People in most cultures view women with small feet as attractive. Like smooth skin or an hourglass figure, petite feet signal a potential mate’s youth and fertility.
Because they signal reproductive potential, a preference for mates with these qualities may have evolved in the brains of our Pleistocene ancestors and are viewed by evolutionary psychologists as evidence that the preference is hard-wired into our genetic makeup. (more…)
YSPH Postdoc Examines how Armed Conflict Increases the Incidence of Intimate Partner Violence
The armed conflict in Burma is not one that receives much attention in the western media. But it has forced thousands of people to flee their homes and seek relative safety just over the border in Thailand.
But once there, refugee women face another peril entirely that continues to threaten their well-being: intimate partner violence.
In a research paper that was recently published in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Yale School of Public Health postdoctoral research associate Kathryn Falb found that refugee women living in three Thai border camps experience widespread physical violence, not by Burmese soldiers, but by the men who fled with them in the first place. (more…)
