Females Compete for Status More Than Males

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A lot of your work has looked at the unique and quite vicious ways that females enact their intra-sexual competition. So what is unique about the female competition for status when you compare it with males? Okay, well, I guess I have a recent paper where I argue that females, more than males, engage in safe, subtle, and solitary forms of competition. And by safe, I've done a lot of work and many others have, suggesting that across animal species, females need to stay alive more.

Joyce Benenson is a lecturer of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University whose research focuses on human social structures and sex differences in competition and cooperation.

We're often told that men are more competitive, more status-driven and more ruthless with rivals for potential mates. In reality doesn't seem to be true, the difference is that women's competition takes a more subtle, cynical and sophisticated route to drive away their competitors.

Expect to learn how women compete for status, why women exclude more than men, why women who promote an egalitarian world are less charitable than you might think, how you can interfere with a rivals' relationship without getting caught, the usefulness of gossip as an enforcement mechanism and much more...

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