Sex and Gender Effects on Power, Status, Dominance, and Leadership – An Interdisciplinary Look at Human and Other Mammalian Societies

Book excerpt: Unequal power and status between the sexes usually translates into one sex monopolizing valuable resources and exercising control at the expense of the other. These inequalities not only have negative consequences for the fitness and wellbeing of the underpowered sex but also hinder the path to peaceful and prosperous societies. Intersexual power refers to an asymmetry in the degree of control that one sex exerts over the other. It can arise, for example, from sex differences in social dominance (i.e., imposed by threat or force), leverage (i.e., conferred by the possession of a resource that cannot be taken by force such as knowledge or fertilizable eggs), motivation, and (in humans in particular) social norms and privileged positions in society.