Women, as compared with men, want to hide their age. Fundamentally, women across the world in all culture, as far as possible, keep their age secret. Some culture considers it is morally wrong to ask the age of women. It is very interesting to know the reason why women want to hide age? Why they feel uneasy to reveal their age while it is not same for men? Actually, hiding age is not misbehave of women. How? In this article, I am going to explore the reason based on the evolutionary process by shedding new light on women psychology.
Human thinking and adapted mind
To know human psychology, we have to know how our mind is structured. Whatever we are thinking is based on the structure of mind. We have a specific mind structure or pattern to think and feel. Whether we are conscious or unconscious, our thinking is patterned. So, to know our thinking, we have to take a closer look at how our mind is structured or patterned. To know women psychology or thinking, we have to know how their mind is structured. The question may arise,
What determines the structure of the mind?
The answer is : natural selection or evolution process. According to Darwin theory, all the species are the product of evolution process. All the human body organs are the product of evolution. e.g. our eye, hand, leg, brain etc. This implies, we have to find out how the women psychology is evolved. To know how it is necessary to know why.
The question arises in an obvious way, why the human mind is evolved? All the evolution process is for adaptation. All species in this world are evolved to adapt in their environment. The environment has certain pressure on them and they are evolved to make them fit in the environment. Or they are evolved to enhance their survival. Or they are evolved to solve the problems. There is a very close relationship between human biology and the environment. The question can be reduced as what kind of environment that our mind should be adapted for?
Hunting and gathering society
It is the first human society and covers 99% time of human history. So the human mind is structured to adapt in this society. Our mind is evolved to adapt to the environment of hunting and gathering society rather than this modern society. It is necessary to examine this society to find our answers.
Hunting and gathering society is a very simple society. In this society, human used to hunt animals and collects foods for their survival. Human lived in the group and had a nomadic life. They used to move from one place to another wherever there is the availability of resources.
Adaptive problem and women psychology
In hunting and gathering society, finding a mate was a crucial adaptive problem. All things in the environment are not equally valuable. For example, some foods are highly nutritional but some are not. Some are beneficial to health but some are dangerous. Likewise choosing a potential mate is highly valuable for reproduction.
What would happen if a men had no mate preference? There might also possibilities to choose women who are below or beyond the reproduction years. What is the result? They cannot give birth to a new child. Their mating would have no meaning.
We know that women have no constant reproduction value. Certain age period of women can only have potential reproductive value. So it was the pressure for a men to choose a potential mate. Men used to choose woman who have higher reproductive value. They were highly attracted to such women. As age determines women fertility or reproduction, it has become the central factor to the attraction. Women with higher potential reproduction could easily be the point of attraction for men of high economic status.
Beyond the production value, men would not select women for mating. So after a certain age, women would not be the point of attraction for men. But women did not want to lose attraction which is possible by hiding their age. It continued for millions of years which creates a pattern in our mind. So fundamentally all women around the world want to hide their age. Therefore, it is not the weakness or misbehave of women but their natural thinking process.
Conclusion
The human mind is patterned by the evolution process. Since human spend 99% of their time in hunting and gathering society, our mind is adapt for this society. The hiding of age by women is fundamentally the thinking process or women psychology which is the pattern created in hunting and gathering society. So it is not the misbehave of women to hide their age.
Reference : "THE ADAPTED MIND" Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture Edited by Jerome H. Barkow Leda Cosmides John Tooby