[...] Rose McDermott, a professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, says the topic raises hackles because many researchers don't want to acknowledge differences in male and female behavior. Ms. McDermott and Richard Wrangham, a professor of anthropology at Harvard, are studying more than 60 African countries to figure out the relationship between gender — sex ratios, the number of women in the workforce — and internal and interstate violence. They are especially interested in the role of polygamy.
"Historically, when large groups of men can't get married they hang out together and they become monks or marauding bands that rob, rape and pillage," Ms. McDermott said. "Where do you think terrorist groups come from?" [...]
| Those lines -- as well as the bit about "the Dahomey kingdom in West Africa during the 18th and 19th centuries, the position of women was more or less equal to men's but the society was very warlike" as a bare-branches counterexample -- were what caught our eye in Felicia R. Lee's New York Times article "Engineering More Sons Than Daughters"
posted in articles on July 3, 2004 1:10 AM | t (0)
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