Chapter 9 Battle of the Sexes

Richard Dawkins theorizes that species originally differentiated into sexes when one group began to develop larger sex cells because the larger endowment of resources would be beneficial to the development off the offspring. This was ripe for the exploitation. Another group was able to develop smaller sex cells. This would benefit them because they could create more because they were smaller. This caused the large sex cells to get larger because they were getting less help from the other sex cells, eventually becoming the egg. The smaller sex cells evolved to become smaller and more mobile to reach the egg, becoming the sperm.
However this is not the only conflict of interests between sex. Neither party would hang around and invest resources in the child if they could get away with leaving the other partner to do it. Dawkins claims the male is more likely to do this because they began with a smaller investment. This is clearly true as we can tell by the number of single mothers in our society. The female could leave the male with the child but the danger of him abandoning it would be too great because it would be easier for him to impregnate another woman then to raise the child by himself. This would be detrimental to the woman because of the amount of resources already poured into the child.
So how does the woman get the man to hang around and raise the child? One strategy is to court the male for a long time before allowing him to mate in order to ensure that he's committed. They may also make him invest a certain amount of resources before being allowed to mate, therefor it would beneficial for him to raise the child then go and search for another mate because he knows he would be forced to invest again. An example of this is making the male build a nest (or buy dinner.)
Another strategy is to give up hope of the male helping to raise the child and simply picking out a male who will give the child beneficial genes. This will quickly become women simply picking out men who are attractive because they will then have children who are also attractive and therefore likely to have children of their own.