num_pages: 512
description: Over the last decade there has been increasing debate as to whether feminism and evolutionary psychology can co-exist. Such debates often conclude with a resounding no often on the grounds that the former is a political movement while the latter is a field of scientific inquiry. In the midst of these debates there has been growing dissatisfaction within the field of evolutionary psychology about the way the discipline (and others) have repeatedly shown women to be in passive roles when it comes to survival and reproduction. Evolutionary behavioral research has made significant strides in the past few decades but continues to take for granted many theoretical assumption that are perhaps in light of the most recent evidence misguided. As a result the research community has missed important areas of research and in some cases will likely come to inaccurate conclusions based on existing dogma rather than rigorous theoretically driven research. Bias in the field of evolutionary psychology echoes the complaints against the political movement attached to academic feminisms. This is an intellectual squabble where much is at stake including a fundamental understanding of the evolutionary significance of women's roles in culture mothering reproductive health and physiology mating female alliances female aggression and female intrasexual competition.Evolution's Empress identifies women as active agents within the evolutionary process. The chapters in this volume focus on topics as diverse as female social interactions mate competition and mating strategies motherhood women's health sex differences in communication and motivation sex discrimination and women in literature. The volume editors bring together a diverse range of perspectives to demonstrate ways in which evolutionary approaches to human behavior have thus far been too limited. By reconsidering the role of women in evolution this volume furthers the goal of generating dialogue between the realms of women's studies and evolutionary psychology.Contents:Women's intrasexual competition for mates / Maryanne L. Fisher --The tangled web she weaves: the evolution of female-female aggression and status-seeking / Laurette Liesen --Getting by with a little help from friends: the importance of social bonds for female primates / Liza R. Moscovice --A sex-neutral theoretical framework for making strong inferences about the origins of sex roles / Patricia Adair Gowaty --Mothers traditions and the human strategy to leave descendants / Kathryn Coe and Craig T. Palmer --Maternal effect and offspring development / Nicole M. Cameron and Justin R. Garcia --The evolution of flexible parenting / Lesley Newson and Peter J. Richerson --Human attachment vocalizations and the expanding notion of nurture / Rosemarie Sokol Chang --Fathers versus sons: why Jocasta matters / Laura Betzig --Women's health at the crossroads of evolution and epidemiology / Chris Reiber --Fertility: life history and ecological aspects / Bobbi S. Low --Reproductive strategies in female postgenerative life / Johannes Johow Eckart Voland and Kai Willfhr -- Now or later: peripartum shifts in female sociosexuality / Michelle Escasa-Dorne Sharon M. Young and Peter B. Gray --Sexual conflict in white-faced capuchins: it's not whether you win or lose / Linda Fedigan and Katharine M. Jack --The importance of female choice: evolutionary perspectives on constraints expressions and variations in female mating strategies / David A. Frederick Tania A. Reynolds and Maryanne L. Fisher --Swept off their feet? Females' strategic mating behavior as a means of supplying the broom / Christopher J. Wilbur and Lorne Campbell --Sex and gender differences in communication strategies / Elisabeth Oberzaucher --A new view of evolutionary psychology using female priorities and motivations / Tami Meredith --From reproductive resource to autonomous individuality? Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre / Nancy Easterlin --The empress's clothes / Julie Seaman --Consuming midlife motherhood: cooperative breeding and the 'disestablishment' of the biological clock / Michele Pridmore-Brown --The quick and the dead: gendered agency in the history of western science and evolutionary theory / Leslie L. Heywood.
language: English
title: Evolution's Empress: Darwinian Perspectives on the Nature of Women
publisher: Oxford University Press