Letter of purpose of the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society.

Chang, Rosemarie Sokol; Fisher, Maryanne L.

doi:10.1037/h0099193

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Evolutionary theories, EP and sociobiology have been scrutinised and problematised by feminists within philosophy and science studies as well as by feminist EP (Allen et al, 1975;Choi, 2001;Fehr, 2012;Hoquet, 2010;Hrdy, 1981;Hubbard, 1983;Jackson and Rees, 2007;Rose and Rose, 2001;Sokol-Chang and Fisher, 2013). This study makes a contribution to these fields by bringing the critique to bear on practice and also to the field of evolutionary health promotion.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From within the field of evolutionary theory, feminist evolutionary psychology (FEP) and feminist sociobiology is critical of the paucity of focus on, and the minimisation of, women in human evolution (Fehr, 2012;Hrdy, 1981;Hubbard, 1983; and see also Sokol-Chang and Fisher, 2013), Critiques have also been concerned with how evolutionary theories, specifically EP and sociobiology, tend to be essentialist, deterministic and androcentric (see e.g. Allen et al, 1975;Fausto-Sterling, 1992;Hoquet, 2010;Kelly, 2014;Rose and Rose, 2001),with political consequences that have the potential to exacerbate social injustices (Higgs and Jones, 2003;Jackson and Rees, 2007; see also Choi, 2001).…”

Section: An Evolutional Approach To Health Promotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender and evolutionary theory in workplace health promotion

Björklund

Wright

2017

Health Education Journal

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Objective: Ideas from evolutionary theories are increasingly taken up in health promotion. This article seeks to demonstrate how such a trend has the potential to embed essentialist and limiting stereotypes of women and men in health promotion practice. Design: We draw on material gathered for a larger ethnographic study that examined how discourses of health were re-contextualised in four workplace health promotion interventions in Sweden. Method: This study provided the opportunity to investigate how ideas derived from evolutionary theories produced particular constructs of the healthy employee. A Foucauldian notion of governmentality was used to examine the rationalities, truths and techniques that informed what we have called a 'Stone Age' discourse as these contributed to shaping the desires, actions and beliefs of lecturers and participants in the interventions. Results: We focus on one intervention which used the Stone Age discourse as an organising idea to constitute differences in women's and men's health through references to women as gatherers and men as hunters, thereby positioning men as the physical, emotional and mental ideal and women as the problematic and lacking 'other'. Conclusion: The paper concludes by discussing the implications of such ideas about health and gender for interventions aimed at changing behaviour and lifestyles. This article seeks to demonstrate how such a trend has the potential to embed essentialist and limiting stereotypes of women and men in health promotion practice. Design: We draw on material gathered for a larger ethnographic study that examined how discourses of health were re-contextualised in four workplace health promotion interventions in Sweden. Disciplines Education | Social and Behavioral SciencesMethod: This study provided the opportunity to investigate how ideas derived from evolutionary theories produced particular constructs of the healthy employee. A Foucauldian notion of governmentality was utilised to examine the specific rationalities, truths and techniques that informed what we have called a "Stone Age" discourse, as these contributed to shaping the desires, actions and beliefs of lecturers and participants in the interventions. Results:The second half of the article focuses on one intervention which used the Stone Age discourse as an organising idea to constitute differences in women and men's health through references to women as gatherers and men as hunters, thereby positioning men as the physical, emotional and mental ideal and women as the problematic and lacking "other". Conclusion: This paper concludes with the implications of such ideas about health and gender for interventions aimed at changing behaviour and lifestyles.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Evolutional Approach To Health Promotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and evolutionary theory in workplace health promotion

Björklund

Wright

2017

Health Education Journal

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“…EP scholars also argue that the field does take culture and social learning into account, and that both genes and environment are involved in any manifest human behaviour (Confer et al, 2010;Buss & Schmitt, 2011). While some scholars, such as Feminist Evolutionary Psychologists (Sokol-Chang & Fisher, 2013), try to bridge the divide between the two sides, others assert that feminism and EP are and will always be incompatible (Kelly, 2014).…”

Section: Evolutionary Psychology and Lgbtq+ Issues: A Qualitative Stumentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary Psychology and LGBTQ+ Issues: A Qualitative Study of Queer Women’s Perspectives on Research Results

Burchell¹,

Firth²,

Robinson³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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This study examines reactions to a recent evolutionary psychology article that uses self-report data to claim that same-sex attraction in women evolved because men find it a desirable quality in a mate. Our study explores a novel perspective on the article by interviewing 29 women with attraction to women in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Participants read a news article about the original study, then the original article, and were then asked about their thoughts and feelings. Our research questions were as follows: 1) What cognitive and emotional reactions to the article do women with attraction to women experience? 2) Why did this article generate a lot of online criticism, from the perspective of women who are attracted to women? 3) Do papers like this cause women with attraction to women to change their opinions about psychological journals and/or psychological research? Using thematic analysis, we found seven themes: Negative emotion, identity threat, failure to address sociocultural explanations, male/hetero-centric, differences in paradigms, sensationalized news article, and contextualizing. The proliferation of articles like these represents one of many small stressors women attracted to women deal with as a minority population, and this stress can have important implications for health.

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“…In fact, it can be traced back to responses to Darwin himself, with Eliza Burt Gamble’s (1894) response to Darwin (1871), entitled The Evolution of Woman, an Inquiry Into the Dogma of Her Inferiority to Man in 1894. It also played a central role in the formation (and letter of purpose) of the Feminist Evolutionary Perspectives Society (Sokol-Chang & Fisher, 2013). Indeed, Sokol-Chang and Fisher (2013) point out this very emphasis on female attractiveness at the expense of other traits.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

More than just a pretty face: The overlooked contributions of women in evolutionary psychology textbooks.

Burch¹

2020

Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences

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A great deal of evolutionary psychology (EP) texts and research emphasize the attractiveness of women over other skills or qualities. I would argue that given the parameters of the evolutionary landscape, the skills and strategies women used after mating and birth (particularly because it is widely argued that almost all women have an opportunity to mate) would be more important to their evolutionary success. To only focus on youth and beauty omits major portions of the human life span and human behavior and ignores the definition of fitness: the number of offspring who survive to reproduce. To this end, I examined introductory EP textbooks for the following content: if physical attractiveness was listed as a factor in female evolutionary success, if intelligence/resourcefulness or other traits were listed as factors, if skills and strategies women use after mating and birth were discussed, and if the role of older women was mentioned. The majority of EP texts discuss female attractiveness in detail, omit female intelligence and resourcefulness, overemphasize the role of men in feeding families, and neglect older women. Overall, this gives an incomplete and biased view of the human species. I then explore what female skills and strategies would play a large role in the survival of the species and should be discussed in introductory textbooks. Public Significance StatementEvolutionary psychology textbooks are the doorway to the discipline. How they depict humanity sets the framework for both future research and public perception. An examination of several textbooks shows that the majority discuss female attractiveness in detail, omit female intelligence and resourcefulness, diminish the role of women in provisioning and neglect older women. Overall, this gives an incomplete and/or biased view of the human species.

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Letter of purpose of the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society.

Cited by 11 publications

References 29 publications

Gender and evolutionary theory in workplace health promotion

Gender and evolutionary theory in workplace health promotion

Evolutionary Psychology and LGBTQ+ Issues: A Qualitative Study of Queer Women’s Perspectives on Research Results

More than just a pretty face: The overlooked contributions of women in evolutionary psychology textbooks.

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