European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)'s video: EMBL Keynote Lecture: Women After All: Sex evolution and the end of male supremacy

Presenter: Melvin Konner From EMBO | EMBL | HHMI Conference: Gender Roles and their Impact in Academia Virtual 13 – 15 October 2020 ABSTRACT: In this lecture, based on my book 'Women After All' [1] and other research, I will trace the arc of evolution to explain the relationships between females and males and the differences between them. Drawing on comparative examples from the natural world, I will shed light on the great variety of possibilities encompassed by nature and by Darwin’s theory. I will also describe biologically influenced human gender identities, without ignoring the many exceptions that challenge the conventional male/female dichotomy. These too can best be understood in the light of evolution and of developmental and cellular biology. I will also draw on my two years of experience with hunter-gatherers in Botswana, whose culture gave women a prominent place, inventing the working mother and respecting women’s voices around the fire. With the emergence of agriculture and “civilization,” history upset this balance as a dense world of war fostered extreme male dominance. But our species has been recovering over the past two centuries, and an irrevocable move toward equality is in progress. It will not be the end of men but it will be the end of male supremacy and will lead to a better, wiser world for women and men alike. The frontiers of research, from molecular genetics through neurobiology and anthropology to political science all tend to make male predominance - scientifically, intellectually, ethically, and politically - an increasingly untenable position. Melvin Konner is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral biology at Emory University. Reference: [1] https://www.melvinkonner.com/women-after-all/