Zihlman, Adrienne L.

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Zihlman, Adrienne L.
(Adrienne Zihlman)

PERSONAL:

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Education: University of Colorado, B.A.; University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D., 1967.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Anthropology, Social Sciences 1, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. E-mail—azihlman@ucsc.edu.

CAREER:

University of California, Santa Cruz, professor of anthropology.

MEMBER:

American Anthropological Association,American Association for the Advancement of Sciencefellow, California Academy of Sciences fellow.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Squeaky Wheel Award, American Anthropological Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Anthropology, 2004; Excellence in Teaching Award, University of California, Santa Cruz; American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellow; California Academy of Sciences fellow and science trustee.

WRITINGS:

(Contributor and editor, with Mary Ellen Morbeck and Alison Galloway) The Evolving Female: A Life-History Perspective (anthropology), Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1997.

Author of The Human Evolution Coloring Book,Harper, 1982, revised, 2000. Contributor to books, including Sex and Gender Hierarchies, Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction,and The Great Apes. Contributor of articles to journals, including Journal of Human Evolution andJournal of Zoology.

SIDELIGHTS:

Adrienne L. Zihlman, as a teacher and writer, has given much attention to the role of gender in the evolution and behavior of humans and primates. She has authored many articles on the topic and has sought to assure that studies of anthropology and evolutionary biology take note of female experiences and perspectives. With Mary Ellen Morbeck and Alison Galloway, she edited the book The Evolving Female: A Life-History Perspective, to which she also contributed writings. The "life-history" method looks at the approaches that living things have evolved with regard to growth, reproduction, parenting, and other aspects of life, and this book studies how female approaches differ from male ones. The work grew out of a 1990 scientific conference at which only women were allowed. Organizers received some criticism for the women-only rule, but B. Holly Smith, who reviewed The Evolving Female for American Scientist,reported that "the book redeems the conference, shifting the focus back again toward science."

The book's contents include studies of mothering patterns among such animals as seals, sea lions, and macaques; of physical differences between female and male humans, including fat distribution and women's risk for osteoporosis; and of social patterns that affect women's roles in life. Some critics thought it unusual but useful in that it looks at both biological and social factors in the development of humans and other mammals. "The goal of this volume harks back to a more holistic and integrated era of science, as Darwin originally envisioned, and perhaps ahead to a future one," commented Jeanne Altmann in the Quarterly Review of Biology. Catherine Key, writing in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, observed that "it is argued that all aspects of an animal's anatomy, physiology and behaviour are components of life history," and she praised this "multidimensional perspective."

Smith found the volume lacking in some respects, saying it fails to provide "a firm definition of life history," but also saw much of merit in it, as the book "enlarges the body of material that belongs in a standard anthropology curriculum—a curriculum that should include comparisons of male and female life strategies and more information about female biology." Some reviewers described the book as accessible not only to established scientists but to aspiring ones, as the contributors provide background on their research and their lives. "In this way," Key concluded, "we glean something of the life-story of the life-history researchers themselves."