There is a grain of truth to it that if you squint at it very hard you can kind of see how someone might arrive to Hypergamy being a pervasive part of culture . . . But not really?

Evolutionary habits don't really work the way you might think:

Okay, so, for simplicity sake let's imagine evolution kind of works like stats at the beginning of an RPG. You put evolutionary points in certain areas, but it comes with certain consiquences and draw backs. Human beings, for reasons, just dumped almost all their points into intellect, very valuable trait but it costed us a lot in return we then needed to account for in other ways. Human gestational periods are long as hell, typically for only one kid at a time, two for the price of one if you're very lucky. Babies got big heads too, which causes a whole lot of logistical problems when trying to give birth. Child rearing takes a lot of dedicated effort for a long time aswell. So, the problem ends up being two fold: a massive amount of time, resources and energy needs to go into raising a single offspring, and on top of that, women had a habit of dying in childbirth.

To account for this, nature kind of min maxed the sexes. This is a very dehumanizing way to talk about people, but for the sake of this conversation females are extremely "biologically expensive" where as males are extremely "biologically cheap." Women can give birth a limited amount of times for a limited window of times, where men can impregnate as many women as he has access to in a single day (if he's got the energy for it) well into old age. People seem to mistake gender roles as being a result of an inherent submissive/dominant gender divide, but really it's that in a hunter-gatherer community it would have a much bigger impact on the survival of the whole tribe if a woman was killed.

Then Suddenly Civilization

It's a much bigger deal than many people seem to consider, going from living for the sake of survival to living for the sake of resource accumilation. Monarchies and similar governments establish because one guy has all the stuff, so much stuff he's going to die before he runs out of his stuff, so he has to decide what happens to his stuff when he dies. I'm oversimplifying it, but, say you're King the First. You have twins, a son and a daughter. Your title as king and your stuff needs to go to one of them so your legacy lives on as haver of all the things. Regardless of which one has a better temperament to rule, the choice is unfortunately pretty clear. Again, that pesky physical reality is getting in the way. Because you're son very unlikely to die while trying to produce an heir, and can produce more without much worry if the first few don't work out (which, you know, was also common back then.) Doesn't matter if your daughter would clearly be the better ruler, each heir she produces is a gamble to her own life. Plus, like, you really wanna be making alliances with the other kingdoms around you so they don't try to take your stuff. Class mobility is politically a very bad idea in a monarchy, so those other kings are going to need high born wives for their sons. She's a way better commodity than she is a successor.

You also want your peasants and other underlings breeding so your kingdom continues to have laborers, soldiers and tax payers, so you get on your way social engineering your masses. You want your lower class women having kids, not dying in war or whatever.

But take note as to how much gender dynamics have already changed at this point.

Merchant class rises up, industrial revolution happen, kings get beheaded, now we're here

As I said, class mobility is bad news for monarchies. The accumilation of wealth amoung the merchant class that eventually led to the industrial revolution, democracies, the beheading of kings etc. Led to a hybridization of the gender roles and gender politics between the lower and the upper classes. Your middle class both were encouraged by government structures to produce as many children as possible, but also likely had some kind of wealth that would outlast their lifetime they wanted to pass on to their children.

Infant mortality rates fell, and more and more women started to more consistently survive giving birth as medical advancement progressed. Nutrition improved to the point were women's window to give birth expanded later into life. Medical advancements in fertility treatment also made it safer than ever/possible to have children later. Contraception was invented. Those biological drawbacks to bring galaxy big brained animals isn't totally moot, but, virtually is in the broad strokes.

Hypergamy as a pet theory of human dating habits only makes sort of kind of sense if you ignore everything that happened in between that hunter-gatherer stage and now. Which is kind of a lot of stuff.

Because women have been subjugated throughout history I think people taken as a given that there's a solid immutable reason for it and assume it must be that women need protecting, however, not really. It made sense for survival, it made sense for political reasons, and then it just didn't anymore. Some women do indeed go after the most economically stable and physically attractive man they can get because they want to be minded, that does happen. But, like, all? Why? There are examples of animals that choose the less "dominant males" pretty consistently. Female giant cuttlefish fish will mate with the male who's physically stopping all other males from being able to get near her if it's her only option, but seem to favor much heavily getting to chose one of the (I shit you not this is true) smaller male cuttlefish who has snuck past the big male by "crossdressing" (changing their patterns and hiding one of their tentacles).

Most modern women dare I say will chose a partner that suits her lifestyle and preferences.