Economic bond among primates

In the family life-style of some primate is the creation of an ‘economic’ bond whereby males obtain food for females and their young.

As the attention of the mother is devoted to her young, she has less time to devote to obtaining food. Female primates, like all female mammals, nourish and carry developing young for many months before birth and also provide milk for the infant for months or years after birth.

Females need resources for themselves and their offspring, and makes can help acquire two of the main resources, food and safety.

For most primates, male contributions to female food supplies involve defending an area where food can be found. The females could spend less time searching for food and more time directly caring for and protecting her young.

The provisioning, bipedal male was able to obtain food farther away from the area occupied by the female and infant; thus, he increased their food supply without depleting local food resources.

But when male has exclusive sexual rights to a female (or group of females), this bond benefits both the female and the offspring because male provides food when necessary.
Economic bond among primates

Gender roles

Male and female relate to each other in many contexts – in family life, work and formal organizations, marriage and cohabitants, friendships and a host of others. In all of these settings, individuals confront expectations of how they should behave and think.

There is much more to being male or female than biological heritage. Virtually all societies expect the two sexes to adopt different gender roles, understood as a set of expected actions and dispositions ascribed to an individual on the basis of her or his assumed biological sex.

Gender roles can produce sex differences in behaviors not only by affection the rewards and punishments received from others but also by affecting the self-concepts of women and men.

Gender roles serve both social and intrapsychic functions. With respect to the former function, gender role expectations guide people’s judgments and evaluation of others.

When one assumes that another person possesses certain characteristics on the basis of his or her gender, one is engaging in gender stereotyping.
Gender roles

Male and females: physical differences

People can think in term of physical differences, psychological differences in roles played in society.

The physical differences are undeniable.  The sex chromosome of humans are called X and Y. A zygote that receives an X chromosome from each parent is a genetic (XX) female, whereas a zygote that received a Y chromosome from the father is a genetic (XY) male.

The X and Y chromosomes carry genes that determine many other traits. Genes situated on the X and Y chromosomes are therefore known as sex-linked genes. So far, the majority of the sex linked genes are located in the X-chromosome. These are known as X-linked genes.

Chromosomal differences result in different prenatal hormone balances in male and females, and hormones are responsible for the facts that the genitals of males and females differ and only female can bear children.

Moreover, males typical grow to be taller, heavier and more muscular than females, while females may be the hardier sex in that they live longer and less susceptible to many physical disorders.

Females tend to be 10 percent smaller than male in most physical variables such as heart size, blood volume and hemoglobin concentration. However, females also carry approximately twice the body fat of males.

The brain weight in an ‘average’ female is about 100 g less than in the male. Much was made of this to prove the lesser intellectual capacity and ability of a woman, until it was recognized that the range in brain weights of adults is very great, and that proportions, male and females differ less in brain weight than a total body weight.
Male and females: physical differences