This pattern of male posturing and female choice is common amongst animals and, over the years, the criteria the females use to make their choices have been elucidated.

ECONOMIST: Birds do it, bees do it | The

We all went crazy when Geraldine Ferraro was picked the first female vice presidential choice on a major party ticket in 1984, and Walter Mondale lost 49 states.

NPR: Political Junkie: Three Weeks to Pennsylvania

Currently, female soldiers have a choice of 11 male body-armor sizes.

MSN: Staff Writer

Having been trained to detect similarities among images, the apes were shown a female's portrait and then given a choice between two other faces, one of which showed her offspring.

WSJ: The Brains of the Animal Kingdom

If Mr Blair wants new female faces in his cabinet, an obvious choice is Patricia Hewitt , the energetic 52-year-old minister responsible for small business and e-commerce at the Department of Trade and Industry.

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Hart, who won three awards in 2010, is up for best female TV comic, TV comedy actress and the People's Choice award, while her show is up for best sitcom.

BBC: Miranda Hart leads comedy awards nominations

Pro-choice women were ecstatic: this was the first election in which the female vote had clearly been the deciding force.

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The Rio police chief also justified her choice of replacement, Inspector Monique Vidal, for her "trajectory as a female officer".

BBC: Twitter

Anne Tamar-Mattis of Advocates for Informed Choice, an American pressure group, says that though legal systems assume that male and female are indisputable categories, none defines them.

ECONOMIST: Sex is a complicated thing to define