The Importance Of Female Choice: Evolutionary Perspectives On Constraints, Expressions, And Variations

This chapter introduces the reader to some of the influential perspectives on female mate choice in human evolutionary biology, including parental investment theory. We then present two key theories in evolutionary psychology that have been applied to understand variations in women’s mating preferences and choices: sexual strategies theory and strategic pluralism theory. Although the importance of female choice has gained widespread acceptance in the biological sciences, the influence that female choice has on mating systems can be limited by many factors, such as control over mating decisions by parents and men’s control over women’s sexuality. Despite these constraints on female choice, women are able to exercise their mate preferences through extramarital affairs and influencing parental attempts to arrange marriages.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/psychology_books/1015/thumbnail.jp