How Do Women Compete For Partners? - Joyce Benenson

[Your Old Comrade]

Joyce Benenson is a lecturer of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University who's research focuses on human social structures and sex differences in competition and cooperation.

We're often told that men are more competitive, more status-driven and more ruthless with rivals for potential mates. In reality doesn't seem to be true, the difference is that women's competition takes a more subtle, cynical and sophisticated route to drive away their competitors.

Expect to learn how women compete for status, why women exclude more than men, why women who promote an egalitarian world are less charitable than you might think, how you can interfere with a rivals' relationship without getting caught, the usefulness of gossip as an enforcement mechanism and much more...

[Your Old Comrade]

Dr Tracy Vaillancourt is a professor at the University of Ottawa, a researcher and an author with a focus on the link between violence and mental health.

Intrasexual competition is present in all animals, however the sophistication of this rivalry amongst human females is unbelievably impressive. The "fairer sex" wield their competition in some very weird, wonderful and ruthless ways.

Expect to learn why women use indirect aggression as a competition strategy, how resource scarcity influences competition, whether children actually developed just fine with no consequences during the pandemic, the relationship between bullying and social status, the impact of bullying on a developing brain and much more...

Tania Reynolds is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of New Mexico whose research focuses on women's intrasexual competition, biases in moral evaluations and social and sexual selection.

Ancestrally, men needed to go to war and hunt. Given this, it would be rather useful to be friends with the spear-wielding bloke next to you so that you know he's got your back. Women's use case for friends is much more subtle and difficult to determine however, and today we try to decipher the underpinnings of female friendships.

Expect to learn why women dislike working underneath a female boss, the painful social existence that very attractive women have to endure, why both men and women bias seeing women as victims and men as perpetrators, why women develop opposite-sex friendships, the most common ways women derogate their rivals, why sexual gossip is a ruthless precision engineered tool and much more...