‘New Darwin’ who says the theory of evolution is sexist

Eve Cat Bohannon Hutchinson £25

When asked to define what a woman is, many politicians still demur. It is possible, opines Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, for a woman to have a penis. Keir Starmer agrees. We didn’t learn that in biology at my girls’ grammar school, but since we’re living in a bizarre culture where this view has many supporters, it’s instructive to study this impressive book about half of humankind – and her all-important biology.

Bohannon tells an exhilarating evolutionary story, as prodigiously researched as it is entertainingly written. Move over, Darwin, and make space for Cat Bohannon.

Her painstaking blend of history, analysis, anecdote and provocative opinion explains the science behind the development of the female sex: wombs, ovaries, hormones, breasts and all the biological accoutrements which add up to womanhood.

Poor old Eve. She was nothing but a man’s rib, a kind of after-thought by God, to give that lonely First Bloke company and copulation in Eden. After that it was our first mother’s fate to get it in the neck for tempting Adam with that apple she had no business to bite. The wicked woman was sweet-talked by a male snake (it’s been happening ever since) and her punishment was to suffer horribly in childbirth – a fate incalculable numbers of women inherited.

But never mind all that biblical stuff, Bohannon wants to set the record straight and focus on the generations of ‘Eves’ who made women what we are. Not that you would recognise yourself in her female exemplar throughout millennia, such as ‘Morgie’ – the little Morganucodon, a rodentlike creature who lived 205million years ago and fed her young with breast milk.

Then, 150million years later, after the asteroid which smashed the world into icy sleep, mammal ‘Donna’ (Protungulatum donnae) came along, and carried her young inside her body. So the long journey through evolution proceeds. Eve doesn’t reach Homo Sapiens until towards the final chapter, called (significantly) ‘Love’.

Why does Bohannon trace

‘femaleness’ so far back?

To answer questions which underlie perennial modern discussions and disagreements. Why do women live longer than men? Why do girls score better than boys at every academic subject, until puberty? Is evolution inherently sexist? In our era of alleged equal rights, do doctors understand women’s bodies?

She says: ‘One-size-fits-all antidepressants are given to men and women, despite evidence they may affect the senses differently. Women are more likely to die of heart attacks, even though they’re less likely to have them – symptoms differ between the sexes, so women and their doctors alike fail to catch them. Anaesthetics in surgery, treatment for Alzheimer’s, even public education curricula suffer from the ill-conceived notion that women’s bodies are… just the same as men’s.’

The questions in Eve pepper us. Why do women wake up faster than men after being given drugs? Do men and women have significantly different brains? Bohannon will annoy some and challenge some preconceptions – but her book is fascinating.