Judith Hand, Ph.D
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        • C6 Equality for Women & Progress
        • C7 Sex, Individuality, Leadership
        • C8 Summary Conclusion
        • C9 D. Fry - Life W/O War
        • C10 AFWW 9 Cornerstones
        • C11 Global Peace System Accomplishments
        • Acknowledgments
      • A Future Without War >
        • Table of Contents
        • C1 - Introduction
        • C 2 - The Single Most Important Idea
        • C3 - How Far We've Already Come
        • C 4 - Embrace The Goal
        • C 5 - Empower Women
        • C 6 - Enlist Young Men
        • C7 - Ensure Essential Resources
        • C8 - Foster Connectedness
        • C9 - Promote Nonviolent Conflct Resolution
        • C 10 - Provide Security & Order
        • C 11 - Shift Our Economies
        • C 12 - Spread Liberal Democracy
        • C 13 - Differences Between Men & Woman About Aggression
        • C14 - Women, Pivotal Catalyst for Positive Change
        • C 15 - How Long It Would Take to Abolish War
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        • C 17 - What Makes People Happy
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Blog

Minoans, Women as Nurturers, and War

10/5/2019

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In 2001, I published a novel set in the Minoan world of the Bronze Age (Voice of the Goddess). To promote the book I gave a talk entitled "If Women Ran the World, How Might Things Be Different." My point, drawn from my background in biology and anthropology, was that the Minoan's sophisticated, state-level society appears to have been remarkably lacking in violence—no violent acts are depicted on any of their numerous art artifacts or paintings. They probably ran their affairs much as the Norwegians, Icelanders, Costa Ricans, or Swiss do today: rejectors of war. 

Those same artifacts indicate that this was a culture where women were respected and powerful leaders. In talks I would say, "women, in general, are biologically different from men, in general, because women have an evolved suite of behavioral inclinations that strongly foster social stability and, that includes avoiding war."

I eventually went on to write Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace, my first attempt to explain, from the perspective of an evolutionary biologist, why women have evolved stability-fostering preferences. Other books and essays followed that include explorations of this same issue: Shift: The Beginning of War, The Ending of War; War and Sex and Human Destiny; and A Future Without War.  

This explanation for why women, in general, have some psychological traits that differ from men in ways relating to conflict resolution and caring for community DOES have to do with raising children, but not in the way most people think. Most people think that women are more nurturing…women are NOT by nature more nurturing than men: they can be bad mothers, and a lot of learning goes into being a good mother. Moreover, men who bond early with their offspring can be equally nurturing. It is an evolved deep-seated preference for social stability that guides many of women's social choices.

In Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace I also described: 
  • some of the hard-wired traits women display that serve to foster social stability;
  • compared conflict behavior and physiological and anatomical differences between humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos as these relate to resolving social conflict s;
  • described, from a historical perspective, how frequently women in power launched wars of conquest compared to men;
  • explored the phenomenon of "hidden females," in which women's needs and talents are consistently overlooked by lay people and experts;
  • and outlined a variety of changes we would have to make in the way we run our lives and treat women if we want to abolish the practice of war.
It's been seven years since that first book on war and the relationship of women to war was published and I'm still at it, working to explain why we could end war if we choose to, and why empowering women is one of several necessary conditions required to suceeed in reaching that much desired goal.



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    Dr. Judith Hand writes historical fiction, contemporary action/adventure, and screenplays. Hand earned her Ph.D. in biology from UCLA. Her studies included animal behavior and primatology. After completing a Smithsonian Post-doctoral Fellowship at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., she returned to UCLA as a research associate and lecturer. Her undergraduate major was in cultural anthropology. She worked as a technician in neurophysiology laboratories at UCLA and the Max Planck Institute, in Munich, Germany. As a student of animal communication, she has written scientific papers on the subject of social conflict resolution. 

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  • Gateway Welcome
  • Introduction
  • About Me
    • Interests & Biography
    • Photo Album
    • Videos
  • Major Interests
    • Sexual Dimorphism
    • War
    • Women
    • Global Peace
  • Publications
    • Non-Fiction >
      • Shift: The Beginning of War, The Ending of War
      • War, Sex and Human Destiny >
        • Table of Contents
        • C1 Background
        • C2 Our Dilemma, ​Our Challenge ​War Defined
        • C3 War - Nature or Nurture?
        • C4 Sexual Dimorphism
        • C5 Humans & Sexual Dimorphism
        • C6 Equality for Women & Progress
        • C7 Sex, Individuality, Leadership
        • C8 Summary Conclusion
        • C9 D. Fry - Life W/O War
        • C10 AFWW 9 Cornerstones
        • C11 Global Peace System Accomplishments
        • Acknowledgments
      • A Future Without War >
        • Table of Contents
        • C1 - Introduction
        • C 2 - The Single Most Important Idea
        • C3 - How Far We've Already Come
        • C 4 - Embrace The Goal
        • C 5 - Empower Women
        • C 6 - Enlist Young Men
        • C7 - Ensure Essential Resources
        • C8 - Foster Connectedness
        • C9 - Promote Nonviolent Conflct Resolution
        • C 10 - Provide Security & Order
        • C 11 - Shift Our Economies
        • C 12 - Spread Liberal Democracy
        • C 13 - Differences Between Men & Woman About Aggression
        • C14 - Women, Pivotal Catalyst for Positive Change
        • C 15 - How Long It Would Take to Abolish War
        • C 16 - Summary of AFWW 9 Cornerstones
        • C 17 - What Makes People Happy
        • Acknowledgments
      • Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace
    • Fiction >
      • Metanoia
      • Voice of the Goddess
      • The Amazon and the Warrior
      • Code Name: Dove
      • Iron Dove
      • Captive Dove
    • Articles, Essays, Newsletter Archive
  • Blog
  • Contact