Gender And Dominance

I really like Lucy's Legacy: Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution by Alison Jolly, ISBN:0674000692. Jolly pulls together a wide breadth of material to compare humans and other primates and their solutions for sex and society. Some differences; lots of similarities.

Comparative primatology/sociology, like the kind that Alison Jolly does in _Lucy's Legacy_, gives interesting insights into human behavior.

Belief: EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR EVERYBODY, THE SOONER THE BETTER.

Observational hypothesis: in human dominance hierarchies, you'll tend to find males at the top. That is different from and doesn't mean that men are dominant or that particular races are dominant.

Steven Goldberg, chair of the of the Department of Sociology at CUNY-City College, New York, has a provocative thesis about gender dominance. A review of his book is at http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/People/Goldberg/SELIG.html. His thesis is probably more often misunderstood and misused than not. (One interesting comment that an Amazon reviewer made about his thesis is that of course men dominate in the things men care more about than women.)

For the sake of balance, other interesting-looking books:


 * "Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman : The Unique Female Qualities of Leadership," by Esther Wachs Book, ISBN: 0066619890
 * "The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future," by Riane Eisler, ISBN: 0062502891
 * "Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How to Use It," by Naomi Wolf, ISBN: 0449909514
 * "Moving Beyond Words / Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender," by Gloria Steinem, ISBN: 0671510525
 * "The Princessa : Machiavelli for Women," by Harriet Rubin, ISBN: 0440508320

[Insert an Everything2ian soft-link to "The 48 Laws of Power," by Robert Greene & Joost Elffers, ISBN: 0140280197.]

Quoth Harriet Rubin, Founder Doubleday / Currency, "Once upon a time power was in patriarchy, a key motivator. It created great products and efficient systems. The subordination of women made for success. Now the opposite is true. The sectors that are growing are those in which there is no sexual identity--such as on the Internet."