Parish completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in 1989.[1] She received her Masters of Science from the University of California-Davis in 1990, where she completed her PhD.[2] Her dissertation focussed on sociosexual behaviour and the female-female relationships of bonobos, under the supervision of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.[2]
Research
After graduating UCD, Parish moved to University College London, where she worked with Volker Sommer on behavioural patterns of animals.[3] During this time Parish became an expert on bonobos.[4][5] Whilst studying bonobos at San Diego's Wild Animal Park, she demonstrated a distinct preference of bonobo females for each other's company.[6] Parish moved to the University of Giessen in Germany, where she focussed on reciprocity.[7]
Parish uses an evolutionary approach to understand human behaviour.[8] In 1999 Parish joined the University of Southern California.[9] At USC she has taught eighteen different topics in across a range of disciplines, including Anthropology, Gender Studies, Arts and Letters, Health and Humanities, School of Education, Psychology.[10] She taught a course on "love, marriage and the experience of being a wife and on the cultural impact of Darwin’s theories".[11]
In 2012 she gave a talk at the Natural History Museum, where she revealed "bonobos have more sex, in more ways, and for more reasons, than most humans can imagine".[12] Whilst at Wilhelma, a zoo in Stuttgart, she observed "two females attack a male at the Stuttgart Zoo in Germany and bit his penis in half".[13] In 2013 Parish spoke at World Vasectomy Day about the Evolution of Contraception.[14] In 2016 she gave a keynote talk at the In2In Thinking Forum, "Apes, Power, and Sex: Why We Make War Not Love".[15]
For centuries, the mainly male evolutionary scientists overlooked the significance of female animals behaviour; treating it as a passive constant in a drama dominated by aggressive males.[18]Darwinian Feminism began when Parish and her then supervisor, Sarah Hrdy, began to reevaluate animal behavior.[1] Their goal has been simple; to pay equal attention to male and female interests.[18] In Bonobos, Parish found a matriarchal society, which she thinks "should give hope to the human feminist movement".[19][13] Parish was featured in Angela Saini's 2017 book Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story.[20][21]
Parish is a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.[25] She is on the board of the Kids Eco Club.[26] She is the scientific advisor for the Bonobo Conservation Initiative.[27][28]
^Sommer, Volker; Parish, Amy R. (2010). "Living Differences". Homo Novus – A Human Without Illusions. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. pp. 19–33. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-12142-5_3. ISBN9783642121418.
^Parish, Amy R.; De Waal, Frans B. M.; Haig, David (2000-04-01). "The Other "Closest Living Relative": How Bonobos (Pan paniscus) Challenge Traditional Assumptions about Females, Dominance, Intra- and Intersexual Interactions, and Hominid Evolution". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 907 (1): 97–113. Bibcode:2000NYASA.907...97P. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2000.tb06618.x. ISSN1749-6632. S2CID35370139.
^Hare, Brian; Yamamoto, Shinya (2017). Bonobos : unique in mind, brain and behavior. [Oxford, United Kingdom]. ISBN978-0198728511. OCLC988167775.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Saini, Angela (2017). Inferior : how science got women wrong and the new research that's rewriting the story. Boston. ISBN978-0807071700. OCLC965781304.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
