POLYGYNY

Polyandry, Polygamy, Monogamy

A marriage structure where men have more than one wife at a time. Widely spread in world societies, but practiced only by a minority of those communities because population sex-ratios and a lack of economic resources make it inaccessible for the majority.

Polygyny is polygamy in which one man has two or more wives at the same time. The term polygyny is also used where a male animal has more than one female mate.

Polygynist is a person who practises or favours polygyny, that is, a man who has several wives at the same time.

Polygamy is marriage with several spouses, or more than one spouse, at once, or living at the same time.

The practice or custom by which one man has more than one wife, or one woman has more than one husband, at the same time.

A marriage structure in which there is more than one spouse at a time: the term covers both polygyny and polyandry.

Polyandry is polygamy in which one woman has two or more husbands at the same time. The term polyandry is also used where a female animal has more than one male mate.

Polyandrist is a person who practises or favours polyandry, that is, a woman who has several husbands at the same time.

Market forces affect patterns of polygyny in Uganda - Thomas V. Polleta, and Daniel Nettleb
Edited by Eric A. Smith, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Abstract: Polygynous marriage is generally more beneficial for men than it is for women, although women may choose to marry an already-married man if he is the best alternative available. We use the theory of biological markets to predict that the likelihood of a man marrying polygynously will be a function of the level of resources that he has, the local sex ratio, and the resources that other men in the local population have. Using records of more than 1 million men in 56 districts from the 2002 Ugandan census, we show that polygynously married men are more likely to own land than monogamously married men, that polygynous marriages become more common as the district sex ratio becomes more female biased, that owning land is particularly important when men are abundant in the district, and that a man's owning land most increases the odds of polygyny in districts where few other men own land. Results are discussed with reference to models of the evolution of polygyny.

Explaining Cross-National Differences in Polygyny Intensity
Resource-Defense, Sex Ratio, and Infectious Diseases - Nigel Barber, Portland, Maine
Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 42, No. 2, 103-117 (2008)
Possible adaptive functions of polygyny include resource-defense, scarcity of men, and countering a high pathogen load, and cultural determinists posit religion and gender discrimination as factors. Using a sample of 32 polygynous countries broken down by urban and rural location, each of these explanations of polygyny was tested in regression analysis. Polygyny increased in tropical countries having plenty of arable land and unequal distribution of wealth (Gini coefficient), supporting the resource-defense explanation. Polygyny also increased in female-biased populations and in countries with a high burden of infectious diseases. In contrast, there was little evidence for cultural determination of polygyny (favorable religion, approval of wife beating, exposure to mass media), although female literacy was a negative predictor. Results thus support the three main functional theories (resource-defense, scarcity of men, pathogen defense) and reject cultural determinist accounts of polygyny.

EFFECTS OF POLYGYNY AND CONSANGUINITY ON HIGH FERTILITY IN THE RURAL ARAB POPULATION IN SOUTH JORDAN
SHUJI SUEYOSHI and RYUTARO OHTSUKA
Journal of Biosocial Science (2003), 35:4:513-526 Cambridge University Press
Abstract: Based on the authors’ interview survey for 608 randomly selected women of the rural Arab population in the South Ghor district of Jordan, this paper examined the effects of polygyny and consanguinity on high fertility, which was recognized as natural fertility. The prevalence of polygynous and consanguineous marriages was 28ˇ0% and 58ˇ1%, respectively, largely reflecting the population’s traditional marriage customs. The findings highlighted a significantly higher total marital fertility rate (TMFR) in the monogamous wives (10ˇ5) than in the senior polygynous (8ˇ1) and junior polygynous wives (8ˇ6); the TMFR did not significantly differ among the wives of non-consanguineous, first-cousin and second-cousin marriages. The formation of polygynous marriage was decided by the husband, mostly as a result of his senior wife’s infecundity or sub-fecundity, and the age of the husband at marriage to his junior polygynous wife was high in many cases, leading to a decline in this wife’s fecundity.

For Polygyny: Reproductive Rights and Empowerment amongst 19th Century Mormon Women - Kane, Nazneen. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
This paper offers a feminist revision of existing narratives that objectify 19th century polygynous Mormon women. Universal denouncements of polygamy imagine and construct plural wives as monolithic victims of oppressive patriarchal power relations. Agency and complex personhood are erased through an uncomplicated lens that simplifies the experience of plural wives as all the same—equally oppressed across individuals, communities and temporalities. Such (re)constructions do not adequately represent the complicated historical accounts of LDS women during the polygamist period. Self and other-authored period and post-period histories contrarily reveal a high level of female autonomy amongst many of these plural wives. I suggest that the autonomy and empowerment of these Mormon women is inextricably linked to the practice of polygmany.
Thus, in this paper, I discuss four direct and proxy measures of women’s empowerment to construct an alternative narrative of these polygynous feminists as resisting oppression within a patriarchal society, emphasizing the increased fertility control and reproductive rights of plural wives. Specifically, I examine their reproductive control, material/economic status, access to political power, and the nature of Mormon women’s female-centered communities to reconstruct a more robust representation of Mormon women in polygamy.

Peoples’ Perception of Polygyny in Contemporary Times in Nigeria
M.A.O. Aluko and J.O. Aransiola
ABSTRACT The study examined the peoples’ perception of polygyny in Contemporary Times in Nigeria. The study sought to identify the factors that have led to peoples change of attitudes about polygyny in general as well as their perceived advantages and disadvantages of polygyny. The data were collected using qualitative methodologies cons-isting of in-depth interviews and Focus group discussions. In all, 2000 respondents were used for the study. The respon-dents were selected using multiple sampling techniques comprising f (i) Stratified random sampling (ii) Quota samp-ling and (iii) systematic sampling techniques. The data were analyzed by the use of frequency tables, simple percentage and Z – Y index analysis method. The study revealed that, there has been a change in people’s attitudes towards the practice of polygyny. As high as 79.8% of women in our sample desire that polygyny be eradicated while 51.2% of the men will support legislation against the practice. Again a greater percentage of the women are against polygyny than the men.

Punishment of polygyny - Esa Ranta and Veijo Kaitala
Abstract: We investigated the evolution of monogamy (one male, one female) and polygyny (one male, more than one female). In particular, we studied whether it is possible for a mutant polygynous mating strategy to invade a resident population of monogamous breeders and, alternatively, whether a mutant monogamy can invade resident polygyny. Our population obeys discrete–time Ricker dynamics. The role of males and females in the breeding system is incorporated via the harmonic birth function. The results of the invasability analysis are straightforward. Polygyny is an evolutionarily stable strategy mating system; this holds throughout the examined range of numbers of offspring produced per female. So that the two strategies can coexist, polygyny has to be punished. The coexistence of monogamy and polygyny is achieved by reducing the offspring number for polygyny relative to monogamy. This yields long–term persistence of the strategies for all offspring numbers studied. An alternative punishment is to increase the sensitivity of polygynous breeders to population density. The coexistence is possible only with a limited range of offspring produced. The third way to achieve coexistence of the two mating strategies is to assume that individuals live in a spatially structured population, where dispersal links population subunits to a network. Reducing the dispersal rate of polygynous breeders relative to that of monogamous individuals makes the coexistence feasible. However, for monogamy to persist, the number of offspring produced has to be relatively high.

On the Economics of Polygyny - Theodore C. Bergstrom
Abstract: Gary Becker devotes a chapter of his Treatise on the Family to ‘‘Polygamy and Monogamy in marriage markets. The inclusion of polygamy in his analysis is more than an intriguing curiosum. Although overt polygamy is rare in our own society, it is a very common mode of family organization around the world. Of 1170 societies recorded in Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas, polygyny (some men having more than one wife) is prevalent in 850. (Hartung, 1982). Moreover, our own society is far from completely monogamous. About 1/4 of all children born in the United States in 1990 were born to unmarried mothers who were not cohabiting with the fathers.1 Even though simultaneous marriages to multiple partners are not officially recognized, divorce and remarriage leads to a common pattern of ‘‘serial polygamy’’, in which males remarry more frequently than females and are more likely than females to have children by more than one spouse.2 This paper concerns the economics of polygynous societies with well-functioning markets for marriage partners. The institutions that we model appear to be particularly close to those found in the polygynous societies of Africa where polygyny is the norm. In the countries of the Sahel region of Africa, the percentage of women living in polygynous households ranges from 45% to 55%. In West Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa, these percentages are mostly in the range from 25% to 35%. In Southern Africa, polygyny is less common, with just under 10% of women living in polygynous households. (Lesthaege (1986)). Descriptions of these institutions can be found in Goody (1973) and in Kuper (1982). Most polygynous societies have positive prices for brides.3 In the polygynous societies of Africa, these prices, which anthropologists call ‘‘bridewealth’’, are typically paid to the bride’s male relatives rather than to the bride. According to Jack Goody (1973, p. 5), ‘‘Bridewealth is not to be consumed in the course of the celebration, nor is it handed to the wife, it is given to the bride’s male kin (typically brothers) in order that they can themselves take a wife.’’ Dowry, in contrast to bridewealth, is a payment from the bride’s relatives. But according to Goody, dowry is not the ‘‘reverse’’ of bride wealth. Dowry typically goes directly to the newly married couple rather than to the relatives of the groom, constituting as Goody suggests, ‘‘a type of pre-mortem inheritance to the bride.’’ Goody distinguishes bridewealth from ‘‘indirect dowry.’’ , which is a payment from the groom’s family to the newlywed couple rather than to the bride’s male relatives. Goody reports that in polygynous African societies, payments at the time of marriage normally take the form of bridewealth rather than of indirect dowry. In human societies, males who inherit economic wealth from parents or other relatives can increase their reproductive success substantially by acquiring additional wives, mistresses, or concubines. For females, on the other hand, an extra husband adds little to her lifetime fertility. Once a female has achieved moderate prosperity, additional wealth does little to relax the biological constraints on the number of offspring she can have. Therefore, we expect that in an an economy with well-functioning markets for marital partners, where parents distribute inheritance and the the bridewealth of their daughters in such a way as to maximize the number of their surviving grandchildren, we would expect there to be polygyny rather than polyandry and we would expect brides to command a positive price. We would further expect to see parents leave their inheritances (including the bridewealth received for their daughters predominantly to their sons rather than to their daughters. According to Goody (1973) and Kuper (1981), most of the polygynous societies of Africa fit this description. In a polygynous society, one may want to distinguish the rights and obligations of full siblings from those of half-siblings who share the same father but have different mothers. In particular, it is useful to know whether males typically share the bridewealth of half-sisters or whether bridewealth is preferentially passed to full siblings. While the norm may differ across societies, Kuper’s book (p. 28 ) contains a beautifully explicit description of this pattern of property rights in traditional societies of southern Africa.

Comparing Explanations of Polygyny
Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, Human Relations Area Files
Bobbi S. Low, University of Michigan
Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 41, No. 4, 428-440 (2007)
Polygyny is common in the ethnographic record. The vast majority of cultures known to anthropology allowed at least some men to have more than one wife simultaneously. This article compares various explanations of nonsororal polygyny, by far the most common type of polygyny. Multiple regression analyses of data for the societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample indicate that the two main independent cross-cultural predictors of appreciable (i.e., more than occasional) nonsororal polygyny are high male mortality in war (resulting in an excess of females) and high pathogen stress, which seems to favor nonsororal polygyny to maximize genetic variation and disease resistance in progeny. High male mortality in war predicts particularly in nonstate societies. High pathogen stress predicts particularly in more densely populated state societies.

A role for female ornamentation in the facultatively polygynous mating system of collared flycatchers
Gergely Hegyia, Balázs Rosivalla, Eszter Szöllsia, Rita Hargitaia, Marcel Eensb and János Töröka
In a polygynous mating system, females settling with already mated males often experience low mating success due to the reduced parental contribution of the male. However, there are numerous factors that may still make it advantageous for some females to choose this mating status. Facultative polygyny is believed to be dominated by male advertisement and female choice. Although quality differences and competition among females are increasingly recognized as important determinants of polygynous settlement patterns, the importance of signals of female quality in this mating system is largely unknown. Here we examined the relationship of the white wing patch size (WPS) of female collared flycatchers, a phenotypically plastic and age-dependent ornament, with social mating status, while controlling for settlement date and age. At the population level, monogamous, primary, and secondary females did not differ in WPS. However, the primary female of individual males was more ornamented than the secondary female, and this difference declined with increasing distance between primary and secondary nests. Secondary female ornamentation increased, whereas that of the primary female did not change with nest distance. These results suggest a subtle role for female ornamentation at polygynous mating. Future studies should therefore take into account mating status when assessing the costs and benefits of female signals. Moreover, patterns in quality-indicating female traits may contribute to the explanation of differences in reproductive success among females of different mating status.
 

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