The processes that underlie the formation of the dominance hierarchy in a group are since long under debate. In the present paper, we investigate the relevance of each of these two theories for the degree of female dominance over males. We investigate this in a correlative study in which we compare female dominance between groups of 22 species throughout the primate order. In our study female dominance may range from 0 no female dominance to 1 complete female dominance. However, to our surprise we found none we use the method of independent contrasts.