Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

by Cat Bohannon

In a wide variety of studies, covering cultures ranging from rural America to urban India, women are more likely to allocate financial resources in a way that directly affects the welfare of their immediate households and local community. When given the opportunity, women are more likely to spend a family’s money on food and clothing and health care and children’s education. Men, meanwhile, are more likely to spend it on entertainment and on weapons and—if we’re talking global trends—on gambling or the local equivalents.[*47] Worldwide, girls and women spend up to 90 percent of their earned income on their families. Men and boys spend only 30–40 percent. When women in India were given the opportunity to participate in local governments as ministers and officers, those governments more greatly invested in things like public services and infrastructure, from waste management to potable water and railways—things that, as it turned out, seemed to matter more to female politicians.