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Sex Roles (2013) 69:549556 DOI 10.1007/s11199-013-0315-y
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Feminism and Evolutionary Psychology: Moving Forward
Alice H. Eagly & Wendy Wood
Published online: 19 September 2013# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract The Special Issue on feminism and evolutionary psychology published by Sex Roles (Smith and Konik 2011) has elicited responses that advance understanding of the debate between evolutionary psychology and feminist perspectives concerning the origins of similarities and differences in the behavior of women and men (Smith and Konik 2013). The further challenges to evolutionary psychology mounted in these responses suggest that the Special Issue has intensified the debate more that it has resolved it. Moving forward requires that feminist psychologists not only add to the considerable body of empirical evidence that challenges evolutionary psychology but also produce alternative evolutionary theories that transcend the nature-nurture controversy that underlies the current debate. To this end, we refer readers to our biosocial constructionist theory in which culture and biology are intertwined in both distal evolutionary processes that shaped human psychology and proximal mechanisms that underlie differences and similarities in male and female behavior (Wood and Eagly 2012).
Keywords Gender . Sex differences . Evolution . Feminist psychology . Sexual selection . Social roles
Introduction
The 2011 Special Issue published by the journal Sex Roles on feminist reactions to evolutionary psychology included an excellent mix of articles written by critics and supporters of evolutionary psychology and by innovators striving for alternative evolutionary theories (Smith and Konik 2011). We
accepted the editors invitation to write a commentary about these Special Issue articles (Eagly and Wood 2011) as did Buss and Schmitt (2011). In evidence of the high level of interest in the evolutionary issues that are critical to scientific understanding of gender, the Special Issue elicited seven new articles that Sex Roles is now publishing (Smith and Konik 2013). Once again we accepted the editors invitation to write a commentarythis time focusing on the seven new articles and on the desirability of developing theories that transcend the traditional debate between feminist and evolutionary psychologists.
The seven new articles point toward ways that theories can move beyond nature-nurture dichotomies by seeking ultimate explanations for male and female behavior that join genetic and cultural evolutionary processes. Although feminist perspectives are...