species. Specifically, Konner suggests that male supremacy is largely an effect of an oppressive social arrangement, namely civilization, which began with the invention of agriculture when humans began to form permanent settlements. Permanent settlements enabled men to be able to accumulate resources and allowed population densities to increase mainly through higher birth rates. Higher population densities placed more intense pressure on the land’s resources. Therefore, it became necessary for men to form coalitions with neighbors to defend against intruders. Power became concentrated in the hands of a few men, leading to a stratified society where male supremacy and female subordination reigned and male violence and war intensified. Today, Konner argues that technology limits the need for the muscle and strength of men, and male domination has outlived its purpose and is maladaptive. Therefore, empowering women is the next step in human evolution. Through empowering women, equality between the sexes will be restored and man-made disasters, such as wars, sex scandals, and financial corruption, will significantly decrease or be eliminated since women (who Konner claims are less emotional than men) will be in positions of leadership and power. The various chapters of the book provide evidence for various aspects of Konner’s argument. In the Introduction ‘‘Stronger Than All Besides,’’ Konner introduces human sex differences, which he considers to be mostly due to biology through intrinsic differences in the body and brain, informing readers that women have greater life expectancies than men, have lower mortality at all ages, are more resistant to many diseases, and suffer less from certain brain defects (e.g., attention deficit, hyperactivity, hypersexuality, and conduct disorder). In fact, Konner goes so far as to present ‘‘maleness’’ as a birth defect called X-chromosome deficiency syndrome that affects 49% of the human species. In Chapter 1 ‘‘Diverge, Say the Cells,’’ Konner reviews sexual development focusing on how human fetuses are by default female unless genes on the Y-chromosome trigger maleness. Further, Konner proposes that pseudohermaphrodites (i.e., individuals with ambiguous genitalia) and transexuals are the exceptions that prove the rules of his argument. For instance, individuals with androgen insensitivity syndrome have an XY genotype but lack androgen receptors or cannot make androgens and, therefore, typically look and behave like females, showing no signs of maleness in their brains, behavior, or sexual orientation. Moreover, Konner reviews animal evidence to demonstrate that culture is not the key determinant of gender identity. Chapter 2 ‘‘Hidden in Darkness’’ and Chapter 3 ‘‘Picky Females, Easy Males’’ provide an overview of evolutionary theories of sex and gender. Chapter 2 reviews various modes of reproduction, such as asexual reproduction and facultative asexuality, to allow readers to grasp why sex exists despite what John Maynard-Smith (1978) identified as the twofold costs of producing males. That is, the advantage of sex is that it creates variation and allows species to outsmart germs, otherwise, known as the Red Queen Hypothesis. Chapter 3 focuses on sexual selection theory, including the Trivers–Willard hypothesis (Trivers & Willard, 1973) and the three hypotheses of how and why sexually selected traits evolved: as indicators of good genes (Hamilton and Zuk, 1982), as handicaps (or fitness indicators; Zahavi, 1975), and through runaway sexual selection (also known as the Sexy Son hypothesis; Fisher, 1930). Konner provides examples of animals with different mating systems, such as the extremely sexually dimorphic elephant seal and sex-role reversed cassowaries and jacanas, to make readers realize that sex roles are determined by the sexual selection and parental investment within the species and that male domination is not anymore natural than female domination or equality between the sexes. He continues these Evolutionary Psychology 2015: 1–3 a The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav evp.sagepub.com