The Woman that never evolved (Deccan herald, 27th July 2006)

BOOK REVIEW
‘THE WOMAN THAT NEVER EVOLVED’
BY SARAH BLAFFER HRDY
Harvard University Press, 1981
15.25$ (U.S.A)


Book titles are of two kinds, those that delight by their aptness and those that leave the reader feeling cheated. This book falls in the former category. The author, an evolutionary biologist particularly known for her path-breaking studies on primates, addresses issues as diverse as feminism and the evolution of social behaviour using her observations in the wild to dispel popular myths about female subordination.

To the lay reader, popular cinema and traditional cultural practices equally declare that men have evolved to occupy different niches from women. In simultaneously trying to defend and oppose this view, both primatologists and feminists have long missed glaring evidences in the primate record. Competition, establishment of hierarchies and coercive behaviour are, by and large, believed to be a prerogative of the male sex. While it is true that in an individual male versus female conflict the male usually wins, it needed a sharper eye to observe instances of manipulation in females- such as reproductive inhibition of other females. As the author says- ‘Few anthropologists have asked why, if intelligence evolved among males to help them hunt, Nature should have squandered it on a sex that never hunted’.

The varieties of social organization in females are immense, from the female hamadryas baboon; referred to as ‘the most wretched and least independent of any non-human primate’ to the female gelada where female-female bonding is the most enduring social relationship and males are merely tolerated for the brief period of mating. Caring for infants is another example of the complex pressures under which female behaviours have evolved. All females in a troop vie for neonates. While this gives the mother some freedom and trains inexperienced females in infant tending, clumsy tenders can prove hazardous for the infant. Mothers in different primate groups allow ‘infant sharing’ to different degrees.

Seen from some angles, the ‘aloof and dominant’ male himself may be at the receiving end of manipulation. Indeterminate paternity offers a multiply copulating female the advantage of obtaining protection for herself and her offspring from several males. Concealed ovulation enables a female to copulate even when she cannot possibly conceive. Also, in monogamous primates, the possibility of polygyny (the state of having multiple female mates) is excluded by the deployment of one female per area and by fierce antagonism among females. All studies without exception provide proof for females as intelligent strategists having evolved in response to different selective pressures as compared to males.

The complex organization of human societies brings with it both the power to effect change and the ability to introduce imbalance. The book overwhelms with evidence as much as it tantalizes with an inconclusive end. As the author says, ‘Among all females, the chance to control their own destinies is greatest among women’. Reading the book would better equip us all to face that destiny; and feed the fascination for our past that most of us have and some of us acknowledge