A mating system where one male mates with multiple females during a breeding season. This is the most common form of polygamy in animals and often involves male competition for access to females.
From Greek 'poly-' meaning many and 'gyne' meaning woman or female. The term specifically describes the multiple female partners of a single male, distinguishing it from other polygamous arrangements.
Polygynous males often develop extreme weapons or ornaments - male elephant seals can be 10 times heavier than females and fight brutal battles for beach territories! The most successful polygynous males may father hundreds of offspring while most males reproduce very little or not at all.
Polygyny (one man, multiple wives) has been historically normalized in legal and religious frameworks while polyandry remained culturally stigmatized, reflecting patriarchal property and inheritance systems where male control of reproduction was prioritized.
Use neutrally when discussing comparative family structures, or pair explicitly with 'polyandry' and 'polyamory' to avoid centering male-centric arrangements as the default polygamous form.
["polygamy (broader, gender-neutral)","polyamory (modern, consensual-focused)","plural marriage"]
Anthropologists and family historians—including many women scholars—have documented how polygyny systems often concentrated economic power with men while limiting women's autonomy, agency, and inheritance rights; centering these analyses corrects male-authored ethnography.
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