Battle of the Sexes

Men are assumed to have a natural competitive instinct; more so than women, at least. Professional sports, the military, chess tournaments - any group or event characterized by aggressive or cut-throat behavior- is usually dominated by men. Conventional wisdom holds that the more competitive nature of men in comparison to women is a product of Darwinian evolution, i.e. it is not a social construct, dependent on culture and norms. New studies are questioning these assumptions about gendered competitiveness. Studies were carried out on two different groups: the Maasai - a patriarchal society, and the Khasi, a matrilineal society. The findings? Men of the Maasai society displayed a stronger competitive drive than women. No surprise there. What about the Khasi?

"Yet, this result reverses in the matrilineal society, where we find that women are more competitive than men. Perhaps surprisingly, Khasi women are even slightly more competitive than Maasai men, but this difference is not statistically significant at conventional levels under any of our formal statistical tests."

What does this mean? If we take this analysis a step further, we can question the "natural-ness" of human competitive nature. If competitiveness is not universal (in the sense that neither male or female is inherently "more competitive"), then we can frame competitiveness as a social construct. The question then become: what norms, values, institutions, and relations create or define our competitive behavior? What are the costs/benefits of this behavior? How do we change it?

Sean