The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

by Matt Ridley

To which came this answer: Of course women pay more attention to wealth because men control it. If women controlled wealth, they would not seek it in their spouses. Buss looked again and found that American women who make more money than the average American woman pay more attention than average to the wealth of potential spouses, not less.31 High-earning women value the earning capacity of their husbands more, not less, than low-earning women. Even a survey of fifteen powerful leaders of the feminist movement revealed that they wanted still more powerful men. As Buss’s colleague Bruce Ellis put it, “Women’s sexual tastes become more, rather than less, discriminatory as their wealth, power, and social status increase.”