Evolutionary Reasons For Average Male/Female Differences

In the animal kingdom, we find that male and female animals, of the same species, exhibit significantly different behavioral patterns from one another. There is good reason to suppose that the same applies to the human animal. It would seem that, on average, male humans tend to be: more callous and ruthless, more career-oriented, the initiators in the courtship process, more attracted to physical beauty, and more suited to spurts of intensive labor. Female humans, on the other hand, tend to be: more empathetic and socially-aware, more family-oriented, more receptive in the courtship process, more attracted to confidence, power, and breadwinner-potential, and more suited to continuous, lower intensity labor.

Feminists contend that these differences are all the result of social conditioning. They posit that, in a society where all boys and girls were raised and treated the same, these differences would disappear. This is a highly dubious claim. It is quite obviously false when we look at other animals; most of whose behaviors are based, almost exclusively, on in-built instincts, but where there are still significant behavioral differences between the sexes. Did lion society brainwash female lions into doing most of the hunting, and male lions most of the fighting? The suggestion is absurd. It is evident that physiological differences between male (stockier, more powerful) and female (faster) lions made this sex-based division of labor the most conducive to survival, and hence the one that came to prevail via the evolutionary process.

How about when it comes to humans though? Can we find evolutionary reasons for the seeming differences in male/female behavior listed above? I believe that we can. Males and females have some clear biological differences; ones that even feminists don’t deny. The two most important are these: 1. The average male has more upper body strength than the average female. 2. Females are capable of bearing children, whereas males are not.

Given these differences, we can see why it would have been beneficial for early human societies to adopt the sex-based division of labor that they did. The stronger and more athletic males made, on average, better hunters and warriors than females. But the lives of the females, the ones with the ability to carry on the species, were even more precious. To expose them to the dangers of war and the hunt would have been quite foolish. This is why they were left home to rear and care for children, and to do the safer tasks such as gathering, meal preparation, clothes-making, etc…

Alright, so we have this sex-based division of labor that clearly made sense for early human societies. But how is this relevant for men and women living in modern societies, which are completely different? It’s relevant because we evolved to live in those early societies. Back then, survival was very precarious. The individuals and societies that were better adapted to the requirements of survival would gradually push those who were less well-adapted out of the gene pool; thereby creating a tendency for future generations of humans to become more and more adapted to life in these early societies. For our purposes, this means that males and females became more and more adapted, in terms of their behaviors and psychologies, to their respective places in the sex-based division of labor.

No such thing happened when it came to modern societies though. It is simply not the case that those better adapted to life in modern societies have more offspring than those who are less well-adapted; in fact, nowadays, something closer to the opposite tendency seems to prevail. In modern times, less well-adapted people are not ruthlessly ripped out of the gene pool; most of them survive just fine, and many of them have offspring. ‘Survival of the Fittest’ does not really apply to the modern human; but it most definitely did to the early human. And so we find ourselves in a situation where, in order to understand the behavioral differences between modern men and women, we have to examine the behavioral patterns and psychologies that would have best suited men and women in early societies to their respective roles in the sex-based division of labor. We shall proceed to do just this for each of the male/female differences listed at the beginning, and then discuss what the implications are of each of these for modern society.

Callous males; empathetic females

In war and in hunting, there is no room for pity; no room for empathizing with the plight of your foe. In war, it is kill or be killed; in hunting, it is kill or starve. Physically, the best warriors and hunters will be strong and fast; mentally, they will display a certain callousness and ruthlessness. Thus, for males, there was a selection bias for those particular mental traits; one that continues to affect us to this day.

The women, left at home while the men were off hunting and warring, had to contend less with enemies of the society, and more with other members of the society. While a man could win respect through his exploits on the hunting and battle grounds, a woman had to be more socially-aware to do so. She had to be adept at navigating the complexities of society, in order to secure herself a favorable place in it. She had to be ready to offer help to other women, so that they might help her in return when she needed it. One can imagine why an empathetic, socially-aware woman would have succeeded better at this than a callous, socially-oblivious one, and hence why the traits of the former would have been more likely to make their way to the current generation of women.

What does this difference mean when it comes to modern society? It means that, on average, women will be more suited to the caring, and customer service, roles than men. Nursing, waitressing, human resources, retail, social work: one would expect to find more women succeeding in these fields than men, due to their enhanced capacity for empathy and social awareness. But the ruthlessness of men serves them well in other fields, such as high-level business management, politics, and the military. A successful business executive ruthlessly pursues profit; a politician, his power ambitions or vision for the country; a soldier, the victory of his country over the enemy. Not only will a man be more likely to succeed in these fields; a more empathetic woman will probably not be inclined to enter them in the first place, due to their seeming heartlessness.      

Career-oriented males; family-oriented females

This one is fairly self-evident: in early societies, men went out to acquire meat and security for the family, while women stayed home to care for the family and to do more domestic tasks. Men and women who were more mentally suited and inclined to their respective roles would have thrived more than those who were less well-suited; and hence more likely to pass on their genes to subsequent generations.

In modern society, this means that men will tend to be more drawn to the high-stress, workaholic jobs than women. It is more likely that a man will be satisfied supporting his children primarily with money, whereas most women will have a stronger urge to play a more direct role in their children’s lives. As a result, women with children will tend towards part-time or lower stress jobs (or no paying job at all), so that they can still have enough time to spend with their children.

Courtship: initiator, visual males; receptive, psychological females

When it comes to sexual attraction, males tend to be more visual than females. For many men, a female’s degree of ‘hotness’ is the most important determinant of attraction. What determines whether a female is ‘hot’ or not? Different men have different tastes, but the ‘hourglass’ female body type is the one that is generally considered to be the most attractive by the majority of men. Good-sized (not gigantic), healthy-looking breasts (good for breastfeeding); wide hips (good for childbearing); not too much excess fat (overweight women have a greater risk of miscarriage and other childbearing problems). As you can see, it’s no accident that men are attracted to the body type that they are: it’s the best one for bearing and nurturing their children!

This visual orientation helps to explain why men are generally the initiators in the courtship process. They spot a woman that they like the look of, and then, like a hunter after game, they strive to make the woman their own (without the killing part).

Women tend to be less attracted to physical ‘hotness’ than men, and more attracted to psychological/social features of a potential mate, such as confidence, power (physical or social), and breadwinner-potential. In early societies, it was vital that a woman choose a mate who had the ability to defend and provide for her and their children. Those women who were adept at choosing well in this regard would have had a better chance of passing on their genes than those who were not.

In early societies, men who were confident and powerful were also likely to make good providers. This relationship doesn’t hold as strongly in modern societies. This explains why many modern women are torn between their attraction for the ‘bad boy’ types, who seem to exude power and confidence but would make poor providers, and their attraction for the ‘geeky provider’ types, who seem to lack power and confidence but would make good providers (due to their capacity to do valuable, intellectual work).

It also helps to explain why women are generally receptive, rather than active, in the courtship process. A man who is too afraid to approach a woman that he fancies is probably not very powerful or confident; a woman automatically screens out these men by leaving it to the males to do the initiating. Also, being less visual in their attraction than men, it takes longer for a woman to know who she is attracted to than it does for a man. These, combined with the lack of the evolutionary hunter-inclination that men tend to have, help to explain why men continue to be the initiators in the courtship process.

Spurt-work males; continuous-work females

Both hunters and warriors worked in spurts of intense activity; followed by extended periods of low activity. Domestic work and child care, on the other hand, required more of a continuous, albeit lower intensity, effort. This being the case, it makes sense to posit that men evolved to become more suited to spurt-work; and women to become more suited to continuous, grinding work.

When it comes to modern society, this means that women will tend to be able to tolerate the tedious office and customer service jobs better than men. But it also means that men will tend to perform better in high pressure, time-constrained situations (such as closing a major business deal), and in roles that require great spurts of creative activity (such as invention).

The preceding discussion is sure to be met with the following objection: “Well I know some women who are nothing like what you’re describing.” Great; so do I. But it’s irrelevant, because I’m talking about tendencies, not individuals. In the modern human, individual diversity is so great that it has the potential to overcome the evolutionary tendencies of our sex in certain cases. But the tendency remains, and it is important to know what it is for the purposes of policy-making and cultural-theorizing.

“But why is it important?” a critic may ask. “This theory, even if accurate, simply promotes unproductive, sexist essentializing.” Not true. It is important that we talk about these differences between the sexes because feminist activists and policy-makers base their policy prescriptions on the assumption that the sexes are in fact equal. This explains their fixation on the so-called ‘wage gap’ statistic; measured by comparing the median yearly earnings of male full-time workers to the median yearly earnings of female full-time workers. This is where the ‘women are paid 78 cents for every male dollar’ nonsense comes from. Feminists, because they assume that men and women are equal, attribute this discrepancy to irrational, sexist discrimination against women, and make it a policy goal to ‘close the gap’. People who recognize that men and women are different though, can see how this gap could be explained without resorting to the ‘irrational sexism’ bogeyman. The average man and the average woman, for the evolutionary reasons discussed above, have different attributes, preferences, and psychologies from one another. The market society happens to value the typical male set more than the typical female set, and so men are paid more on average. There is nothing sinister about this fact; it is simply how a free labor market must function if it is to serve the consumer society as efficiently as possible.

Noting the differences between the sexes is also important culturally. It can serve as a very useful shortcut when we are trying to acquire knowledge about ourselves or others. It is helpful to be familiar with the traits that, as a member of given sex, we will probably have. It is helpful when choosing a career, when interacting with others, and when raising children. Much more helpful than the insanity, especially trendy in Sweden nowadays, of ‘gender neutral parenting’. The hard fact is that boys are much more likely to enjoy violent video games, and girls much more likely to enjoy playing with dolls. To ignore this and to treat your children as if they were neither sex is to harm your child’s psychological and social well-being in the name of some absurd feminist fantasy of absolute equality. It was the aim of this article to bring the discussion back to reality (however sexist it may be considered), in order to combat some of the harmful delusions of the ‘sexes are equal’ movement.