War of words

Why women have more reason than men to fear the gossip's tongue

MOST women may be physically weaker than men, but they have a formidable weapon at their disposal: gossip. Nattering to each other in this way could be why women form such strong social bonds, says anthropologist Nicole Hess from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

In prehistoric times, men cooperated to hunt or see off rivals competing for their mates. But Hess wondered what made women first form cooperative social groups. "My feeling, growing up as a female, was that women also have strong coalitions. They form strong friendships too."

She thinks gossip could be the key. By chatting to each other, women have a powerful weapon that could be used to outcompete their rivals for precious resources.

Hess and her colleague Edward Hagen tested the idea by asking men or women to imagine that they had discovered someone cheating in a competition, at the expense of a real-life friend. The cheater warned them to keep quiet, otherwise they'd be beaten or bad-mouthed. Depending on the scenario, the cheater was either alone, or backed up by a group of allies.

Men threatened with violence were less likely to expose a cheat if he had back-up. But if told they would be gossiped about, it made no difference whether the cheat had allies or not. For women, the opposite was true. The number of enemies was unimportant when violence was threatened. But if faced with verbal punishment, they were more likely to keep quiet if the cheater had friends.

Hess says this shows that women who share information within a group have a powerful advantage-they could use gossip to damage the reputations and social status of their rivals. This ploy may have helped them secure more food and material resources for themselves and their children.

Men competed in warfare and other physical or violent confrontations, and were judged on obvious traits such as strength and hunting ability. But women's key attributes of fertility and fidelity are less obvious, so they were more vulnerable to gossip, Hess says.

Social anthropologist Camilla Power of the University of East London in Dagenham agrees. "It's a great idea," she says. "In evolutionary terms, gossip was started by women."

But she isn't convinced that gossip was the reason women formed groups in the first place. You need trust for gossip to work, otherwise no one will believe you, she says. And women would need to form coalitions for that trust to develop.

Author: Joanna Marchant, reporting from the Human Behaviour and Evolution Conference in London.

New Scientist issue: 23rd June 2001

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