Sex inequality driven by dispersal

Chen, Yuan; Ge, Erhao; Zhou, Liqiong; Du, Juan; Mace, Ruth

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.027

Cited by 25 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…In fact, we find that there is remarkable equality in how males and females divide leisure time across households in both populations. This demonstrates an important finding, diverging from evidence from agricultural (Strassman, 2017) and industrialised societies (Hochschild & Machung, 2012;Nakamura & Akiyoshi, 2015;Voicu et al, 2009;Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard, 2010), as well as patrilocal populations (Chen et al ., 2023), where it is often the case that patriarchal norms are prevalent and gender inequalities thrive (Chen et al, 2023;Gupta & Stratton, 2008;Geist, 2005;Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994). Outside options have been seen to lead to inequalities within households in many large-scale societies (Shimray, 2004;Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994;Greenstein, 2000;Breen & Cooke, 2005); however our results of a null association between our measure of outside options and leisure time enjoyed, complimented by observed equal division of leisure in households, point to a potential role of some unique factors prevalent in these societies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Bargaining between the sexes: outside options and leisure time in hunter-gatherer households

Deb,

Saunders,

Major-Smith

et al. 2024

Preprint

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We discuss gendered division of labour in nuclear households as a bargaining problem, where male and female partners bargain over labour inputs and resulting leisure time. We hypothesize that outside options - an individual’s fallback options for welfare outside their household, such as kin support - affects this bargaining process, providing those with greater outside options more leverage to bargain for leisure time. In two hunter-gatherer populations, the BaYaka and Agta, we take social capital as the determinant of outside options, using a generative model of the Nash bargaining problem and Bayesian multilevel logistic regression to test our hypothesis. We find no evidence for an association between social capital and division of leisure in either population. Instead, we find remarkable equality in the division of leisure time within households. We suggest the potential role of sex-egalitarian norms, non-substitutability of subsistence labour, bilocality and behaviors which maintain gender equality in immediate-return hunter-gatherers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Bargaining between the sexes: outside options and leisure time in hunter-gatherer households

Deb,

Saunders,

Major-Smith

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…The analyses we describe present gender differences in wealth acquisition in patrilineal and matrilineal contexts, rather than describing differences between men and women in the same household. The latter would be an interesting extension of the present research, and might also reveal differences in bargaining power for women and men under different forms of post-marital residence [106]. In the Mosuo case, women often co-reside with their brothers, whose motivations for conflict and cooperation differ from those between husbands and wives.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Gender disparities in material and educational resources differ by kinship system

Mattison

Beheim

et al. 2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Contemporary inequality exists at an unprecedented scale. Social scientists have emphasized the role played by material wealth in driving its escalation. Evolutionary anthropologists understand the drive to accumulate material wealth as one that is coupled ultimately to increasing reproductive success. Owing to biological caps on reproduction for women, the efficiency of this conversion can differ by gender, with implications for understanding the evolution of gender disparities in resource accumulation. Efficiency also differs according to the type of resources used to support reproductive success. In this paper, we review evolutionary explanations of gender disparities in resources and investigate empirical evidence to support or refute those explanations among matrilineal and patrilineal subpopulations of ethnic Chinese Mosuo, who share an ethnolinguistic identity, but differ strikingly in terms of institutions and norms surrounding kinship and gender. We find that gender differentially predicts income and educational attainment. Men were more likely to report income than women; amounts earned were higher for men overall, but the difference between men and women was minimal under matriliny. Men reported higher levels of educational attainment than women, unexpectedly more so in matrilineal contexts. The results reveal nuances in how biology and cultural institutions affect gender disparities in wealth. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary ecology of inequality’.

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“…The family-size dynamic is not only influenced by but also affects the demographic events, and it also influences the interactions and ultimately inclusive fitness of the family members (through changing of local relatedness (Croft et al, 2021), possibly also different costs and benefits of helping co-residing members). Although there are many advantages to living in large families (Chen et al, 2023; Chomtohsuwan & Nagashima, 2010b; Dessy et al, 2021b; Sauerborn et al, 1996; Thomas et al, 2018), there may also be drawbacks, such as decreased cooperation and an increase in conflict due to decreasing average relatedness. For example, it has been reported that more effort should be spent on reproductive competition between residing father and son and between brothers under polygyny than monogamy (Ji et al, 2014), and Tanzanian children from polygynous families (bigger households) show poorer growth performance than those from monogamous families (smaller households) (Hadley, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Large families which used to be common in many regions around the world, are still prevalent in some rural places (Burch, 1967;Stack, 1974) and becoming more important in some developed countries (Bengtson, 2001). Living in a large family is associated with various benefits, such as risk resilience (Dessy et al, 2021a;Sauerborn et al, 1996), more help (Thomas et al, 2018), lower living expenses costs (Chomtohsuwan & Nagashima, 2010a), and workloads (Chen et al, 2023). Although it has been argued that these families seldom exceed 25 persons per household (Burch, 1970).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kin selection underpins family dynamics in rural China

He,

Wang,

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The number of co-resident members is an important characteristic of human families and thus plays an important role in human evolution. However, an inclusive fitness model of how many members should co-reside has not been explicitly tested. Here we use an evolutionary game model and a decade of family dynamic data from a rural population of southwestern China (1,110 households) to show that the existence of an evolutionary stable family size can be understood by considering the average local relatedness and average inclusive fitness of the family. We found that average relatedness (r̅) decreased with increasing family size, and r̅ was associated with helping behavior (especially for the elders) in the family, so the family tended to keep a higher level of average relatedness by adjusting the number of co-resident members. These findings are helpful to understand the variation in family size in different cultures and to demonstrate the importance of kin selection in regulating family dynamics.

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Sex inequality driven by dispersal

Cited by 25 publications

References 64 publications

Bargaining between the sexes: outside options and leisure time in hunter-gatherer households

Bargaining between the sexes: outside options and leisure time in hunter-gatherer households

Gender disparities in material and educational resources differ by kinship system

Kin selection underpins family dynamics in rural China

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