A gender bias expert, Kim Elsesser, Ph.D., is the author of Sex and the Office, and she taught classes on gender at UCLA for eight years. She is a senior contributor for Forbes and has published in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
New research challenges the long-held notion that innate differences between men and women are at the root of gender inequalities in society. The new studies reveal that many of our close primate relatives live in societies that are either female-dominated or share power equally between the sexes. From forming female coalitions to controlling women’s reproductive rights, lessons from these primate societies may offer clues about human power dynamics.
However, the latest findings reveal that female dominance or gender equality is not as unusual as previously thought. “If you look at the whole distribution of variation across primates, you see that it's not really that uncommon to have something other than male dominance outside of the African and Asian monkeys,” said Rebecca Lewis, the study's lead author and a professor at Duke University.
If female primates wield more power when their fertility is limited, this could shed light on the motivations behind attempts to restrict human women's control over their reproductive choices. Feminist scholars have long argued that men’s control over women’s reproductive autonomy is a central feature of male dominance in humans, and
However, Lewis explains that for some primates, the reverse is true. Male marmosets, for example, perform the majority of childcare. Female marmosets form a unique mating bond with two males, and these males exclusively pair with that single female. Following this exclusive arrangement, the female marmoset typically gives birth to a set of twins.
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