Biological egg structure does not dictate the degree of female parental involvement

Evidence

It would be rash to deduce from such an observation that woman’s place is in the home: but there are rash people. In his book Tempérament et caractère selon les individus, les sexes et les races (Nature and Character According to Individuals, Sex, and Race), Alfred Fouillée claimed he could define woman entirely from the ovum and man from the sperm; many so-called deep theories are based on this game of dubious analogies. It is never clear what philosophy of nature this pseudo-thinking refers to. If one considers laws of heredity, men and women come equally from a sperm and an ovum. I suppose that vestiges of the old medieval philosophy—that the cosmos was the exact reflection of a microcosm—are floating around in these foggy minds: it was imagined that the ovum is a female homunculus and woman a giant ovum. These reveries dismissed since the days of alchemy make a weird contrast with the scientific precision of descriptions being used at this very moment: modern biology does not mesh with medieval symbolism; but our people do not look all that closely. If one is a bit scrupulous, one has to agree that it is a long way from ovum to woman. The ovum does not yet even contain the very notion of female. Hegel rightly notes that the sexual relationship cannot be reduced to that of two gametes. Thus, the female organism has to be studied in its totality. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 88 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Another reason parental care is generally provided by females, rather than males, has to do with the certainty of parentage. For many animal species females retain the eggs inside their bodies until after they are fertilized. A female who cares for these eggs can be certain that they are hers, and not those of another female, so energy and time invested are well spent. Males have no such assurance, for precisely the same reason: if fertilization happens inside females then males run the risk that sperm from a rival male actually fertilizes the offspring. Expending resources for the care of unrelated offspring is not cost-effective. Consequently, because females have invested the most already, and because they generally have higher certainty of genetic parentage than their mates, selection favors the evolution of maternal care of offspring more often than it does paternal care. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 684 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

These biological data are of extreme importance: they play an all-important role and are an essential element of woman’s situation: we will be referring to them in all further accounts. Because the body is the instrument of our hold on the world, the world appears different to us depending on how it is grasped, which explains why we have studied these data so deeply; they are one of the keys that enable us to understand woman. But we refuse the idea that they form a fixed destiny for her. They do not suffice to constitute the basis for a sexual hierarchy; they do not explain why woman is the Other; they do not condemn her forever to this subjugated role. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 102 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Parentage certainty drives why females, not males, typically provide parental care — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 684; Biology refutes both the female-passivity bias and the male-effervescence bias at the gamete level — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 85; Biology shapes but does not determine woman’s situation or destiny — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 102 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Parentage certainty drives why females, not males, typically provide parental care #qualifies (0.85) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 684
• Sexual difference cannot be reduced to the biology of gametes #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 88
• Biology shapes but does not determine woman’s situation or destiny #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 102
• Biology refutes both the female-passivity bias and the male-effervescence bias at the gamete level #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 85
• Reproductive investment asymmetry drives sex differences in mate selection and aggression #qualifies (0.80) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1181
• Male and female gametes are fundamentally equivalent in origin and structure #corroborates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 85
• Male parental care can invert the direction of sexual selection and weaponry #qualifies (0.75) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 160