Feminism and Evolutionary Biology: Boundaries, Intersections and Frontiers

628 Pages·1997·0.82 MB·English

by  Patricia Adair Gowaty (auth.)

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Copyright @ 191J7 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Chapman & Ha11 in 191J7
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 XXX 01 00 99 98 lJ7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Feminism and evolutionary biology : boundaries, intersections, and
frontiers / edited by Palrida Adair Gowaty.
p. an.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-412-07361-8 ISBN 978-1-4615-5985-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-5985-6
1. Feminism. 2. Human evolution. 3. Human biology.
4. Scx:iobiology. 5. Feminist theory. I. Gowaty. Palricia Adair.
HQl154.F4426 1996
305.42-dc20 96-20305
aP
e
Chapter 3 1997 by Anne Fausto-Sterling
Brltish Llbrary Calalogulng in Publlcation Data available
Dedicated
during her centenary year
to
my grandmother,
Ethel Cook LaRoy
who continues to show me how to live.
Contents
Preface Xl
List of Contributors xvii
1 Introduction: Darwinian Feminists and Feminist
Evolutionists 1
Patricia Adair Gowaty
SECTION I Feminist Biologists Looking at Feminist
Evolutionary Biologists 19
2 Possible Implications of Feminist Theories for the
Study of Evolution 21
Sue V. Rosser
3 Feminism and Behavioral Evolution: A Taxonomy 42
Anne Fausto-Sterling
SECTION II Feminist Biologists Critique Behavioral
Ecology and Sociobiology 61
4 The Mask of Theory and the Face of Nature 63
Marcy F. Lawton, William R. Garstka, and J. Craig Hanks
5 Quantitative Genetics, Feminism, and Evolutionary
Theories of Gender Differences 86
Victoria L. Sork
6 The Curious Courtship of Sociobiology and Feminism:
A Case of Irreconcilable Differences 116
Zuleyma Tang-Martinez
vii
viii / Contents
SECTION III Practical Issues: The Feminism Question
in Science 151
7 Hiring Selection 153
Stephen M. Shuster and Michael J. Wade
8 A Feeling for the Organism? An Empirical Look at
Gender and Research Choices of Animal Behaviorists 184
Donna J. Holmes and Christine L Hitchcock
SECTION IV On and Beyond the Female Perspective 205
9 Sexual Alliances: Evidence and Evolutionary
Implications 207
Sarah L Mesnick
10 Male and Female Perceptions of Pair-Bond Dynamics:
Monogamy in Western Gulls, Larus occidentalis 261
Raymond Pierotti, Cynthia A. Annett, and Judith L Hand
11 The "Nature" of Sex Differences: Myths of Male
and Female 276
Charles C. Snowdon
12 The Role of Females in Extra Pair Copulations in
Socially Monogamous Territorial Animals 294
Judy Stamps
13 Mate Choice and Intrasexual Reproductive
Competition: Contributions to Reproduction That Go
Beyond Acquiring More Mates 320
Jeanne Altmann
14 Female Influences on Male Reproductive Success 334
Clark Barrett and Robert R. Warner
15 Sexual Dialectics, Sexual Selection, and Variation in
Reproductive Behavior 351
Patricia Adair Gowaty
16 "In the Belly of the Monster": Feminism, Developmental
Systems, and Evolutionary Explanations 385
Russell Gray
SECTION V Darwinian Feminism and Human Affairs 415
17 Darwinian Medicine Dawning in a Feminist Light 417
MarleneZuk
18 Femicide: An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective 431
Margo Wilson, Martin Daly, and Joanna Scheib
Contents / ix
19 The Evolutionary History of Human Parental
Investment in Relation to Population Growth and
Social Stratification 466
Jane B. Lancaster
20 Female Choice in the Context of Artificial Insemination
by Donor 489
Joanna E. Scheib
21 An Empirical Test of the Bodyguard Hypothesis 505
Margo Wilson and Sarah L. Mesnick
SECTION VI Boundary Battles and Frontier Conflicts 513
22 Inextricably Entwined: Politics, Biology, and Gender-
Dimorphic Behavior 515
Caitilyn Allen
23 Commentary 522
John Maynard Smith
24 Parental Investment-Minding the Kids or Keeping
Control? 527
Jonathan K. Waage
25 The Emperor's Moth 554
Terry Barrett
26 On Science, Identity Politics, and Group-Speak 562
Bernard C. Patten
27 Telling the Stories of Life and Reframing the Questions:
Evolutionary Biology and Feminism 569
Marjanne E. Cooze
28 Females and Feminists, Science and Politics, Evolution
and Change: An Essay 575
Irwin S. Bernstein
SECTION VII Permeable Boundaries 583
29 Myths of Genetic Determinism 585
Jonathan K. Waage and Patricia Adair Cowaty
Index 615
Preface
The development of a more inclusive evolutionary biology is what this book
grew to be about. As instigator, I might claim that is what I meant it to be all
along. However, my original plan was only to provide the forum for formal dis
cussions of what it means to be simultaneously evolutionist and feminist. It was
born of my desire, shared by others, to explore, expand, and exploit opportunities
for interdisciplinary work between feminisms (there is more than one kind of
feminist political philosophy) and evolutionary biology. This is a theme that con
tinues to exercise my imagination and about which I have thought for a long
time. What I wanted to facilitate was the opportunity for others to express their
interests at this thematic interface. Thus, I organized the Society for the Study of
Evolution-University of Georgia State of the Art Symposium on Evolutionary
Biology and Feminism, which took place June 13-14, 1994 at the University of
Georgia's Institute of &ology. This book grew out of the "Ev and Fern" Sympo
sium.
My charge to the original contributors was to speak and write about whatever
they wanted to at the interface of evolutionary biology and feminism. In one
sense I really just wanted to know what others were thinking about. The common
knowledge I had about them was that each is interested, as I am, in understand
ing the nature of nature and in revealing sexist oppressions so that we may
choose to overcome them. Looking back, it was also important to me that I liked
each one.
Some of the issues I anticipated we would discuss included the following:
What can feminism do for evolutionary biology? What can evolutionary biology
do for feminism? What is a "Feminist Evolutionary Biologist"? What is a "Dar
winian Feminist"? Does political commitment violate claims to scientific legiti
macy? Are there important differences between "female perspectives" and ''fem
inist perspectives" in evolutionary science? Almost none of these questions was
xi
xii / Preface
answered explicitly during the symposium. At least a partial answer for every
one is in this book. I included my own thoughts about them in the Introduction.
The "Ev and Fem" Symposium did include discussions of the dynamic inter
actions between feminisms and evolutionary biology, explorations and expan
sions on the theme of female perspectives in behavioral ecology and sociobiol
ogy, discussions of Darwinism and human affairs of particular interest to
women, feminist criticisms of evolutionary biology, examinations of feminist
evolutionary thought by other feminist biologists, and suggestions of how to use
tools of evolutionary biology to materially change gender-oppressive factors in
the workplace.
Besides new information, "Ev and Fem" exposed contention and controversy
that I had not expected. The in-the-hall discussions were some of the most ani
mated I have seen anywhere. It seemed that what I had facilitated was the oppor
tunity for "boundary battles."
The main problem seems to have been that it is difficult to communicate
even with those with whom one supposedly has so much in common. I feel this
acutely because in the symposium and this book made of contributions from con
tributors that I solicited, my own work has been misconstrued in ways that make
it quite foreign to me. Despite this, I think it worth the effort to persist in an at
tempt to discuss our differences. At the conference I was disappointed that so
few of our crucial differences were publicly aired. I really have personally suf
fered from the aftermath of controversy that surfaced on my own campus and
among some of my closest colleagues. I was really saddened by the depth of mis
understanding and apparently arrogant disregard for the work of several of the
contributors evidenced by several of the other contributors. I can only imagine
that these repercussions from my attempts to bring people together for hoped-for
rapprochement happen because of "failures to communicate", so I have spent
much of the time since the Ev and Fem symposium thinking about what gets in
the way. Many of these thoughts are in the first and last chapters of the book.
After the first day of the Conference, I was depressed. That evening, I ran into
Gene Odum ("the father of modem ecology" and Crawfoord Prize Winner) in the
back hall of the Institute of Ecology. He asked how the Symposium was going. I
briefly explained and was surprised by his take on our boundary battles. He re
cast our happening, not in terms of the specifics of fights between feminists and
evolutionists or between feminist and feminist, or even between evolutionist and
evolutionist, but as the inevitable by-product of any intellectual endeavor at the
interface of different disciplines. He looked at me and said, "Patty, people fight
over emergents at interfaces. Your controversies are just what should be happen
ing. Keep up the good work!"
A metaphor from my brother helped, too. He was recently back from Maui
and much impressed with lily ponds. He had discovered-by putting his head
underwater and opening his eyes-that lily pads floating their separate ways on
the pond's surface are leaves attached to common underwater stems. So, he told