The Ignoring of Women

Many (many) years ago as an undergraduate student, I read a book called The Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan. I highly recommend reading it, but the upshot is that the evolution of homo sapiens, as are most things, is taught from a male-concentric point of view. A species of apes came down from the trees onto the plains, learned to hunt, women’s breasts became bigger to encourage face-to-face mating to form bonds, and that’s about it. Morgan argues there are good reasons why that’s not true.

She says rather than the plains, the species went to the coast. In water there was protection from…