Discrimination and Homophily

The goal of this chapter is to use the framework developed thus far in the book to address the question: how do discriminatory conventions and norms influence patterns of interaction? In particular, the models presented will highlight causal processes that can lead to homophily, or disproportionate in-group interaction, as a result of discrimination. The chapter uses academic communities as a case study throughout. Actors are modeled on interactive networks, where they prefer to link with partners who yield higher payoffs. The suggestion is that when women get less academic credit, they learn to avoid collaborating with men as a result. However, when certain groups have advantages that lead to more significant production of credit, this trend can reverse. In these cases, a disadvantaged group may be willing to share credit inequitably to have access to a collaborator who generates more credit.

Social Categories, Coordination, and Inequity

This chapter shows why social categories provide solutions to certain coordination problems. It begins with a description of what social categories are and how they function in human groups. The chapter moves on to describe what social categories look like in game theoretic models. As becomes clear, a group with categories will often be able to achieve a level of efficiency unavailable to a group without them. There is a catch, though. The efficiency gained by adding social categories to a group often comes at the expense of egalitarianism. Groups that use social categories to solve coordination problems often display inequity in that joint action with unequal roles leads to unequal benefits for those involved.

The Evolution of Household Bargaining

This chapter first presents an explicitly evolutionary model of the emergence of coordination in modern households. The chapter shows why certain conditions might favor market labor for one gender and home labor for the other. The goal is to provide a proof of concept for the usefulness of evolutionary models in this domain, as opposed to traditional game theoretic models. The chapter also argues that once these patterns have emerged, they should be relatively stable in the face of changing social conditions. Using these patterns of coordination as a starting point, the chapter then shows why emerging patterns of household bargaining, i.e., over who does more total work, and has more total leisure time, should favor whichever gender tends to be employed in market work.

The Cultural Red Queen and the Cultural Red King

When cultural groups evolve, or adapt, at different rates, or more generally show asymmetric levels of reactivity towards each other, we can observe a cultural Red King effect. This occurs when a minority group ends up disadvantaged simply by virtue of their size. When a minority group interacts with a majority group, minority types meet out-group members much more often than majority types do by dint of the size differences between the groups. As a result the minority group will learn to interact with the majority more quickly, often leading to a bargaining disadvantage. As this chapter shows, the resulting effect is analogous to one that can occur between coevolving biological species. The chapter explores this effect and where it might matter to real-world bargaining. In addition, the chapter looks at the possibility of a cultural Red King in intersectional populations.

Power and the Evolution of Inequity

The chapter starts with an introduction of the primary paradigm used in this half of the book—the bargaining game. It uses this model to show why in groups with social categories fairness in bargaining is not the expected outcome of cultural evolution. Instead, social categories act as a symmetry breaker that stabilizes inequitable bargaining conventions. The chapter then turns to the role power plays in the evolution of bargaining. Powerful groups often gain an advantage with respect to the emergence of conventions of resource division. This can lead to compounding processes that profoundly disadvantage some social groups. These models make especially clear how irrelevant markers like race and gender can come to be more important in determining resource division than relevant factors, such as individual status.

Introduction

Imagine you are in a group of ten people. In a minute, you will all be randomly paired with a partner. At the count of three, without a chance to talk or communicate in any way, you must dance the tango. If you both step forward, you’ll collide. If you both step back, you’ll look stupid. If one of you steps forward, and the other back, you’ll do the dance successfully. This is an example of a coordination problem—a situation where actors have similar interests but nonetheless face difficulties in coordinating their action. Presumably neither you nor your partner really cares which one of you steps forward and which back, at least not as much as you care about executing complementary actions. In other words, what you really care about is coordination....

Conclusion

In this chapter, I briefly summarize the main messages of the book. Gender can emerge to solve coordination problems. This sets the stage for the emergence of inequitable roles. Social categories, combined with cultural learning, lead to persistently inequitable norms and conventions. And understanding this process can help us intervene on it.

The Evolution of Gender

This chapter does two things. The first is to use the evolutionary framework developed to explain a particular feature of the gendered division of labor—that some aspects of it seem conventional, and other less so. In developing this argument, the chapter employs a novel measure intended to capture the way conventionality can vary in degrees. The second is to explain why, somewhere between our most recent common ancestor and now, gender emerged in human groups. Some social scientists have argued not just that gender facilitates division of labor, but that gender itself exists in order to divide labor. The chapter presents a how-possibly model for the emergence of gender in a society without it.

Gender, Coordination Problems, and Coordination Games

The chapter opens with a brief discussion of gender and gendered division of labor. A general discussion follows of what coordination problems are and the models used to represent them–coordination games—are introduced. It is argued that not all coordination games are equal. While some can be solved by conventions and norms that are identical for everyone in a society, others, those that require people to take different, complementary actions, pose a special problem. Coordinating behavior in these sorts of games requires extra information to break symmetry between those who are interacting. Gendered division of labor is just such a scenario.

Evolution and Revolution

This chapter looks at a cluster of topics centered on the question: what can be done about inequitable conventions of resource division between social categories? First, the chapter outlines which social preconditions that must be in place in order for inequitable type-based conventions to arise at all. These include the recognition of social categories, and conditioning of behavior based on these categories. There is then a discussion of the possibility of eliminating these preconditions. The chapter moves on to consider how one might go about moving from inequitable to equitable norms for division of resources. Ultimately, the picture is one in which social justice is an endless battle. The forces of cultural evolution pull populations toward inequity, and combating these forces requires constant vigilance.