Women, behavior, and evolution: understanding the debate between feminist evolutionists and evolutionary psychologists

Politics and the Life Sciences : the Journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences
Laurette T Liesen

Abstract

Often since the early 1990s, feminist evolutionists have criticized evolutionary psychologists, finding fault in their analyses of human male and female reproductive behavior. Feminist evolutionists have criticized various evolutionary psychologists for perpetuating gender stereotypes, using questionable methodology, and exhibiting a chill toward feminism. Though these criticisms have been raised many times, the conflict itself has not been fully analyzed. Therefore, I reconsider this conflict, both in its origins and its implications. I find that the approaches and perspectives of feminist evolutionists and evolutionary psychologists are distinctly different, leading many of the former to work in behavioral ecology, primatology, and evolutionary biology. Invitingly to feminist evolutionists, these three fields emphasize social behavior and the influences of environmental variables; in contrast, evolutionary psychology has come to rely on assumptions deemphasizing the pliability of psychological mechanisms and the flexibility of human behavior. In behavioral ecology, primatology, and evolutionary biology, feminist evolutionists have found old biases easy to correct and new hypotheses practical to test, offering new insights int...Continue Reading

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Citations

Dec 30, 2011·Politics and the Life Sciences : the Journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences·Joseph Losco
Feb 6, 2013·Politics and the Life Sciences : the Journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences·Laurette T Liesen, Mary Barbara Walsh
Sep 21, 2013·Politics and the Life Sciences : the Journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences·Rebecca J Hannagan
Jan 31, 2017·Politics and the Life Sciences : the Journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences·Jennie Sweet-Cushman

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