Evolutionary Ethics 233for high-earners. While meat in large quantities can only be supplied by male
hunters, women in hunting and gathering societies meet most of the nutritional
needs of their communities, by gathering, digging, trapping, and fishing. Only in
large, hierarchically-organized societies in which women’s economic activities are
formally constrained does earned, appropriated, and inherited wealth become a
scarce and necessary good, to obtain a share of which women will make evident
sacrifices. In any case, it would be difficult to mount an argument that social
institutions and educational systems ought to assist women in pursing the goal of
an excellent WHR, rather than in their intellectual development or maximal use
of talents.
6 MORALITY AND THE MARITAL COMPROMISEThe notion that human marriage is a compromise between the male preference
for polygamy or free-ranging bachelorhood (as opposed as these strategies are)
and the more uniform female preference for lifelong monogamous commitment
is not well-supported by observation. Rather, in addition to patterns of sexual
receptivity that correspond to lunar months and to the seasons, there appear
to be longer cycles of emotional receptivity determining the timing of human
association and defection. A spontaneously arising and collapsing pair bond of
four to seven years duration, punctuated by opportunistic excursions, appears to
be natural for both sexes, with women’s selectivity in the latter regard somewhat
higher than men’s, as the evolutionary theorist would predict. The wastefulness
of relentless and futile seduction efforts by males, together with the sacrifices for
both sexes of strict monogamy, suggest that a mixed strategy will be realized,
either, as Trivers suggested, as a polymorphism within the group, with various
temperaments representing a variety of strategies, none of which goes to fixation, or
by shifts of habit over the life-cycle of the individual, or in response to surrounding
conditions. As Kitcher remarks, “Males and females can be expected to play highly
complicated conditional strategies whenever evolution has equipped them with the
cognitive capacities required by these strategies” [Kitcher, 1985, 173]. Contrary to
the claim that females overwhelmingly prefer monogamy, it is obvious that females
are “fickle” in the sense that they are likely to revise their initial estimates of mate
quality on the basis of longer experience. Many novels and stories deal with the
profound effects on individuals and on the social fabric of such re-evaluations.
Further, as men are known to defect, die, and kill each other, a rigid monogamy
strategy would be easily invaded by a more flexible temperament. While men
would not tolerate harem-like conditions, DNA analysis has demonstrated that
covert polyandry is more extensive than previously suspected.
The notion that women object less to physical infidelity on the part of pair-
bonded mates than to “emotional” infidelity and the threat of abandonment be-
cause they do not risk raising children who are not their own has been questioned
for both its factual and its explanatory component [Harris, 2004]. Jealousy seems
not to be very differently structured in the two sexes, assuredly not differently