Elizabeth Pillsworth: CSU Fullerton Department of Anthropology

Darwin’s theory of sexual selection emphasizes the role of female mate choice in shaping male morphology and behavior. In evolutionary psychology, the model of female choice has served as one organizing feature of research on human mating. However, in many human societies women are reported to have very little influence over their own mating decisions; rather, parents or other kin often control the marriage decisions of daughters. This has led to the claim by some that female choice has been overestimated as a selective force in human evolution, based upon the evolutionarily novel context of modern Western sexual practices. I will present data from the Shuar, a hunter-horticulturalist society in the Amazon basin of Ecuador, to highlight the ways in which women exert mate choice within a paternalistic and highly controlling environment, and demonstrate that choice need not be “free” to have an evolutionary impact.