| Abstract: | Theories of human aggression tend to emphasize aggression as a male phenomenon. An ecological approach to aggression implies that females ought to be aggressive when confrontation is a viable means of attaining scarce resources. In modern Zambia, intrafemale aggression occurs at the individual and socioeconomic class levels. At the individual level, aggression occurs between women for a specific man or his economic resources both within households and beyond their boundaries. At the class level, elite and poor women combine forces to victimize subelite women. Both levels of aggression involve competition over the scarce resource of socially desirable men and their support. Competition is due to the unequal access of the genders to opportunities for labor-force participation and hence different positions in the stratification system, the desire for hypergamous marriage, marital instability, changing role expectations, and the increased dependency of women on men. |
