A new study in the journal Personal Relationships reveals that women prefer mates who are recognized by their peers for their skills, abilities, and achievements, while not preferring men who use coercive tactics to subordinate their rivals. Indeed, women found dominance strategies of the latter type to be attractive primarily when men used them in the context of male-male athletic competitions.

Women prefer prestige over dominance in mates

The Minangkabau people migrated across the Straits of Malacca from Sumatra centuries ago and their traditional houses consist of upswept roofs reminiscent of buffalo horns. Many of the state’s modern buildings are fine examples of this distinctive architecture.

A unique feature of the state is the Adat Perpatih, a matrilineal social system practised by the present-day descendants. This system is evident in clan and marriage customs, property ownership and dance forms.

The state capital of Seremban is an hour’s drive from Kuala Lumpur and is a flourishing urban centre with several historic and cultural landmarks.

New York Times article on Eastern tradition of female centered sexuality.

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A common representation of Justice is a blind-folded woman holding a set of  scales. The origin of the Goddess of Justice goes back to antiquity. She was referred to as Ma’at by the ancient Egyptians and was often depicted carrying a sword with an ostrich feather in her hair (but no scales) to symbolize truth and justice. The term magistrate is derived from Ma’at because she assisted Osiris in the judgment of the dead by weighing their hearts. [1]

To the ancient Greeks she was known as Themis, originally the organizer of the “communal affairs of humans, particularly assemblies.” [2] Her ability to foresee the future enabled her to become one of the oracles at Delphi, which in turn led to her establishment as the goddess of divine justice. Classical representations of Themis did not show her blindfolded (because of her talent for prophecy, she had no need to be blinded) nor was she holding a sword (because she represented common consent, not coercion). [3]

The Roman goddess of justice was called Justitia and was often portrayed as evenly balancing both scales and a sword and wearing a blindfold. She was sometimes portrayed holding the fasces (a bundle of rods around an ax symbolizing judicial authority) in one hand and a flame in the other (symbolizing truth). [4]

Internet Resources

Donna Marie Giancola, Justice and the Face of the Great Mother (East and West)
This paper traces the historical parallels between Ancient Greek and Indian images of justice. The author compares two concepts of justice: an older and often overlooked view of justice from the Goddess religions where the goddess of justice was an avenger with the more traditional patriarchal view of justice as an abstract principle which forms the basis of modern Western law.

Prepared by Barbara Swatt, Reference Intern.

University of Washington School of Law

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[1] “Legal Symbols of the Anglo-American Legal Tradition,” 11 The Guide to American Law: Everyone’s Legal Encyclopedia, Appendix D, 685, 687 (1985).

[] Id. at 687.

[] Cathleen Burnett, “Justice: Myth and Symbol,” 11 Legal Stud. F. 79, 80 (1987).

[] Supra, note 1 at 688.

From the Economist Magazine: Gender pay gap between females and males with Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees.

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In 1920, an American woman leader proposes the formation of a Matriarchal Political Party in order to establish a Matriarchal form of Government in the United States.

View the New York Times Historical Document: 1920 US Matriarchal goverment proposal

Killer whales are social animals that live in stable family-related groups.  Killer whales display a  high level of care for their offspring.  In addition to the mothers, various pod members (mainly adolescent females) perform most of the care for the calves.  As with most mammals, killer whales are very protective of their young.

Killer whale pods are based on the lineage of the mother (mothers, daughters, and sons form groups); the whales live and travel with their mothers even after they are full-grown, forming strongly matriarchal whale societies.

Elephants are herd animals. In the wild they live in families which keep close bonds despite covering large areas of land looking for food. They have a stable social order of family and extended family groups unmatched in the world of mammals. Experienced mother elephants that lead, protect and train the young.

The Elephant Matriarchy

Elephant life is governed by a matriarch (the top female herd leader); in a family and clan, all authority is vested in experienced mother elephants who demand respect and are acknowledged as herd leaders. They alone protect and lead the young; they maintain order and harmony in the group; they face the foe with courage and aggression. The large proud bulls also play a role in providing security, but they are not inclined to family life. They go their own way for long periods traveling alone or with groups of other males only to join at mating times with the females.

The core group is the family group, which consists of two to three older females and their offspring this group stays together even in large migratory herds.

Family groups usually number up to 20 or 30 animals of different ages. The leaders are usually sisters, who retain their association for life.

Power and struggle are often central experiences of masculine culture and the costs of pursuing appropriate behaviours can be heavy:

‘To be a man it is not enough simply to be: a man must do, display, prove, in order to establish unchallenged manhood’ (Miles, 1991). All of the major signifiers of manhood are continually under threat or intrinsically transitory: money, political power, physical strength, sexual performance – none can be relied upon to last.

(McLean in Kenway 1997:13)

Boys who hold to this kind of masculinity may find themselves constantly struggling to save face and live up to expectations. Even the most successful may feel they have to repeatedly prove themselves. As a consequence, many boys experience anxiety and fear of failure which undermine their self-esteem and sense of security.

For men, two things seem to go inextricably together – the desire for power and the fear of powerlessness. No other alternative seems to exist.

(McLean in Kenway 1997:13)

Many young men feel unable either to succeed in establishing an ‘acceptable’ masculinity or to question the narrowness of the way in which masculinity is being defined. This can set up a ‘dog eat dog’ pattern of interactions in which many boys feel under siege but ‘locked in’ to the game. Providing space and time for masculinity issues at school can create ‘time out’ in this cycle.

Feeling powerless but acting tough

Allowing boys to examine the desire for power (and fear of powerlessness) that drives some masculine behaviours may help them see that they have many choices.

Some boys’ dominating behaviours provide them with privilege and rewards at the expense of others. They may be seen as ‘tough’ and ‘manly’. If intimidation seems to work at school, it may also work in family life and into the future. They themselves, and those around them, pay the price in material, health and family costs.

The fear of losing face – of failing at properly ‘doing’ their masculinity – motivates some boys to join in sex-based harassment and violence at school. Acknowledging this does not excuse their behaviour, but it can be a first step in understanding how collective gender dynamics work.

… in secondary school … boys often experience girls’ verbal and social sophistication as extremely intimidating. In many cases boys respond with techniques of physical harassment, which are trivialised by terms such as ‘joking’ or ‘teasing’. Boys often find it very difficult to recognise the collective nature of their own behaviour … (To a boy) his own ‘joke’ is an entirely individual and isolated occurrence. But to a girl who has experienced the same ‘joke’ from twenty different boys in one day, it can take on a very different meaning … (this underlines the importance of) anti-harassment policies based on … collective gender dynamics.

(McLean in Kenway 1997:14)

Recognising the collective pressures

It is ironic but true that while men as a group clearly hold the reins of power, most men often feel powerless, for example, at work where hierarchies and competitive systems may create few winners and many who fail. School systems too can create winners and losers and boys who see little reward in school engagement often gain some satisfaction, and peer approval, in resistance.

While the women’s movement has encouraged girls to question the ways that gender behaviours may limit their lives, most boys have not been challenged in the same way. Schools are well placed to encourage such social and self-awareness.

Faced with bullying from older boys, for example, they are more likely to think about taking martial arts classes … than to question the ideals and practices of masculinity. More masculinity, not less, is what most boys long for.

(McLean in Kenway 1997:14)

The need for boys to be aware of a diversity of masculinities is clearly an important step in freeing them from narrow and damaging masculinity practices.

In what could be termed a truly seminal discovery, researchers have shown that when females are more promiscuous, males have to work harder — at the genetic level, that is. More specifically, they determined that a protein controlling semen viscosity evolves more rapidly in primate species with promiscuous females than in monogamous species. The finding demonstrates that sexual competition among males is evident at the molecular level, as well as at behavioral and physiological levels.

The researchers, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Bruce Lahn at the University of Chicago, published their findings in the November 7, 2004, issue of Nature Genetics.
“In species with promiscuous females, there’s more selective pressure for the male to make his semen more competitive. It’s similar to the pressures of a competitive marketplace.”
Bruce T. Lahn

Lahn’s group studied semenogelin, a major protein in the seminal fluid that controls the viscosity of semen immediately following ejaculation. In some species of primates, it allows semen to remain quite liquid after ejaculation, but in others, semenogelin molecules chemically crosslink with one another, increasing the viscosity of semen. In some extreme cases, semenogelin’s effects on viscosity are so strong that the semen becomes a solid plug in the vagina. According to Lahn, such plugs might serve as a sort of molecular “chastity belt” to prevent fertilization by the sperm of subsequent suitors, though they might also prevent semen backflow to increase the likelihood of fertilization.

Lahn and his colleagues compared the SEMG2 gene, which contains the blueprint for semenogelin, from a variety of primates. They began by sequencing the SEMG2 gene in humans, chimpanzees, pygmy chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, macaques, colobus monkeys, and spider monkeys. These species were chosen because they represent all the major mating systems. These include those in which one female copulates with one male in a fertile period (such as gorillas and gibbons); those in which females copulate highly promiscuously (such as chimpanzees and macaques); and those in which mating practices fall somewhere in between (such as orangutans where a female will copulate with the dominant male, but may also copulate with other males opportunistically).

“When we plotted data on the evolution rate of the semenogelin protein against the level of female promiscuity, we saw a clear correlation whereby species with more promiscuous females showed much higher rates of protein evolution than species with more monogamous females,” said Lahn. The researchers measured protein evolution rates by counting the number of amino acid changes in the protein, then scaling it to the amount of evolutionary time taken to make those changes.

“The idea is that in species with promiscuous females, there’s more selective pressure for the male to make his semen more competitive. It’s similar to the pressures of a competitive marketplace. In such a marketplace, competitors have to constantly change their products to make them better, to give them an edge over their rivals — whereas, in a monopoly, there’s no incentive to change.”

The finding constitutes the first specific evidence that different levels of sexual competition produce different genetic effects, said Lahn. It had been established previously that levels of polyandry — the mating of one female with more than one male — affected physiological traits. For example, more polyandrous species have larger testes capable of producing more sperm. There is a metabolic cost to such adaptation, Lahn said, and in species where there is no competition, the cost is not worth the effort.

“Now, for the first time, we show such competitive effects, not only at the level of physiology, but of individual genes,” said Lahn. “The genes have to adapt faster for any given male to gain an edge over his competitors.”

According to Lahn, while other studies have indicated that male reproductive genes in general tend to evolve more rapidly than other genes, “this study extends those observations to a more quantitative level, showing that the rate of evolution actually correlates with how intense the sexual selection is.”