Evolutionary theory is predicated on gender equality because parents have an equal genetic contribution to children. It is the only academic theory that treats men and women equally.
Each person receives 23 chromosomes from their mother and 23 chromosomes from their father. This means that each gender has the same investment in offspring.
It might be argued that females are more important than males because the X-chromosome from mothers has more functional genetic information. Moreover, mothers contribute their RNA to offspring because it is present—outside the nucleus of a fertilized egg.
Females often contribute a great deal more to the nurture and care of the offspring, particularly among mammals. Yet, parents invest the same amount in females as in males, whether before or after birth. (This generalization is known as Fisher’s Principle, and it is logically robust.)
In some cases, males invest more in offspring than females do. Among sea horses, it is the male who becomes pregnant and carries the offspring inside his body. In phalaropes, a marsh bird, the males inhabit the territory of a dominant female, incubate her eggs, and care for the chicks.
While evolutionary biology is thus gender-neutral, the same can hardly be said of the humanities. Whether it is history, sociology, economics, anthropology, or psychology, all suffer from a disciplinary bias against women.
