The End of Men
Interesting article arguing that society is strongly slanted towards women doing better, and also noting that parents who are given the choice of choosing their children’s sex are preferring women, sometimes in a 2-to-1 ratio:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/
If ordinary, sexually reproducing humans continue to exist beyond the short term, I expect ordinary sexual selection to balance this out as the value of scarce male mates rises.
Suppose a society had a stable tendency to prefer women, and that tendency was opposed by increasing scarcity values of men. We would expect to arrive at an equilibrium state where women were still the preferred gender.
Some societies. But yeah, hyperbolic title aside, interesting statistics. Doesn’t seem to be caused by anything long-term, though.
Not true of India and China, you got 1/3rd of humanity right there.
The article’s header speculates about women being better suited to post-industrial life; I think the more obvious answer to the gender imbalance is descriminatory laws which favour female candidates at school and at work.
The 2:1 ratio part is especially dubious with regard to selection bias (‘In some clinics..’), but this article was mind-blowing for me.
I believe this (gender imbalance) is the simplest solution to eliminating the majority of violent conflict. the most violent males are those at the bottom of the assortive mating ladder.