The Meaning and Meanness of Polygyny
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This chapter explores the pervasive harm polygyny inflicts on women, children, and nation-states by tracing the author's unexpected scholarly journey into the topic. Prompted by a post-9/11 conversation, the author began to investigate how polygyny—through practices like patrilocality, child marriage, and wealth-based marital inequality—exacerbates violence, undermines health, and fosters systemic oppression. Using data from the WomanStats Project and global experimental studies, the author demonstrates that higher rates of polygyny correlate with increased domestic violence, child mortality, female genital mutilation, and diminished civil and political rights. Her expert testimony in a landmark Canadian trial further validates these empirical links, influencing legal efforts to curb harm under the guise of religious freedom. Finally, the chapter urges scholars and policymakers to confront how entrenched gender hierarchies, rooted in polygynous systems, perpetuate inequality and instability—and to take action to disrupt their intergenerational effects.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".