In an earlier post I noted that the natural role for women was motherhood, a role well-suited to their empathetic nature. To my surprise, a number of readers here took issue with my assertion that women are more empathetic than men. In this post I’ll offer some evidence in support of my assertion, and offer an explanation as to why that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.

Evidence of Woman’s Empathetic Nature

Across cultures, women score higher than men on empathy related traits. A number of studies show that women score higher than men in personality traits such as sensitivity, compassion, empathy, and warmth.[1],[2] The gap between the sexes was generally found to be fairly large. One groundbreaking study has shown this gap to exist across twenty-six cultures, thus strongly suggesting a biological rather than cultural cause.[3] The same study found the gap to be largest in North America and Western Europe, which are among the most gender egalitarian regions in the world. One possibility for this is that as the genders become more socially equal, their biology-based differences become more obvious.

An empathetic female nature is apparent in childhood when girls gravitate towards nurturing toys, while boys gravitate towards weapons. The favorite toys of boys tend to be weapons: plastic swords, toy guns, water guns, bows and arrow etc. which boys use to play fight. Furthermore, the most popular video games boys play tend to be games where boys kill enemies. Girls instead gravitate towards dolls which they try to have conversations with and nurture. These sex typed toy preferences are observed throughout the world and across time, suggesting a biological cause. In fact, even juvenile female chimpanzees cradle sticks as if they were infants.[4]

Why Women Evolved to be more Empathetic

Empathetic women have a reproductive advantage. While a man can be reproductively successful by fathering as many children as possible, a woman can only be reproductively successful by making sure the children she has survive. Unlike men, women can only have a limited amount of children in their reproductive life. Having surviving children seems easy in the modern world with plentiful food and running water, but was extremely difficult for most of history. As recently as 1910 one in ten children died in infancy [CDC, Figure 1]. Anthropologists estimate that in more primitive hunter-gatherer societies the infant mortality rate is around 20%.[5] Children often died from disease, tribal warfare or any number of dangers.

Historically women had significantly more children than they had today. For most of history children were viewed as an asset – more hands to work the field, defend the tribe, or scavenge food. It was not uncommon for a woman to have 7 or 8 children; in fact, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin both had 9 siblings. High infant mortality, coupled with large families, meant being a mom was a very demanding and difficult job. In this context, women good at being moms were more likely to have surviving offspring. Empathy, compassion, warmth etc are all traits of good moms. This suggests that over time empathy related traits become more prevalent in the gene pool and sex linked. It thus became part of the female nature.

Empathy a Driving Force in a Universal Suffrage World

The more empathetic nature of women can also be clearly be seen in the political trends of past decades. Post universal suffrage, empathy has become a major driver of political movements. Social justice steadily rose in importance as women became more politically active. Compared to men, women are consistently stronger supporters of welfare and protections against those perceived as weak, including racial and sexual minorities and even animals. [6] In fact, a study found supporters of animal rights to be overwhelmingly women. [7] When men had complete control of the political process, they spent their time dominating groups they perceived as weak and had no qualms with eating animals. Modern politics is incomprehensible without understanding the feminine nature and its growing influence.

The material I presented here come from my book, Awake: The Return of Men. Check it out if you’re interested in finding out more how about the sexes differ and how these differences have changed the modern world. The book is available on amazon.

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[1] M. Guidice, T. Booth, and P. Irwing, “The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality,” PLoS ONE 7, no. 1 (2012), e29265.

[2] Yanna J. Weisberg, Colin G. DeYoung, and Jacob B. Hirsh, “Gender Differences in Personality Across the Ten Aspects of the Big Five,” Frontiers in Psychology 2 (August 1, 2011), 178.

[3] P. T. Costa, A. Terracciano, and R. R. McCrae, “Gender Differences in Personality Traits Across Cultures: Robust and Surprising Findings,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology81, no. 2 (August 2001), 322-331.

[4] Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham. “Sex Differences in Chimpanzees’ Use of Sticks as Play Objects Resemble Those of Children,” Current Biology 20, no. 24 (December 2010), R1067-R1068.

[5] Michael Gurven and Hillard Kaplan, “Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination,” Population and Development Review 33, no. 2 (June 2007) 321-365.

[6] Robert Shapiro and Harpreet Mahajan, “Gender Differences in Policy Preferences: A Summary of Trends From the 1960s to the 1980s,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 50, no. 1 (Spring 1986), 42-61.

[7] Rachel Einwohner. Gender, Class, And Social Movement Outcomes, Identity and Effectiveness in Two Animal Rights Campaigns*. Gender & Society*, Vol. 13 No. 1, (February 1999) 56-76.