Gender Differences in Dominance Hierarchies
Offensive as it may be, different genders subconsciously process dominance hierarchies in distinct ways. While each gender may not necessarily be born with these differences, the varied lived experiences of males and females create, on aggregate, differing average patterns in group hierarchy relation.
What’s more, the manner in which our society conceptualizes dominant males versus dominant females produces different optimal pathways to achieve higher status. This matters because almost every governance model used today is specifically designed to be gender blind, yet the dominance hierarchy overlay layer on top of them is at least moderately impacted by gender.
The two biggest differences:
- Men are more likely to settle dominance disputes with violence due to higher levels of testosterone, which means women are relatively more likely to resolve disputes with social shaming.
- High social status does more to benefit men on sexual marketplaces than women. In The Pragmatists Guide to Sexuality, we explore research demonstrating that women on average prefer a partner who has a high social rank while men are largely indifferent to women’s hierarchical social positions for short-term mate selection (though they do optimize for it in long-term mate selection).[[59]](#_ftn59) As one paper found, “a man’s sex appeal to women is bolstered insofar as he bests other men in sports, business, or art. In contrast, men’s mate choices are largely indifferent to which women outperform other women in those arenas.”[[60]](#_ftn60) Because, in addition to gaining professional advantages, greater dominance also improves men’s status as a sexual partner, men on average have more motivation to take risky bets to move up a social hierarchy when contrasted with women.
How do these factors affect the unconscious dominance hierarchy impulses of men and women? The most immediately applicable takeaway (which has been backed by research—see: “Female Dominance Hierarchies: Are They Any Different from Males’?”[[61]](#_ftn61)) is that males assume a dominance hierarchy when they first interact with a group, whereas females regard all members of a group as equal until after they have witnessed the establishment of a dominance hierarchy.
If we were to guess why this difference exists, we would suppose that males are more likely to solve dominance disputes with violence, meaning that they can size up which male in a group would win one of these disputes just by looking at them. If a male walks into a room of males, he can quickly work out how they would sort themselves after a series of physical altercations—taller, more muscular males would end up nearer to the top. On the other hand, female dominance hierarchies are sorted more frequently by social attacks, meaning women are likely to learn at a young age to wait and see how a group interacts before assuming who is where in a hierarchy.
While this dynamic only affects each gender toward the beginning of their interaction with a group, it means group hierarchies will sort themselves differently depending on whether they start with majority male or female participants. Short, physically weak men will perform worse in majority male environments.
Among chimps, males are typically higher in the dominance hierarchy than females whereas among bonobos, females are typically higher in the dominance hierarchy than males. We have reason to believe that humans fall into the chimp model of great ape behavior patterns. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that more “male-like” females, or females who demonstrate more traits commonly associated with a male, are more prevalent in upper management than feminine females. This means that in systems with ineffective governance structures, talented, feminine females will, on average, be underutilized due to lower presumed social rank within decision-making bodies like boards and committees.
This is not something that can be avoided just by having participants in a governance structure not see each other, as the perceptions also extend to voice pitch, with more feminine voices being seen as less dominant. This is true even within genders—with lower-pitched-voice females being perceived as more dominant than women with higher-pitched voices on a linear scale. This judgment of voices and dominance also has a gendered component, with women being more sensitive to it than men.[[62]](#_ftn62) In other words, a governance structure that is primarily female will penalize a female with a high-pitched voice more than one that is predominantly male.
In adulthood, men still favor participating in single-gender dominance hierarchies at a much higher rate than women, who instead prefer dyadic relationships (those between just themselves and one other person). This is an interesting finding for us as it runs against our anecdotal observations, but it is what the data suggests.[[63]](#_ftn63)
Attempting to create governance structures that promote equality without taking these differences into account is as doomed to failure as trying to navigate the transatlantic passage without accounting for trade winds and currents. Yes, the currents and winds don’t always move in one direction, but they do so enough that if you were to ignore their patterns, you would have a hell of a time making the crossing with any precision.