關鍵看產權。沒錯，在女性並不擁有自主權利時，她們的稀缺性並不能造成女性地位的提升。從Azar Gat的War In Human Civilization中可以舉一個極端例子：
在相當多的原始部落和農業社會中，殺女嬰行為多到駭人聽聞的程度：
In all hunter–gatherer (and agricultural) societies, female infanticide is regularly practised. Parents prefer boys who can hunt (or work in the fields) and protect. Infanticide is often covert and attributed to accidents, but census statistics of pre-industrial societies tell an unmistakable story. Although the number of male and female babies should be nearly equal at birth (105:100 in favour of boys), there are many more boys than girls in childhood. Surveys of hundreds of different communities from over 100 different cultures (of which about a fifth were hunter–gatherers) has shown that juvenile sex ratios averaged 127:100 in favour of boys, with an even higher rate in some societies. The Eskimos are one of the most extreme cases. Their harsh environment made them wholly dependent on male hunting, whereas female foraging played a greater economic role in milder climates. Thus, female infanticide was particularly widespread among them. They registered childhood sex ratios of 150:100 and even 200:100 in favour of boys. No wonder then that the Eskimos experienced such a high homicide rate over women, even though polygyny barely existed among them. Among Australian Aboriginal tribes childhood ratios of 125:100 and even 138:100 in favour of boys were recorded. The Orinoco and Amazonian basin hunters and horticulturalists have been closely studied. Their childhood boy ratio to every 100 girls is: Yanomamo 129 (140 for the first two years of life), Xavante 124, Peruvian Cashinahua 148. In Fiji the figure was 133. In tribal Montenegro it was estimated at 160. Although the evidence is naturally weaker, similar ratios in favour of males have been found among the skeletons of adult Middle and Upper Palaeolithic hunter–gatherers, indicating a similar practice of female infanticide that may go back hundreds of thousands of years. (p.74)女性稀少導致了男性間的暴力沖突和高死亡率：
Among the Yanomamo, for instance, and they can be regarded as representative in this respect: about 15 per cent of the adults die as a result of inter- and intragroup violence. The division of violent death between males and females is very uneven, however. The figure for the males is 24 per cent versus 7 per cent for the females. The Plains Indians showed a deficit of 50 per cent for the adult males in the Blackfoot tribe in 1805 and 33 per cent in 1858, whereas during the reservation period the sex ratio rapidly approached 50:50. (p.75)殺女嬰和男性沖突形成一個均衡：為了保留更多資源給能長成戰士的男嬰而殺女嬰，為了解決可供婚配女性數量不足而打仗。一旦原始部落被國家納入管轄，部落間戰爭減少，殺女嬰行為立即急劇減少。原始部落間成年男性暴力死亡率達到20世紀世界大戰的水平，而且常年如此：
All this suggests that average human violent mortality rates among adults in the state of nature may have been in the order of 15 per cent (25 per cent for the men);……
Furthermore, as Meggitt observes with respect to both the Australian Aborigines and New Guinea Enga highlanders, most of the men carried wound marks and scars, and regarded them as a matter of course. Chagnon portrays the same picture for the Yanomamo. (p.131).
……
In the First World War about 3 per cent of both the French and German populations died, representing roughly 15 per cent of the adult males. In the Second World War over 15 per cent of the Soviet Union’s population perished, and around 5 per cent in Germany. However, when averaged over time, even the dreadful figures from these cataclysmic events fall short of those for primitive societies.(p.131-132)
在男性的暴力沖突中，女性的命運同樣很悲慘：
In inter-village warfare, women were regularly raped or kidnapped for marriage, or both.(p.58)……
Warfare regularly involved stealing of women, who were then subjected to multiple rape, or taken for marriage, or both.(p.69)
……
So hunter–gatherers’ warfare commonly involved the stealing and raping of women; (p.69)
這些社會同樣盛行多妻制，而誘拐別人的老婆又成為了作戰動因：
However, in the richer and more productive parts of Arnhem Land and nearby islands in the north, a few men could have as many as 10–12 wives, and in some places, in the most extreme cases, even double that number. There was a direct correlation of resource density, resource accumulation and monopolization, social ranking, andpolygyny. (p.71)
……
Among the Eskimos of the more densely populated Alaskan coast, abduction of women was a principal cause of warfare. Polygyny, too, was more common among them, although restricted to the few. (p.71)
總而言之，婚配市場上女性稀缺的確可能提升女性地位，前提是女性本人是婚配市場上的主體(agent)，其自主權利受到尊重，能夠自由選擇。否則，再稀缺的女性也只是一部份男性手中的玩偶或可居的奇貨，甚至是搶奪的戰利品，在婚配市場上根本沒有她們說話的份。
