The Department of Anthropology proudly presents
The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia series

"A Behavioral Ecology View on the Gender-Health Paradox"
By Siobhán M. Mattison, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology, University of New Mexico

In-Person: 3PM, 411 West Hall
Virtual: https://umich.zoom.us/j/92496167134

Why is it that women outlive men yet experience higher morbidity along the way? Public health perspectives have provided important insights on the various factors contributing to the so-called gender-health paradox, but lack a unifying underlying framework to tie different predictors together. In this talk, I describe how behavioral ecology can help to unite disparate findings and explain if and when these trends might be reversed. "Gender reversals" in health among matrilineal and patrilineal Mosuo of China illustrate how underlying variation in socio-ecologies impacts gender differences in health, with important implications for interventions designed to mitigate disparities.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Siobhán M. Mattison is an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of New Mexico and a rotator at the National Science Foundation. Her research focuses on explaining health and welfare in light of variation in human kinship and social structure norms. She conducts fieldwork with the Mosuo (Na) of Southwest China and among the Melanesian Ni-Vanuatu. She received her doctoral degree in biocultural anthropology from the University of Washington and trained as a postdoctoral fellow in anthropology and demography at Stanford University.