Zentner & Mitura 2012 — Nations' gender gap predicts sex differences in mate preferences

What the study found

Zentner and Mitura surveyed 3,177 people across 10 nations and then reanalysed an existing dataset of 8,953 people across 31 nations, testing whether the classic sex differences in what people want in a partner hold up as societies become more equal. They report that these differences — including women's greater emphasis on a partner's resources — do not stay fixed but track a country's level of gender parity. ^[1]

gender differences in mate preferences with presumed evolutionary roots decline proportionally to increases in nations' gender parity

^[1]

Why it matters here

A common manosphere argument holds that women are innately, universally "hypergamous" — biologically wired to seek higher-status, higher-resource partners regardless of context. This study is evidence that the size of that preference gap is not constant: it shrinks as women gain economic and social parity, which points to social conditions rather than a fixed evolutionary constant. That bears directly on the check is hypergamy universal?, where it is cited to distinguish a measurable, context-dependent tendency from a claimed immutable law of nature.