Well, according to Wikipedia's article on hypergamy:
Today most people marry their approximate social equals, and in much of the world hypergamy has decreased; for example, it is becoming less common for women to marry older men, although hypergamy does not require the man to be older, only of higher status.
This is an unusable definition. It is too limiting, overly simplistic and inadequate for the topic being discussed.
Even though the books provide a comprehensive understanding of hypergamy, who’s definition only becomes clear by actually reading the material, I will attempt to describe this abstract idea using my own words.
The Rational Male series of books are about sex. Or more specifically, the intersexual dynamics between men and women and how each expresses their innate sexual strategy .
For me, I think there’s more to it than that. The fundamental root of the issue is actually one of procreation, or the instinctual impulse for a species to propagate itself. Every living thing in nature is driven and has developed strategies to proliferate, to replicate itself, and human beings are no exception.
These are deep hard-wired unconscious biological programs. and sex is simply the means by which they are expressed.
Men’s biological drive is singular in its focus. The urge to spread his seed among the largest population of women available to him, in order to successfully pass on his genetic material.
It’s a drive that is well documented, easy to recognize and is socially accepted in the old trope of of the guy who “can’t keep it in his pants” and “lets his little head do his thinking for him”.
From the distant past into the modern age, men’s behaviours are so obvious and predictable that they have almost become caricatures of themselves.
Women’s biological drives are dualistic in nature, and up until recent rise of the Manosphere, have been largely hidden from public consciousness. Because of her unique biology, a women must serve two competing drives simultaneously.
This of course likely results in some understandable cognitive dissonance in women, because often the two drives are at odds with each other.
The first is genetic (heritable fitness traits) and the second is provisioning (long term safety and protection for her offspring).
Alpha seed versus Beta need.
The heritable fitness traits of men that women are instinctively drawn to are the appearance of robustness and good health. Physical attributes such as height, muscularity, symmetry, a deep voice, all act to stimulate a woman’s innate desire for sexual mating, because these are the traits that would most likely ensure the survival of her offspring in nature.
That’s why naturally handsome, good-looking men tend to be more successful in the sexual arena.
There’s another aspect to the genetic component of women’s primary drive that is often misunderstood, because the outward manifestation of it seems to defy all logic and common sense.
And understanding this second aspect helps explain why women are paradoxically drawn to the quintessential “bad boy”. The man with an attitude, who acts arrogant and dismissive, who is unlikely to be a good long term provider, and who may not even be conventionally handsome, but still manages somehow to enthral and get beautiful women to go to bed with him.
This is also a commonly accepted social trope.
For some reason nature has also selected for the Alpha qualities of confidence, aloofness, and self-assured indifference to become strong unconscious attractors to women’s basic desires.
I don’t know why this is, but I suspect that when a man demonstrates his own worth by outwardly showing that he’s indifferent to the sexual charms and lures of woman, he triggers something in a women’s brain (which has otherwise become accustomed to the constant attentions of men), marking him as “special” and “different” .
They instinctively recognize him as a real Alpha male, the leader in his group, a high value potential mate, or a “man worth having”, and must compete with other women for. Again, I stress that these are deeply held biological drives, and no amount of superficial understanding or rationalization will make them go away. It is an undeniable biological reality that can only (hopefully) be mitigated through conscious awareness and deliberate action.
The second part of women’s dualistic sexual strategy (hypergamy) is that of the biological drive to secure long-term provisioning. - Beta need.
Because it is so rare to find both Alpha (genetic) and Beta (provisioning) traits in the same man, women must both reconcile and often compromise one aspect of their hypergamous nature at the expense of the other.
Interestingly, the dualistic nature of women’s biological impetus is expressed on both a micro and macro scale.
On a micro scale, one can see the distinction within the natural ebb and flow of her menstrual cycle.
During her ovulatory or proliferative phase, a woman will be aroused by and drawn to men with more Alpha-like qualities, because her biology tells her it’s “time to mate”, so she will select from the highest level Alpha that she can attract.
During her luteal phase, when the estrogen level decreases and her uterus is preparing to shed, she will then become more attracted to the Beta qualities of long term provisioning.
On a macro scale, women’s unconscious hypergamous nature is expressed in her sexual behaviour and mate selecting patterns at different stages of her life.
During the height of a woman’s fertility, in her early to mid-twenties, she’s likely go through a phase of active sexual activity with a number of short term Alpha males - often called her “party years”. In one sense, when viewed through the long lens of history, the modern young woman of today ends up squandering her prime reproductive years hopping from one bed to another.
It is only when a woman reaches her late 20’s early 30’s, and she can no longer successfully compete against younger more attractive women, when she turns her focus of her mate selection towards Beta-Type males to secure her long-term provisions needs.
It’s at this point that many women in our modern society, now well past their reproductive peak, aim to secure and husband and start a family, complain about the lack of “good men”.
That, in a nutshell, is how I understand the concept of hypergamy as it is outlined in the books.
Lastly, I’d like to touch upon how this information could be potentially useful to us here in the forum, and I came up with one good example related to Sandra Brown’s book - Women who love Psychopaths.
On the surface, the calm, self-assured confidence of a naturally (but good-hearted) Alpha male is virtually indistinguishable from the haughty narcissistic arrogance of the psychopath. Their outward expression is so similar that many women, unaware of their inner biological drives, will be fooled by them.
If a woman had a deep understanding of how these unconscious biological drives were influencing her behaviour and decision making process, and could bring this understanding into her conscious awareness, then she could potentially avoid a major catastrophic life-changing relationship that would bring her nothing but sorrow and harm.
By making the unconscious conscious, even if it only helps one or two women avoid getting entangled with a predator, wouldn’t the information contained in these books be useful for them to learn, understand and assimilate?
Something to think about.
I myself am confused by what it entails exactly (despite reading TR's blog posts and other blogs on the manosphere). It appears too limited/restricted, and some RedPillers quickly bring up the "hypergamy card" to explain any and all female behaviour wrt relationships. Though it probably goes a long way towards explaining certain typically feminine tendencies, and we might use it as a basis from which most women operate "by default", there are so many other factors that would also contribute to a seemingly "dualistic sexual strategy" (as I think I understand it, since I'm not entirely sure what it means) - such as early trauma, imprinting, absent father, dysfunctional family, characteropathy (NPD, BPD…), or just plain emotional immaturity. So it's not so simple (I know nobody here said it was). "Patterns within patterns" indeed.
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Here, take a look at the following news report from the Eurasian Women's forum. I think there is definitely something deeply seated and subconscious that attracts most of women (no matter their status or money) to competent, strong, AND caring men. Their charm is totally disarming. 
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