Violence against women in an evolutionary context: is the gender system a cause of dystocic labor in modern humans?
Résumé
Violence against women is one of the most widespread violations of human rights in our world today. The gender system, an institutionalized system producing different roles for women and men, could be the source of a system of oppression of women that generates gender-based violence. Cultural practice affected by the gender system, such as food sharing, may explain biological difference between men and women. According to the "Nutritional Constraints on Women's Size Selection" (NCWS) hypothesis, body size difference between men and women coud be explained by the women's limitation to the food access throughout human evolution. This hypothesis is investigated in this paper, through new insights from primatology, evolutionary anthropology and auxology. Based on their analyses, we suggest that sexual dimorphism, where males are bigger than females, is a primate condition rather than the result of the inequality in the food access. NCWS hypothesis suggests that nutritional constraints result in a limitation of growth and produce small pelvis. This would explain why modern humans exhibit a high frequency of fetal-pelvic disproportion resulting in a high maternal mortality without medical assistance. But previous works show that the pelvic shape is adapted to the parturition in different ciconstances (small bodied women, reproductive age). For these reasons, we suggest that the emergence of the gender system is not related to the specific obstetrical conditions of modern humans. Other hypotheses such as the obstetric dilemma or the energetic for growth and gestation bring specific explanations to the human birth patterns.
Domaines
Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)