Women live longer than men. Almost everywhere. And it seems likely they always have. Sweden’s first national statistics, gathered between 1751 and 1790, showed Swedish woman living 36.6 years on average, compared to 33.7 years for men. Men suffer more disease, have more accidents – and are more likely to kill or to be killed. According to psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, a man is 20 times more likely to murder another man than a woman is to kill another woman.
But why?
Well for a start it’s because men are far more competitive than women. Young men most of all. They have to compete with one another, because women choose only high status males to father their children. They’re even willing to share the best men – so some men fail to find a partner at all. Far more men than women die childless. So men have to work hard – and be willing to take risks to find a mate. We see them doing it all the time. Taking risks with their health. Taking risks gathering wealth. And in the extreme, they’ll resort to violence to protect what they have – or to obtain more from other men.
Do you remember the Bob Dylan song: ‘When you got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose?’ It’s true. So men who’re unemployed, or without a partner, kill other men much more often than men who have jobs or long term relationships. Life expectancy is also important, as are differences in wealth. Where life’s short anyway, it makes sense for a man to take bigger risks. Murder rates are also higher whenever incomes vary a lot. It’s not poverty alone that makes men aggressive, it’s big differences between the have’s and the have not’s.
Murder rates also vary hugely from one society to another. The rate in Colombia is 15 times that of Costa Rica. The rate in America is 10 times that of Norway. The highest rates of all are where there’s no effective police or central government, such as in Amazonian tribal communities. There are also big variations within countries. For example, comparable homicide rates in the Southern United States are double those in the rest of the country – four times those in the Mid West. Careful research has ruled out obvious explanations, such as the South’s higher temperatures, greater poverty and its history of slavery.
So why should there be more murders in one part of America compared to another? It’s because the Southern United States has a type of society known as a ‘culture of honour’. They’re common wherever people believe that a man has to be capable of looking after himself. Where the state is unable to protect him for example. In places like that, a man has to establish his credentials as ’someone not to be meddled with’. What else can he do? Other men constantly try to put him down, and his only option is to threaten to use force in return. But inevitable, from time to time, it leads to actual violence. Because a man can’t be too willing to back down, or he’ll not be taken seriously in future.
A culture of honour dominates countries around the Mediterranean and most of the part of North and South America where the Spanish settled. It’s found among the Maasai and the native horsemen of central Asia and the American plains. Ireland, Scotland, and most of Scandinavia had this culture in the past.
US criminologist Marvin Wolfgang calls the most common type of murder in such societies a ‘trivial altercation’. Two men get into an argument over an insult, a small debt or whatever, usually in front of people they know. Neither’s willing to give way and the dispute ends in a murder. Actually it’s not fair to call these disagreements trivial. Mostly, the men involved have a pretty low status, and they’re defending the only thing they’ve got that’s really valuable. A reputation for refusing to be pushed around.
High-status men defend their reputations too – but usually in other ways. Generally they can use the courts to deter competitors. But in groups that can’t afford lawyers – or wherever the law is ineffective – a reputation for violence is essential for getting and keeping a high status. And status is important. All over the world it’s the high status men who get to have all the women. Napoleon Chagnon of the University of California has shown that in at least one Amazon tribe, men who have killed have more wives and children than those who have not, and it’s likely that lots of societies are similar.
Societies where there’s a culture of honour were often settled by people who were – maybe still are – herders. Animals are easily stolen, so it’s important for a man who owns livestock to establish that he’s not someone to be challenged lightly. Ethnographer John K. Campbell pointed out that the first public quarrel in the life of a young Greek shepherd is a critical moment. To gain respect, he must challenge not only real insults but also attempts to wind him up. You probably remember people in school who were good at it: ‘You’re looking at my girlfriend…?’ ‘No I’m not!’ ‘What’s the matter, she’s not good-looking, or what…?’
Places which were mostly settled by herdsmen tended to have poor law enforcement. The country was too big or sparsely populated. In areas colonised mainly by arable farmers, the situation is different. It’s much harder to steal crops, and people have to get along with the man next door. Cultures of honour also seems to develop wherever people loose their settled roots in a community, or where the law can’t be effectively enforced.
And in such societies, most murders result from insults, a brawl in a bar, a fight over a woman, or a neighbours’ quarrel. Guys think they will be regarded as a wimp if they don’t respond to an insult – and they’re right. The FBI say that the Southern United States is exactly like that, and it’s a similar story in such areas all over the world.
But things are changing. Economic and social changes, improved enforcement and respect for the law are gradually changing attitudes. And so cultures of honour are disappearing. Thank goodness. But at least the contrast between countries and cultures shows that violence by men is not simply genetically programmed. Male aggression is not inevitable. It’s just as much a result of the way we live, and what we expect a man to be. Whether a man uses his fists when he’s insulted is a matter of upbringing and expectations. So we can do something about it…
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