Kindness, understanding, and intelligence topped a recent list (Kenrick & Simpson, 1997). Women value prospective male suitors on a cluster of characteristics related to resource potential: good financial prospects, ambition, industriousness, older age, and emotional maturity. On the other hand, men value potential female partners in terms of fecundity, the ability to produce and care for children (Buss 69) Physical attractiveness is a determinant of desirability and measure of reproductive fitness. Men put greater emphasis on attractiveness as female beauty relates to a woman's reproductive ability.
Since there is less segregation between sexes and race, the suppressed changed and the oppressors have not. Mate selection criteria for men have remained at a constant but for women it has been a drastic change. Since the traditional female role has changed in the past generations factors such as education and entering the work force have thrown them in "mating pools" thus giving women more option and resulting in their mate criteria being more demanding. Since women have to make a greater obligatory investment in offspring though gestation and infant care, they have more of a choice about whom they are going to mate. .
Dr. David M. Buss tried to explain the evolutionary truth about relationships in his book The Evolution of Desire and bases his theories on a cross-cultural study of more than 10,000 respondents. Buss is an evolutionary psychologist and asserts that all of our dating, mating and relating behaviors are hardwired. Each gender has its own set of mating strategies that remain unchanged since the dawn of time, and work to guarantee the survival of the species. Buss explains through evolution that a "Women's greater initial investment does not end with the egg. Fertilization and gestation, key components of human parental investment, occur internally within women. One act of sexual intercourse, which requires minimal male investment, can produce an obligatory and energy-consuming nine-month investment by the woman that forecloses other mating opportunities (Buss 19).