Some sections felt more evidence based than other, but it was still all fascinating. Particular points of interest for me included learning that males and females react differently to pain medications, and the how & why behind the evolution of reproduction for some animals; I'm looking at you mallard ducks. The female body is seriously incredible. 

This book is fascinating. It offers an alternative perspective on the driving forces of evolution, speciation, and the development of human civilization by summarizing biological, archeological and anthropological research that supports the thesis that the reproductive and offspring rearing characteristics of mammalian female bodies can explain the ways our human bodies and societies function today. This is a contrast to the typical story of human speciation which emphasizes the biological evolution of hunting, self-defense, and physical domination and minimizes the uniquely female contributions to our evolution. For example, while hunting, farming, and fire making tools are typically considered vital for survival and the building of societies, Bohannon argues that the development of ancient genecology and fertility treatments were more important milestones for early humans and other hominids species as this is what allowed the continuation of a genetic line that made the hunting, gathering, and shelter-making worthwhile evolutionarily.  

The text is scientific - I highly recommend reading by audiobook to parse the density of information - but Bohannon returns to an imagined "Eve" story with each chapter to describe each ancestor species that originated a particular female sex characteristic and relate it to our human female experience which lightens the style without compromising the science. 

While absolutely a feminist perspective; feminist-humanist social theory this book is not. It's subsintabely a book on evolutionary biology, not sociology or gender politics. This book is far less concerned with arguing that women are equally adept at navigating a corporate boardroom or handling physical labor. It embraces physical differences between mammalian sexes but argues that female bodies have the physical differences they do because they were vitally important to getting our species to a point where our bodies can even comprehend complex social arrangements such as gender and patriarchy. It analyzes generalized truths about female bodies such as why are they smaller than male bodies? Why do they carry more fat? Why are their voices higher pitched? Why do they live longer than men? The answer to most of these questions is because female bodies evolved to divert a portion of their biological energies toward reproduction - but reproduction was absolutely essential is what allowed for humans to evolve into the type of animal that can write feminist literature and argue about gender equity and human dignity.

And a note on human gender: While this book is centered around the concept of "biological sex" (sometimes a transphobic dog-whistle when applied to humans), I did not find the substance of this book transphobic or even trans-exclusionary. Multiple times, the author created space to acknowledge the existence of transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and queer people and clarify when she was referring to scientific, biological sex characteristics, and when she was referring to gender characteristics. She used trans and genderqueer individuals as interesting case studies comparing the relative influence of biological sex characteristics and constructed gender socialization as well as considering the effects of sex hormones when produced by a person's body versus when acquired by a external prescription. She also acknowledging that transness is a relatively new field of study to an evolutionary biology, but one that deserves more study. 

Ultimately, Bohannon chose a potentially controversial topic for an intersectional feminist to write about and ultimately did it well. The evolution that resulted in the human female body is fascinating and relevant to modern social topics such as reproductive freedom, gendered and sexual violence, economic and social gender equity, healthcare, childcare, and so many others. She uses biological sex not as a weapon to divide socialized gender discrepancies, but rather as an argument that female bodies have done more than their share of the evolutionary innovation that have resulted in a fully conscious, creative, diverse species capable of transcending our basic sex differences to pursue a future of our own individualized sexual, reproductive, and gendered destiny.

Just kind of bored with the topic and the premise of the book it digs deeper into the science and the history than I was interested in and a lot of  the surface level information I already knew.