The Role of Polygamy in Monogamy

Polygyny is also pretty ruinous to women. It creates a lot of female-female competition, and so I think it almost works better for both sexes in the sweet spot societies where resources are distributed evenly enough that being married to that average Joe is actually worth it. If you create an environment with such inequality, then it becomes more advantageous for the woman to be the second wife of the top guy. And you even see this in like female competitive nature. In areas of high income inequality, women behave more promiscuously,. They have more short term mating, because that's the preferred male strategy.