This chapter explores the costly nature of birthing and parenting in human evolution, and how it drove our need for family planning and gynecology. It discusses birth control methods, cultural norms, and the challenges of reproduction for the human species, as well as the evolution of sexism and its connection to mating strategies and control over female bodies.
The female body has been neglected in anthropological narratives, minimized in the archeological record, and excluded from modern-day clinical trials. But what if that weren’t the case? How would the scientific story of humanity change if we made women the protagonists? Cat Bohannon first asked herself that question a decade ago, and her surprising answers can now be found in a New York Times bestselling book called “Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.”
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