[co-written with Rachel Dempsey]
A few weeks ago a group of European scientists published a study claiming that sex differences between men and women are much larger than we previously thought. The study found a very small overlap between men and women for personality traits such as sensitivity and warmth (much stronger for women) and emotional stability and dominance (much stronger for men).
These results are being used as proof that men and women's brains are fundamentally different, but what's important is what the study doesn't measure.
It doesn't measure differences in brain structure. It doesn't measure any sort of inherent difference at all. The differences are based on a survey in which men and women self-reported answers to a series of personality question based on the 16PF model. In other words, the study measures responses that fully-developed adults give when measuring themselves on traits that are socialized along a distinct gender binary.
The results can't possibly come as a surprise to anyone who has ever walked into a toy store, or turned on the television, or, you know, left their house. Humans are taught literally from birth what is appropriate behavior for a woman and what is appropriate behavior for a man, and the fact that fully grown men and women have learned to exhibit different behaviors isn't exactly groundbreaking news. Little girls are given dolls and called pretty, little boys are given trucks and called strong. In fact, in her book "Delusions of Gender," psychologist Cordelia Fine points to a study of how pregnant women described the movement of their fetuses in the last three months of pregnancy. Male activity was described as vigorous, while female activity was "not violent, not excessively energetic, not terribly active." Gendering, it seems, actually starts in the womb. (For more gendered fun, see the website Sociological Images. They keep an exhaustive -- and exhausting -- list of pointlessly gendered products; see also Riley on Marketing).
The study has generated sensationalizing headlines like "Men and women really are living on different personality planets" and "Gender wars: Men, women more different than thought." And the researchers that conducted the study haven't exactly been helping -- one of them was quoted on this website saying the results show men and women might as well be "different species." (Not only is that statement irresponsible, it also does nothing to increase the scientists' credibility. Neither Rachel nor Joan is a scientist by any means, but we both took ninth-grade biology, and that's enough to know that the definition of a species is a group of organisms capable of interbreeding. Which usually involves both a male and a female.)
We propose a different interpretation of the study's results. Regardless of gender, humans are extraordinarily good an internalizing social cues, and their behavior as adults reflects decades of learning about "how men are" and "how women are." If we take that fully plausible interpretation of the study as fact, it's great news for equality advocates. Overcoming stereotyped gender binaries is as simple as socializing people from birth to see personality traits from warmth to liveliness to emotional stability as human rather than as male or female.
Okay, so maybe that won't actually be that simple. Our stereotypes run pretty deep. But studies like this one don't justify these stereotypes; they reinforce them. That's not science. Let's not make it more complicated than that.
Follow Joan Williams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JoanCWilliams
EXACTLY what I thought when I read about this so-called study!
Biological imperatives too!
Still through out time: women's roles and ideation stay the same - very predictable. It could be said only the bravest of them find their own way in the social milieu: it is easier to pick - your female type and way, and go on about it!
Progressive eras - have opened the door to women's creativity and ways: too, bad the stick in the muds want to force her back into a barbie doll again or property/slave!
In the year 2017, robotic technology has made tremendous developments. Business executive Sam Treadwell's (David Andrews) "Cherry 2000" android (Pamela Gidley), short circuits during a make out session on the wet kitchen floor.
He is told by a repairman that she's irreparable and finding another Cherry android will be difficult since she was a limited edition. After removing the memory chip from the old unit, Treadwell searches for a replacement, enlisting Edith "E" Johnson (Melanie Griffith), a tough tracker who guides him into the wasteland interior of a post-apocalyptic United States.
The automaton sex slave or the a human being!
Yes, men get their: Bozo training the same way!
Still through out time: women's roles and ideation stay the same
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No.
You project the world you know into the past and see things through the prism of your own experiences. There is no shame in that, it is where we all start. We all assume that as it is so has it always been.
Not so.
Take something you have probably heard, in the bad old days the woman could not own the inn, yes? If her husband died a male relative would inherit and she could be kicked out of her own inn with nothing, yes? Everything was all horribly unfair to women, yes?
It was unfair. But it wasn't as bad as it sounded.
Every drop of alcohol in that inn was hers. And all the brewing/distilling equipment she used to make it. A man could literally not legally own it. Men owned land but women controlled the means of production. The looms, the wheels, the stills, the churns, etc etc etc.
The division was stupid and arbitrary but women were a economic force to reckon with because ***there was no way to get the goods women made except to buy/trade with a woman for them.***
That is power.
And it meant that trade skills were more important in a wife than looks/sex. A pretty girl is pretty, but the girl who brews better ale is the one the innkeeper's son has his eye on.
------->weltanschauung
I enjoy the run into the psychological - too, seeing as you seem to be making castles in the air about my view: wonderful. I take you are now at your 370th full moon?
Let us look at circa 2011
----------->V. On Conditions of Women, Children and Elderly People
Little can be spoken of the human rights record in the U.S. in view of protecting the rights of women, children, elderly people and other special disadvantageous social groups.
American women cannot enjoy the equal rights with men to take part in government and political affairs. Statistics from the Center for American Women in Politics indicated that in 2003, women hold 59, or 13.6 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives, and 14, or 14 percent of the seats in the Senate.Despite an increase in the number of women seated in state legislatures in 2003, they made up only 22.3 percent of the total 7,382 state legislators in the U.S.
----->http://www.china.org.cn/world/china_us_facts_2011/2011-08/03/content_23134572_10.htm
---->Large picture View
http://books.google.com/books/about/Population_pressure_cultural_adjustment.html?id=I6g_02nUi4sC
----->Female losses
http://www.evefoundation.org/domestic-violence-statistics/
----->Sexual slaves movie
Lilya 4-Ever (2003)
Lilja 4-ever
Siberian Brothels?
Women of the past faired no better--show a tag if you want to take stand: midnight oil burner!
My question is, what is the intended purpose of discovering whether there are in fact differences between men and women? How will researchers, policy makers, advertisers, etc then use this information and what impact will it have on our lives? My take is, that science has proven one consistent truth over the centuries; the answer and/or the truth is rarely if ever simple and straight-forward.
Great article
He had a 3-year old sister, so most of the kiddy entertainments were at least gender-neutral,
not boy-centered. One fine summer day, I put him down outside not far from where his dad
had parked the bulldozer. Now, his sister liked the bulldozer and was fond of picking bouquets
of dandelions to stuff in the radiator grill. But his response was a sight to see.
I could practically see the wheels turning in his boy-brain. "MUST get to big yellow machine.
MUST get up to seat of machine and sit in it. MUST move levers in front of seat." Which
is exactly what he did (with a little help from me to make sure he didn't crash while climbing
up to the seat). His focus on the absolute necessity of getting to those controls amazed me.
At that point, I decided that it wasn't really how the kids were raised. It was inherent.
I like to build things and climb things.
One Christmas I was given oven mitts and he was given legos.
We traded.
My sample size is just as large as yours and proves just as conclusively that you are wrong.
In the west where economic freedom allows for choices more women choose to be stay at home mothers than at any time in history or in poorer nation. The prevailing socialization in the west is women can do anything a man can do and they're encouraged to be employed in all jobs considered mens work. Since there are less women in those jobs even though women are socialized and encouraged to be employed in those jobs, we can clearly see the opposite has taken place. Nature beats nurture everytime.
Males compete for mates, females do the choosing. Those males who have the traits females are looking for do well, those who cling to outdated beleifs/valllueess don't get dates, and thus die childless....so sad...NOT.
At least you understand what you are - a serf. Serfs are in no way, shape, or form desirable.
Nurture changes brain structure.
Here is an example:
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http://www.tomsguide.com/us/science-research-video-game-brain,news-13379.html
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So If I took 100 blonde people and 100 redheads and had the blondes all play the video game used in the study for weeks and weeks while the redheads play no video games at all I could create a situation where **blondes and redheads have different brains** OMG OMG OMG!
Correlation, however, is not necessarily causation. So while there would be a situation with significant average differences in brain function by hair color, it isn't the hair color causing it but rather the choice to nurture blondes differently than redheads.
Gee .. I wonder if one gender is encouraged to play video games while the other is discouraged from doing so ...
So I was left alone to simply grow up as a human without interference from my parents.
Now we moved almost every year. I learned early on that making friends meant losing them and that hurt. So I kept to myself. So I grew up as a human without pressure from a peer group.
Now at a very young age I came to the mistaken belief that I would be expected to pay my parents back for my housing, clothing, and feeding. I began saving to do so at age 7 and strove to reduce costs as much as possible. Library books were free. Toys cost money. So I grew up human without sculpting by advertisers.
I am simply me.
Both boys and girls are trained to be certain ways. A boy or girl who rebels almost always rebels by cleaving ... to the *other* stereotype. They buy into the idea that you have to be a "boy" or a "girl" with all the bullcrap attributed to one or the other.
I, meanwhile, was oblivious to both sets of cultural baggage. So I lack the trained behaviors of either gender.
And from the outside looking in its incredibly obvious how trained you *all* are.
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Actually, they do both.