Discuss the Evolutionary Theory of Gender Development Essay Example

genetic factors that occur in gender development which have been proven to play a huge role.

This view put forward has been criticized for being determinist as it implies that men and women have little choice or control over their behaviors; women are natural 'nurturers' and men are naturally aggressive and promiscuous. Some have taken these suggestions even further to argue that equal opportunities policies are doomed In the workplace as men are naturally more competitive, risk talking, and likely to progress up the career ladder (Crooning and Curry, 2000). Another evolutionary explanation comes from mate choice.

This states that the key to adaptive behavior is reproductive success. Many gender role behaviors are related to reproductive strategies.

In terms of mate choice, men look or partners who are physically more attractive, whereas women are traditionally Interested In the resources a partner might be able to provide. The evolutionary explanation for this is related to the way males and females maximize their reproductive success. Males do well to mate as frequently as they can and select women who are more fertile and healthy - physical attractiveness.

Females also seek signs of fertility and healthiness in a partner but are more concerned to find a partner who can provide resources. Therefore, in terms of gender differences, we expect that men will seek physical attractiveness and women will seek a partner who marriage partner. The study involved over 10000 people from 37 different cultures, including a wide diversity of ethnic, religious, political and economic groups.

He found that women more than men desired mates who were good financial prospects.

This translated into a desire for men with resources, or qualities

that were linked to resource acquisition, such as ambition. Men placed more importance on physical factors. Research has consistently shown that physical appearances provides a wealth of cues to a woman's health and hence her fertility and reproductive value.

Men universally wanted mates who were younger than them - an indication that men valued increased fertility in potential mates. Buss found that both sexes wanted mates who were intelligent, king and dependable.

Cross-cultural studies are used to test whether the behaviors are universal of influenced by cultural practice. One of the main difficulties with such research is the degree to which data collected actually represents the behavior of the people from different cultures. For example, one difficulty is that people do not always represent themselves honestly in questionnaires, and in case of research conducted in other cultures, some of the questions may not make sense.

One implication of the evolutionary explanation of gender roles is meat-for-sex hypothesis.

When humans turned from a vegetarian diet to one that included meat, men became the hunters because of selective pressures. An outcome of this may be that men used meat as a means of attracting female interest. Studies of modern hunter-gatherer societies have found that men use meat as a means of gaining access to women (Hill and Kaplan, 1988). Research has shown that women are better at antipathies (understanding what other people think and eel) whereas men are better at systematizing (understanding and building systems).

Baron-Cohen (2002) calls this E-S Theory and has proposed that this gender difference may be the result of a selection pressure for males, who develop better hunting strategies, and females, who are focused on

rearing their children.

He suggests that males who were able to systematic with greater precision would have gained an evolutionary advantage. It has been proposed that women may not Just bet better at emphasizing but may also be more focused on interpersonal contacts; tend and befriend. Taylor et al (2000) proposed that this may stem from the different halogens faced by men and women when dealing with stress.

Ancestral males would deals with threats by getting ready to fight or flee. In contrast, the adaptive response for females as the primary caregivers would be to protect themselves and their young in their role as primary caregiver to children. It would also be adaptive to group together with family units.

This leads to a female tendency to tend and befriend at times of stress, whereas men are more likely to become defensive. Nines et al (2001) conducted a natural experiment to test male-female differences in stress response.

They sampled levels of cortical (the stress hormone) a week before students took examinations, which was meant to be low stress, and immediately before the examination which was a high stress level. In the male participants there was a significant increase in cortical levels, where as in females there was a significant decrease, supporting the view that women respond to stress in a different way to men.

One major limitation was pointed out by Cascades (2007). This researcher argues that evolutionary psychology tells us nothing about non-heterosexual don't update with the attitudes of current times and don't reflect peoples values now.