Ramnath notices that men and women are jealous for different reasons. Men (in general) are worried that their wives will have sex with others, while women (again in general) are worried that their husbands will love someone else. He also notices that this fact is explained by evolutionary psychology. If women sleep around, men are faced with the prospect of having to raise the children of the gair, while for a woman if her husband sleeps around, it does not make as much of a difference as it would if he deserted her.

Having identified the reason, he goes on to speculate that with society changing, i.e with women becoming financially independent, this behaviour will probably change.

I replied to him in the comments arguing that the phenomenon was due to evolutionary hardwiring and would not be changed by changes in economic or social conditions.

He replied saying

Ravi, I assume you would accept that the hardwiring that evolution has built into us can itself be explained by economics. (Man (incl woman) is hardwired to make a choice in which benefits exceed cost. He prefers a beautiful mate, rather than an ugly one, because the signs of beauty (smoothness of skin, or symmetry) are also signs of good health, and he wants to make sure his efforts are not snatched away by death or disease)

Actually, he assumed wrong. Evolution did not hardwire a man to think: “Hey my wife is sleeping around. If she gets pregnant with the other guy, I will end up looking after his kid. As a result, my wife will have less chance to get pregnant with my kid, and therefore my gene will end up unreplicated.” If these thoughts were put into his mind by evolution, then new facts would cause him to alter his behaviour. He might politely walk up to the man his wife is sleeping with and suggest that he use contraception, for example.
But no, that’s not how evolution works. Evolution just gave an advantage to men who get very very angry when they learn that their wife is sleeping around. So angry, in fact that they could kill the man that she is sleeping with, without being able to give a coherent explanation for why they did so. On the other hand, in the case of women, it gave an advantage to women who jealously guard their mate’s affections, but no particular advantage to women who guard against them sleeping around.

To be sure, when I say that something is “hardwired” in our minds, it does not mean that we will behave that way, but that we tend to. Yes, human behaviour can change, but it is silly to expect that it will change the way you want it to or to the extent you want it to just by changing a person’s circumstances. For example, I think that no change in conditions will result in a society where the behaviour I described above (offering a condom to your wife’s lover) becomes the norm. However, it has happened that instead of shooting him or challenging him to a duel, it is now the norm to fight it out in court.

The point is, human nature will always remain the same and it will tend to affect human behaviour. Human behaviour can be altered, but it is not infinitely malleable. See the book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature for a fascinating discussion of this topic.