Overview

What does it mean to be female? Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--a sociobiologist and a feminist--believes that evolutionary biology can provide some surprising answers. Surprising to those feminists who mistakenly think that biology can only work against women. And surprising to those biologists who incorrectly believe that natural selection operates only on males. In The Woman That Never Evolved we are introduced to our nearest female relatives competitive, independent, sexually assertive primates who have every bit as much at stake in the evolutionary game as their male counterparts do. These females compete among themselves for rank and resources, but will bond together for mutual defense. They risk their lives to protect their young, yet consort with the very male who murdered their offspring when successful reproduction depends upon it. They tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy. When ""promiscuity"" is an advantage, female primates--like their human cousins--exhibit a sexual appetite that ensures a range of breeding partners. From case after case we are led to the conclusion that the sexually passive, noncompetitive, all-nurturing woman of prevailing myth never could have evolved within the primate order. Yet males are almost universally dominant over females in primate species, and Homo sapiens is no exception. As we see from this book, women are in some ways the most oppressed of all female primates. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is convinced that to redress sexual inequality in human societies, we must first understand its evolutionary origins. We cannot travel back in time to meet our own remote ancestors, but we can study those surrogates we have--the other living primates. If women --and not biology--are to control their own destiny, they must understand the past and, as this book shows us, the biological legacy they have inherited.

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[A] breakthrough book...A primatologist by training and feminist by predilection, Hrdy asked the basic and in my mind perfectly sensible question: How do women compare to other female primates? What can we understand about our urges, desires, and fears, our sexuality, our relationships with men and with other women, and the near universality of women's second-class status, by examining the lives and loves of our closest nonhuman kin? Among Hrdy's many bracing conclusions: Far from being coy and sexually tepid, as the stereotype has it, women may well have evolved for a restless sort of promiscuity, the better to confuse issues of paternity and thus heighten their children's chances of survival in the hazardous, half-cocked company of men. -- Natalie Angier O Magazine (06/01/2007)

In its treatment of primate behavior, Hrdy's book has no peers...[It is] a fascinating account of the selective pressures that have shaped the behavior of males and females.--Dorothy Cheney Science It is an understatement to say that this is a provocative essay. Although the book is written for a general audience, it will compel specialists to reconsider many of their assumptions about the evolution of primate females. Those interested in evolutionary influences upon human social behavior will be stimulated and challenged. Undoubtedly, many of the hypotheses will be controversial, and some may be disturbing.--Joan B. Silk Ethnology and Sociology This is a splendid book. It is a scientific treatise on primate sex and status, successfully masquerading as a good read.--Alison Jolly American Scientist The bulk of the book represents an attempt to create a perspective on the evolutionary biology of women by evaluating their female primate heritage. These chapters are original, high quality formulations presenting and explaining the behavior of female primates using a combination of sociobiological and socioecological principles of analysis...The book is written toward a borderline between the scientific and the popular audience--not an easy thing to do--but, by and large, Hrdy does just that. For this reason, the book has a place in both research and teaching.--Jane B. Lancaster American Journal of Physical Anthropology [A] breakthrough book...A primatologist by training and feminist by predilection, Hrdy asked the basic and in my mind perfectly sensible question: How do women compare to other female primates? What can we understand about our urges, desires, and fears, our sexuality, our relationships with men and with other women, and the near universality of women's second-class status, by examining the lives and loves of our closest nonhuman kin? Among Hrdy's many bracing conclusions: Far from being coy and sexually tepid, as the stereotype has it, women may well have evolved for a restless sort of promiscuity, the better to confuse issues of paternity and thus heighten their children's chances of survival in the hazardous, half-cocked company of men.-- (06/01/2007)

This is a splendid book. It is a scientific treatise on primate sex and status, successfully masquerading as a good read.--Alison Jolly American Scientist In its treatment of primate behavior, Hrdy's book has no peers...[It is] a fascinating account of the selective pressures that have shaped the behavior of males and females.--Dorothy Cheney Science The bulk of the book represents an attempt to create a perspective on the evolutionary biology of women by evaluating their female primate heritage. These chapters are original, high quality formulations presenting and explaining the behavior of female primates using a combination of sociobiological and socioecological principles of analysis...The book is written toward a borderline between the scientific and the popular audience--not an easy thing to do--but, by and large, Hrdy does just that. For this reason, the book has a place in both research and teaching.--Jane B. Lancaster American Journal of Physical Anthropology It is an understatement to say that this is a provocative essay. Although the book is written for a general audience, it will compel specialists to reconsider many of their assumptions about the evolution of primate females. Those interested in evolutionary influences upon human social behavior will be stimulated and challenged. Undoubtedly, many of the hypotheses will be controversial, and some may be disturbing.--Joan B. Silk Ethnology and Sociology [A] breakthrough book...A primatologist by training and feminist by predilection, Hrdy asked the basic and in my mind perfectly sensible question: How do women compare to other female primates? What can we understand about our urges, desires, and fears, our sexuality, our relationships with men and with other women, and the near universality of women's second-class status, by examining the lives and loves of our closest nonhuman kin? Among Hrdy's many bracing conclusions: Far from being coy and sexually tepid, as the stereotype has it, women may well have evolved for a restless sort of promiscuity, the better to confuse issues of paternity and thus heighten their children's chances of survival in the hazardous, half-cocked company of men.-- (06/01/2007)

It is an understatement to say that this is a provocative essay. Although the book is written for a general audience, it will compel specialists to reconsider many of their assumptions about the evolution of primate females. Those interested in evolutionary influences upon human social behavior will be stimulated and challenged. Undoubtedly, many of the hypotheses will be controversial, and some may be disturbing.--Joan B. Silk Ethnology and Sociology This is a splendid book. It is a scientific treatise on primate sex and status, successfully masquerading as a good read.--Alison Jolly American Scientist In its treatment of primate behavior, Hrdy's book has no peers...[It is] a fascinating account of the selective pressures that have shaped the behavior of males and females.--Dorothy Cheney Science The bulk of the book represents an attempt to create a perspective on the evolutionary biology of women by evaluating their female primate heritage. These chapters are original, high quality formulations presenting and explaining the behavior of female primates using a combination of sociobiological and socioecological principles of analysis...The book is written toward a borderline between the scientific and the popular audience--not an easy thing to do--but, by and large, Hrdy does just that. For this reason, the book has a place in both research and teaching.--Jane B. Lancaster American Journal of Physical Anthropology [A] breakthrough book...A primatologist by training and feminist by predilection, Hrdy asked the basic and in my mind perfectly sensible question: How do women compare to other female primates? What can we understand about our urges, desires, and fears, our sexuality, our relationships with men and with other women, and the near universality of women's second-class status, by examining the lives and loves of our closest nonhuman kin? Among Hrdy's many bracing conclusions: Far from being coy and sexually tepid, as the stereotype has it, women may well have evolved for a restless sort of promiscuity, the better to confuse issues of paternity and thus heighten their children's chances of survival in the hazardous, half-cocked company of men.-- (06/01/2007)

[A] breakthrough book...A primatologist by training and feminist by predilection, Hrdy asked the basic and in my mind perfectly sensible question: How do women compare to other female primates? What can we understand about our urges, desires, and fears, our sexuality, our relationships with men and with other women, and the near universality of women's second-class status, by examining the lives and loves of our closest nonhuman kin? Among Hrdy's many bracing conclusions: Far from being coy and sexually tepid, as the stereotype has it, women may well have evolved for a restless sort of promiscuity, the better to confuse issues of paternity and thus heighten their children's chances of survival in the hazardous, half-cocked company of men.-- (06/01/2007) In its treatment of primate behavior, Hrdy's book has no peers...[It is] a fascinating account of the selective pressures that have shaped the behavior of males and females.--Dorothy Cheney Science It is an understatement to say that this is a provocative essay. Although the book is written for a general audience, it will compel specialists to reconsider many of their assumptions about the evolution of primate females. Those interested in evolutionary influences upon human social behavior will be stimulated and challenged. Undoubtedly, many of the hypotheses will be controversial, and some may be disturbing.--Joan B. Silk Ethnology and Sociology The bulk of the book represents an attempt to create a perspective on the evolutionary biology of women by evaluating their female primate heritage. These chapters are original, high quality formulations presenting and explaining the behavior of female primates using a combination of sociobiological and socioecological principles of analysis...The book is written toward a borderline between the scientific and the popular audience--not an easy thing to do--but, by and large, Hrdy does just that. For this reason, the book has a place in both research and teaching.--Jane B. Lancaster American Journal of Physical Anthropology This is a splendid book. It is a scientific treatise on primate sex and status, successfully masquerading as a good read.--Alison Jolly American Scientist

Sarah Hrdy belongs to a new generation of primate-watchers who are filling in the blanks concerning the everyday behaviors of our nearest relatives. Hrdy, and many of her coworkers (as well as the better-known Jane Goodall and Alison Jolly), are female; and they bring to their scholarship a special interest in the role of females in primate groups. Here then is Hrdy's survey of the data, based on her own observations of langurs in India and the many reports that have accrued since the mid-sixties. Her essential point is that females, no less than males, are competitive, sexually active, and socially involved members of groups. In the course of 70 million years of evolution, the primates show wide diversity in structure and behavior, exhibiting every known social system, except polyandry (one female, several males). Monogamy is the rule among some prosimians, among marmosets and gibbons - in which case females enjoy high status and are physically similar to males. Females dominate among squirrel monkeys and ring-tailed lemurs. On the other hand, the female hamadryas baboon is probably the most wretched and least independent of any nonhuman primate. The hamadryas female is not related to other females in the harem, which is dominated by a single male. In contrast, there is a strong sisterhood among gelada females in similarly structured baboon groups. The gelada females can and do unite to rally against the male. What does Hrdy make of all this variety? For one, she debunks both macho and feminist myths: female primates are not meek, weak sisters who owe their existence to the benevolent protection of males, nor are they sweet uncompetitive ladies who know no lust for power, or Amazons who can look back to some primordial matriarchal past. Such creatures never evolved, says Hrdy. instead, she believes that human female sexuality is rooted in nonhuman primate evolution where one can find present evidence for orgasm, for concealed ovulation, and for year-round sexual receptivity. She further believes that these aspects of sexuality have been adaptive - allowing females to compete for promising males, to manipulate male behavior, and to increase male investment in offspring; as well as increasing the primate's potential for passing on her genes. Thus Hrdy casts her theories along well-known sociobiological lines. She also favors the admittedly reductionist hypothesis of British primatologist Richard Wrangham that primate groups are structured in response to the quality and quantity of food available. Females arrange themselves in space and time, she says, to maximize food intake while minimizing competition for food from either individual females or from other groups of females. (Males, in turn, arrange themselves so as to control these dispersed females.) Such a conclusion belies the complexity of behavior Hrdy has observed, and even her suggestion of consciousness and strategic thinking (as well as the recognition of individual personalities that might lead to nonsexist bonding friendships). So, while Hrdy displays a fine eye and a fine hand at gathering and reporting the data, one may hope that further studies will engender less stark and materialistic underpinnings for human behavior. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.

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