Feminism Prompts New Perspectives in Biology

Professor Judy Stamps of the Section of Evolution and Ecology is a behavioral ecologist who studies territoriality and sexual selection in animals. She contributed a chapter to Feminism and Evolutionary Biology, a book edited by Patricia Gowaty and published in 1997. Among other issues, the book traces how feminism has changed the approaches biologists use to study the evolution of mating systems and sexual behavior in animals. I recently talked with Professor Stamps to learn more about behavioral ecology, and feminism and evolutionary biology.
--Debra Cleveland

In the chapter she contributed to Feminism and Evolutionary Biology, Judy Stamps notes that "female perspectives are useful because they generate interesting alternative hypotheses that can then be tested using appropriate techniques in the laboratory or field."

What do behavioral ecologists study?
Essentially, behavioral ecologists study animals to understand how behavior helps them manage the selective pressures they face. Animals are assumed to behave in a way that maximizes their fitness, but sometimes they have to balance tradeoffs. For example, it may seem beneficial for an animal to eat a lot of food because it grows faster. But while it is foraging, the animal may be more exposed to predators, and so may not survive. A male bird who vigorously defends his territory may end up with more space, but he may become more vulnerable to disease because he is wearing himself out.

How have feminism and female perspectives affected evolutionary biology?
By telling everyone they had blinders on, feminists prompted scientists, both men and women, to question long-held assumptions about male and female roles, and control of and access to reproduction. Evolutionary biologists now propose and test alternative hypotheses about reproductive behavior much more quickly than they used to.

As an example of how things can change, in to be filled with the best possible sperm and males competed for access to her. However, feminism caused reproductive physiologists, a lot of them at UC Davis, to question this model. They subsequently showed that a female bird's role in fertilization is much more active. If it weren't for feminism, we would still be talking about things in the same old way.

So feminism has changed how research is conducted?
Yes. As I said in the chapter I wrote for Feminism and Evolutionary Biology, feminism has prompted scientists to phrase questions that would not otherwise be asked, suggest hypotheses that would not otherwise be offered, and conduct experiments that would not otherwise be attempted. Whether these hypotheses turn out to be correct is immaterial, as long as they generate productive, focused studies in animal behavior. In developing hypotheses to test, it's constructive to consider behavior from as many angles as possible.

But there is still room for growth. For instance, we tend to see courtship as the male's province, and we often expect females to court the same way males do, which is not necessarily so. I just returned from a research trip to Mexico during which I observed blue-footed boobies, a type of bird. The male courts very overtly, calling females loudly from a distance. In contrast, a female shows interest more subtly. She quietly wanders up a little closer to the male and looks at him out of the corner of her eye a little longer than usual.

Right: Female blue-footed boobies display their interst in a mate much more subtly than males--one example of why courtship has been perceived as a male-only activity. Feminist perspectives have prompted biologists to question long-held assumptions about male and female roles.

Also, improving how science is done is not dependent only on feminism. In the U.S. we're doing science in the context of Western culture, so by collaborating with people from other cultures, you can get different perspectives. In one study, Japanese researchers saw very different things in macaque monkeys than European or American observers. The Japanese tested their hypotheses and found things that had been completely overlooked in previous studies.

In my work, I've seen that the behavior of blue-footed boobies contradicts one assumption that I think results from culture and is currently being reexamined: The notion that males will mate with anything they see. A male boobie may be as choosy as a female because he's investing a lot in offspring too, and he's often with the same female for more than one season.

In addition, feminists themselves often come from a perspective of conflict, it's the males against the females. While that may be a legitimate perspective, we shouldn't neglect the concepts of collaboration and negotiation. So far, behavioral ecologists have primarily used theoretical models that take into account only winning and losing, and I wonder how much of that can be attributed to our culture, which is a winner-take-all, Super Bowl kind of culture.

When did evolutionary biologists begin to use feminist perspectives?
Feminist perspectives were incorporated into evolutionary biology starting a little over 20 years ago--fairly recently. However, one thing I have to say in defense of science is that if something works, people use it. They may disagree with it initially, but if it does a better job than what they're currently doing, maybe they won't change, but their graduate students will.

In the book, Patricia Gowaty says that "Many evolutionists and feminists explicitly seek to understand human nature." Can behavioral ecology research help us to understand human nature?
Yes, but with a caveat because several biases have skewed studies done thus far. For instance, scientists have tended to study species that fit their perceptions of how things should work. Then, when they observe the animals, they often see what they expect to see. An example of this is primate research. The first species people studied were the ones in which males were fighting, females were scrapping with each other; it was sex and fighting all over the place. Most people didn't go out to look at the most boring primates they could find, the ones who sat around peaceably, with one occasionally looking askance at another, who in turn moved away, and that was it for two weeks in terms of aggressive interactions. So all the studies that came out for awhile stressed the importance of dominance. It's because we selected species that reflected what we thought was interesting.

You're using this book for a spring quarter graduate seminar?
Yes, and I've never experienced so much interest from faculty members and students alike. I think this indicates a pent-up interest, and not just by women, in the general question of how our science is informed, or not informed, by wider cultural issues. Science isn't quite as objective as we might think. We need to at least acknowledge what those biases are so we can work with them or bring other perspectives in.

Reference: Gowaty, P, ed. 1997. Feminism and Evolutionary Biology. New York: Chapman and Hall.