Veiling is an ancient cultural practice endorsed by religion, social institutions, and laws. Recently, there have been adaptive arguments to explain its function and existence. Specifically, it is argued that veiling women is a form of male mate guarding strategy, which aims to increase sexual fidelity by decreasing overt displays of his mate’s physical attractiveness, thereby helping to secure his reproductive success. Furthermore, it is suggested that such mate retention strategies (veiling) should be more important when child survival is more precarious, as cues to sexual fidelity support higher paternal investment. Using publicly available data from the PEW Research Center encompassing 26,282 individuals from 25 countries, we tested the hypotheses that men should be more supportive of women’s veiling and this support should be more important in harsher environments, particularly those with poor health and high mortality rates, where paternal care is presumably more important. Our results show that men were more supportive of veiling than women, and this support increased as the environments became harsher. Overall, these findings support the male mate retention argument as well as the idea that the practice of veiling is sensitive to environmental differences.

中文翻译：

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头纱重要性的性别差异：跨文化调查

戴面纱是一种受到宗教、社会机构和法律认可的古老文化习俗。最近，有适应性的论据来解释它的功能和存在。具体而言，有人认为，戴面纱的女性是男性配偶保护策略的一种形式，其目的是通过减少配偶的身体吸引力的公开展示来提高性忠诚度，从而帮助确保他的生殖成功。此外，有人建议，当孩子的生存更加不稳定时，这种配偶保留策略（面纱）应该更重要，因为性忠诚的线索支持更高的父亲投资。使用来自 25 个国家的 26,282 个人的 PEW 研究中心的公开数据，我们检验了以下假设：男性应该更多地支持女性戴面纱，这种支持在更恶劣的环境中更重要，尤其是在那些健康状况不佳和死亡率高的环境中，父亲的照顾可能更重要。我们的研究结果表明，男性比女性更支持戴面纱，而且这种支持随着环境变得更加恶劣而增加。总体而言，这些发现支持男性配偶保留的论点以及戴面纱对环境差异敏感的观点。