Female sexual strategies

Strategically, a fundamental constraint for women is their limited scope for pursuing quantity, especially in an era of extremely high infant and child mortality rates. Even with ten children (close to the limit), only four or five would survive to adulthood. The only way to increase quantity was to shorten the interval between births by reducing the breastfeeding period, using breast milk substitutes like goat's milk or cow's milk, or hiring wet nurses.
In terms of reproductive purpose, a woman only needs one husband—provided he can produce healthy sperm. Polyandry is extremely rare, usually serving the needs of family management, avoiding the division of property and land, and reducing resource conflicts among brothers. It's more of a male strategic consideration than a woman's active choice, and is primarily prevalent among the poor or in extremely resource-scarce regions.
However, typically needing only one husband doesn't mean women don't need more sexual partners. Otherwise, it would be difficult to understand why wives have so many extramarital affairs (only slightly fewer than husbands), since most of these relationships are consensual, and many are even actively sought and initiated by the women themselves. A typical modern woman will likely have about eight sexual partners in her lifetime.
Men's primary motivation for seeking multiple sexual partners is to secure their reproductive resources, while women do so for more sophisticated strategic reasons.
The most obvious is the need for backup. High male mortality rates and short lifespans were particularly pronounced in eras of hunting, violent conflict, and frequent tribal wars. For wives, lacking a backup option was extremely dangerous, not only because of the risk of widowhood but also because of the risk of abandonment.
This backup strategy requires women to maintain interest in their chosen husbands while simultaneously keeping other suitors hopeful. This means adopting a degree of ambiguity to keep them interested, sometimes offering small rewards, but without going too far to avoid jeopardizing their existing marriage. Finding the right balance is difficult, but skillful women can manage it with ease, even maintaining multiple backup options simultaneously.
The backup plan strategy also resolves the contradiction between the urgency and caution of a widow's remarriage. The short and precious reproductive period, coupled with the urgent and heavy burden of raising and protecting children, demands that widows remarry as soon as possible. However, the reliability of a new husband's abilities and willingness must be carefully considered. A backup plan allows women ample time and opportunity to calmly assess the situation.
The second motivation is more subtle. On the one hand, to persuade a man to cooperate in raising the children, the wife must ensure her husband's fidelity, thus giving him sufficient confidence in the parent-child relationship. At the same time, to get the husband to fully commit to the family partnership, he cannot be completely at ease; otherwise, he might spend less time providing minimal protection for his wife and children while seeking more sexual opportunities, thus shifting the strategy towards quantity. As discussed in "The Conflicting Monogamy," the optimal number of children for each spouse is often different.
To address this, women have developed a strategy of moderate ambiguity, clearly reflected in their physiological and psychological characteristics. While most primates have clearly identifiable estrus cycles, with females using prominent signals such as sexual swelling to advertise their ovulation and fertility, human female ovulation is more subtle. This means husbands struggle to determine which days their wives are most likely to conceive, forcing them to remain by their wives' side for most of the time (excluding menstruation) to prevent infidelity and pregnancy. Consequently, husbands have little time or energy for other sexual relationships.
Females with estrus cycles typically only accept mating requests during estrus (except for animals like bonobos that use sex as a regular social activity), while human females can be sexually aroused and accept sexual requests at any stage of their ovulation cycle, and can achieve orgasm even when conception is unlikely (albeit with a lower degree and probability).
In the absence of reliable paternity testing technology, the combination of a moderately ambiguous strategy and a backup plan strategy can help women mitigate the risk of infanticide. If the parentage is fully established, the newly chosen backup plan has sufficient motivation to kill, abandon, or expel the child left by the previous partner. However, the ambiguous backup plan strategy makes them hesitant: the child might be his own. The ambiguous strategy further reinforces this uncertainty: because ovulation cannot be identified, any affair cannot rule out the possibility of the woman becoming pregnant.
Women are more subtle and tactful than men in expressing affection, sexual interest, and sexual pleasure, and their emotions are more unpredictable, making them more enigmatic. These psychological mechanisms may have developed in conjunction with the aforementioned ambiguous strategy. Through a complex set of signals, a woman tells her husband: I love you and am willing to be loyal to you, but only if you keep a close eye on me; otherwise, I have other options.
A third motivation for women seeking sexual partners outside of a fixed spouse is to increase the genetic diversity of their offspring, thus implementing a diversified investment strategy. Since children inherit many traits from their fathers, different traits have varying relative advantages under different environmental conditions. However, future environmental conditions are unpredictable, and diversification avoids putting all eggs in one basket.
More importantly, because different strategies rely on different resources, if children inherit the same strategy, resource conflicts are more likely to occur among them. As discussed in the article "Male Sexual Strategies," strategy differentiation based on birth order can alleviate resource conflicts among brothers by configuring childhood strategies using birth order as a parameter. However, mothers have an even more direct option: to give their children different fathers.
This diversification is not random but a carefully crafted combination. Women follow different criteria when choosing a husband for themselves and a father for their children. The former focuses on his ability and willingness to care for his wife and children, including wealth, power, emotional fidelity, and a love of children, while the latter focuses more on his genetic endowments, such as health, intelligence, and sexual attractiveness.
While there is overlap between these two aspects—the ability and willingness to raise children can be inherited to some extent, and health and intelligence also influence parenting ability—the differences are also significant. The acquisition of wealth and power is largely accidental, sometimes completely unrelated to genetic endowment, such as lottery winners or orphans adopted by the king. Moreover, this potential is not easily identifiable, whereas traits like health and sexual attractiveness are not only more reliably heritable but also easier to judge intuitively.
Furthermore, since seeking extramarital sexual partners aims to increase the genetic diversity of offspring, and the selection of a husband will certainly focus on those endowments related to parenting ability, the selection of a lover should ideally prioritize other aspects. Therefore, the ideal combination is a well-resourced husband, plus several lovers with excellent genetic endowments in other areas.
This is the general guideline; the optimal combination depends on the woman's own circumstances. Broadly speaking, we can identify several common combinations. If a woman possesses vast parenting resources and needs no male assistance (such as Elizabeth I), then her criteria for choosing a husband should primarily be based on identifiable genetic endowments, and she can boldly implement a diversified strategy.
However, this is only possible if she has autonomy. In many societies, a woman's right to choose a spouse is often controlled by her parents, and her brothers may also interfere, even though their interests are not aligned with hers. This is especially true in the elite classes, where a daughter's marriage is often used as a tool for the family to establish political or business alliances.
If a woman has already married a particularly wealthy husband, then the overriding priority is to give birth to a son and help him secure his inheritance. Before that, any other considerations must be put on hold until this task is accomplished, or until it is no longer possible. The reason why having a son (rather than a daughter) is the most important is that for particularly large resources, only sons can fully realize their potential, while the marginal benefits of daughters decrease too quickly due to limitations on the number of children they can have.
Women who marry into wealthy families need to be particularly careful about diversification. This is because the opportunity cost of being abandoned after an affair is exposed is too high, and because the husband, due to his good conditions, can easily remarry, he will have fewer concerns and hesitations when deciding to abandon (or even kill) his wife. Moreover, if she can inherit her deceased husband's estate, even just a portion, it is enough for her to obtain favorable conditions for remarriage, without needing to consider the issue of backup options in advance.
Conversely, if a woman marries a husband of average means, she has reason to be more proactive in pursuing backup options and diversification. This is because the need for backup options and diversification is more urgent, and the risks and opportunity costs are lower. While a husband with limited options and poor remarriage prospects might be more diligent in preventing infidelity, he is more likely to remain silent once his wife's infidelity is a fait accompli.
For most girls who don't possess the qualities of a queen or princess, marrying a reliable husband is a priority. Therefore, (at least in traditional societies) maintaining a reputation for chastity is crucial; a reputation for promiscuity greatly damages a woman's chances of finding a partner. Thus, most women don't prioritize short-term relationships in their sexual strategy. However, a small number of girls with particularly poor circumstances, anticipating difficulty finding a reliable husband, are forced to focus on short-term relationships, thus sacrificing their reputation for chastity.
Studies show that girls who lack a father or paternal love during childhood tend to have earlier menarche, begin sexual relationships earlier, and are more inclined towards short-term relationships. This may be because the absence of a father could mean being an illegitimate child or living in extreme poverty. Without a father's protection, the chances of sexual assault and loss of virginity are also higher, all of which negatively impact their choice of a partner.
Like other women, in short-term relationships, women tend to prefer men at the extremes of the strategy spectrum: either wealthy, high-status men or sexually attractive playboys, rather than conservative, family-oriented men. The saying "women don't love bad men" perfectly encapsulates this.
While a wealthy man is unlikely to marry her, he might be willing to support her and her child, provided the child is highly likely to be his. Conversely, a good man, out of consideration for his family, might not dare to acknowledge an illegitimate child, let alone support them. A libertine, on the other hand, can ensure her son inherits his womanizing ways, since the son is likely to be a poor man of low social standing in the future, a situation where the libertine strategy is more advantageous.
Once a woman chooses short-term relationships as her strategic focus, her reputation for chastity becomes unimportant, because men don't care about that in short-term relationships. A reputation for promiscuity can actually help them attract short-term partners, as suitors will find them easier to obtain and less responsible.

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Female sexual strategies

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