Female Reproductive Pros And Cons

The historical context: Women and men faced different issues as they evolved and therefore developed different strategies in mate-seeking to reach the goal of having the most reproductive success. Since women were the ones who were making the most effort to invest time and care into their offspring, men were therefore caring less and women became a limited reproductive resource for men. Women had no choice but to rely on men and that is when selective criteria for choosing a mate appeared and had no choice but to choose someone whom they could trust would bring food on the table and security to her and their offspring. Moore and Cassidy think that “female reproductive success is therefore constrained by access to the resources necessary to raise costly offspring.” In order to seek for a mate, Puts tells us that women were competing to be the most attractive ones because more physically attractive women demand greater male investment and other direct and indirect benefits. Miller et al explain: “The sex that invests less in offspring (typically males, who minimally invest sperm, compelred with females, who minimally invest eggs, gestation, lactation and other care) should devote proportionately more mating effort to short-term …show more content…
decided to test 37 different cultures to see how people were seeking for mates and Wood and Eagly decided to retest their results with the data from the United Nations. They explain: “As gender equality increased, women expressed less preference for older men, men expressed less preference for younger women, and consequently the sex difference in the preferred age of mates became smaller.” This shows signs that with equality and empowerment, criteria selection can also change. Eagly and Wood agree with Schlegel and Barry and cite them: “As found by Schlegel and Barry, however women’s status is likely to be high in societies in which they contribute to public production and thereby can receive benefits from the broader