Mankind would still be living in caves, albeit with really, really fancy curtains;
Women have surpassed men in most areas of education, but men continue to be more numerous in fields like math, physics, and engineering. For more than a decade, feminist groups have been lobbying Congress to address the problem of gender “injustice” in the laboratory. Their efforts are finally bearing fruit. Federal agencies are now poised to begin aggressive gender-equity reviews of math, science, and engineering programs. Groups like the National Organization for Women must be celebrating — but American scientists should brace themselves for the destructive tsunami headed their way.
It’s an epiphany I had some years ago, while pondering the engineering behind the luggage carousel at Minneapolis airport, as I waited for my bags. If women ran the world, we would not have the jet engine. It has nothing to do with intellect. It just isn’t in our nature to want one.
Lemme see if I understand this correctly: we should hire based on the shape of container rather than the contents?
Brent, you lost me at: I work as a Java Architect
That’s not “real” engineering. I’m talking refinery, hard-hat engineering where the girls can talk sh*t with operators, stare down morons and tell you why a 150# flange can take more than 150 lbs of pressure depending on the operating temperature.
Excuse me, I’m getting excited now.
Bob, I use words like “tend” and “to some extent” because I don’t know that the conclusions are yet sufficiently clear. We’ve only begun looking at genetic configurations and how they might affect such things as behavior and thinking. When you say that men and women use completely different parts of their brains to do math, I can’t respond because I haven’t seen research to support (or refute) your assertion. And even if it is true, it leads to other questions such as: do all men use the same area of the brain to do math? Or are there variances even within the same gender? And what, if anything, is the significance of that? Does it matter if the location of brain activity varies? And if so, how? Are there similarities in the way brilliant students of both genders reason, or do the difference in the areas of the brain persist?
I taught math for 30 years. Did I notice gender differences? Some–but nothing conclusive. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that girls tended to succeed more because they were willing to work harder. However, the similarities between brilliant students of either gender were more pronounced than any differences. They had something extra–an intuition and the ability to draw from all the bits of knowledge to come up with a solution to a problem.
Does the fact that I made mistakes while cutting the laminate for my floor (reversing left and right) mean that I’m genetically incapable? Or that I just need more practice with measuring and using tools–especially because, as a little girl I never messed around with building things or taking things apart. (It just wasn’t expected. My brothers got a tool kit for Christmas and I got a doll. I put the doll out in the snow to “die” because I hated her, and coveted my brothers’ tools. Is there perhaps something deeply Freudian about that?) I will add though, that there’s nothing like wasting a plank (at about $15.00 a pop) to teach you how to do better.
I would be happy to read any references you have on the subject.
This topic came up a couple of days ago while a group of us were vacationing in Mexico. We were watching four Mayan Indian men do this cultural act where they climbed a large pole and attached their feet to the end of a rope and while one plays a flute they hang upside down and gradually unwind down to the ground.
I said it must have really impressed their wives ages ago when they excitedly got them away from feeding the kids, getting water, making clothes and all the other myriad tasks that women did and proudly showed them what THEY had accomplished. Some comments must have included, “That’s it, that’s what you have done all day! What’s next, you are going to walk on the moon, yeah, right!” before they wandered away while the guys mumbled, “Still needs a little work, lets make it higher next time with a bigger band.”
Later we flew home with our female captain piloting the plane and we didn’t get lost as some of the guys warned as I am sure she would ask for directions if she needed them unlike us.
Bel
Same thing happend to me one Christmas but I just didn’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings and stuffed the stupid thing in the closet — never saw it again.
It seems to me that the femiNazis have overactive imaginations. They provided no proof of discrimination.
Yet the US gov’t is acting as if there is, and is likely to conclude as much even if it finds no evidence whatsoever of discrimination.
Next thing we know, men will be having trouble finding employment in the math, physics and engineering professions and will even find roadblocks to getting into programs of study in such disciplines. This is what will happen once the aggressive, discriminatory “affirmative action” stuff happens as an inevitable result of this push. Imagine… many more women getting into these professions, perhaps many whose hearts probably aren’t in it at all. What then? Will our innovations decline in frequency?
Will “affirmative action” end up just placing a lot of women where they really just want to make oodles of money without really doing anything other than going through some motions, etc.?
I’m all for men and women to become all kinds of scientists. But to encourage anyone who really could care less about science to “get into a career in science” just because they belong to a “target group” isn’t going to advance science. It’s best if we simply make sure it’s easy enough for all, without discrimination in any way towards anyone, to get into the profession… if they really, really want to.
Women have failed as ‘mothers’ … and they are failing as ‘men’ … so now their demand for ‘equality’ is confusing.
What do ‘women’ really want …. because they certainly are not very accomplished in bed …???!!!!
But to respond to the original point “If women ran the world, we would not have the jet engine. It has nothing to do with intellect. It just isn’t in our nature to want one.” My nature is such that I appreciate rapid, long distance travel when I can get it. So if women ran the world, is the point of that statement that we would simply not have air transportation? Or that we would have different (and perhaps even better) ways of hopping from one continent to another?
The statistical distribution of mathematical ability (and general intelligence)of women is the same as men at the MEAN, but the ‘tails’ are different; there are many more men at both ends. That is why most geniuses in the pure sciences are men, and why most idiots are male also. Just the way it is.
My hideously sexist comment for the day is that Danica Patrick just won her first Indy car race in Japan recently. She is the first woman to ever win one.
This means two things.
1) Danica Patrick whupped every single super-duper Speed Racer dude on the course. They all got beat by a giiiiirrrrrllllll! hee hee! Grrrrls rule!
2) In all the world there is exactly one (1) chick with what it takes to win an Indy race.
She’s about five sigmas off the girlie bell curve for racing. Dead center in that curve is the girls in the stands because their boyfriend dragged them there.
Personally I say thank God for that, I hate getting beat at cars by a girl. Guns too.
This concludes The Phantom’s sexist comment du jour. Tune in tomorrow when The Phantom says guys can usually lift more weight than girls!
One area in which men are greatly under represented is nursing. Yet I haven’t seen a massive blitz by feminists to remove the “blatant institutionalized discrimination” which we all know must therefore be rampant in the nursing profession.
From what I’ve seen, men actually make very good nurses, and I’ve often said that we should have more of them. It’s hard to put a finger on the differences but, particularly in the operating room and critical care environments I’d say that the men who are there are definitely among the stronger performing workers.
I speak from a position of authority about men, because I am one, and about women, because I have lived with one for 25 years.
Men and women are wired differently, in a fundamentally and deeply important way. It is in our root programming that the the important differences exist. Unfortunately, it is considered sexist and demeaning to even express this belief.
Women are terrorists!
My dearly beloved wife (35 years — smartest decision I ever made — maybe the ONLY smart decision, come to think of it) is coming home after a month away.
I’m throwing out the pizza boxes, the empty beer cans, making the bed, re-arranging all the PILLOWS (what’s the story with women and pillows/cushions – whatever they call them?) doing laundry, and generally preparing myself for the accusation that I am inadequate.
And don’t ask me about window treatments.
We men would perfectly happy (because we’re too stupid to know what happiness really is) living in caves, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and beer cans (are there any other really necessary food groups?) surrounded by useless high-tech gizmos without women.
But, alas, God in His infinite wisdom, knew better.
tomdslm at April 26, 2008 2:54 PM
What are you a moron? What a stupid thing to say, you …
Oh wait, I think I see your point.
One area in which men are greatly under represented is nursing.
But not wet ones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OkcucXIuVI
“For those few years, when I was chief domestic engineer and bottle washer, I’ve never worked so hard in my life”
And a janitor is a sanitary engineer. Heres the deal. Some of the most physically demanding jobs are the zero-low skills ones. You train. You get skills. You get skills, you get a job. Engineers undergo vigorous training. Then they make huge sums of money. If you drop out of school because “Math, science etc” is not for you, then you are plain lazy. And you deserve the correspondingly low salary.
Its great that you are/were a stay at home mom. But when your children grow up, will you go out and get a job and work your way up, or will you sit at home and commend yourself. I am sure you know which one is indicative of ambition and which of laziness.
“It’s utter hogwash to jump to the unwarranted conclusion that because women’s aptitudes seem to be different from men’s that that makes them lazy–or that those of us who believe that men and women happen to be different also think that women are lazy.”
The next time you pick up a bottle of Pepsi, just remember that the CEO of that company is a woman. With two children.
How did she do it? By sacrificing time with her children or figuring out a way to make it work? Does it have to be one or the other. Couldnt you get a job that would pay for somebody to do the house maintenance (vacuuming and other such brain numbing chores), giving you more than enough time to spend with your children after work?
If you could afford a maid to come and clean your house, you would have had one.
Women are not inherently lazy and they seem to exhibit the same aptitude as men quite often – the list of such women is immense. Women who claim that they dont have the aptitude on the other hand, are just trying to disguise the reality of their laziness.
Men and women are wired differently? It reminds me of that joke about Margaret Thatcher being the only one with a set of cojones in the British Cabinet.
Angels in the Attic is no longer valid. Train a man or train a woman and they can do the same job. The difference lies in the expectations – men are expected to undergo training and do so more willingly. Women, thanks to your “men and women are different” jargon, tend to see it as an option, and it is laziness, yes, plain laziness, that stops them from doing so.
oops. Just scrolled down and saw some wonderful attempts at name-calling. How could I resist?
“I’m betting Bert is either (a) single and never married (or in a co-habiting relationship), (b) currently single after yet another failed relationship (one of many – and can’t figure out what’s wrong with these women), or (c) is married to some wimp who allows him to derride her and call her “lazy” (or allows him to push her into a job she hates, simply because he sees it as prestigious and makes him a whole lot of money).”
That is just plain funny. Yeah thats what it is. I think women are lazy not because I am surrounded by ambitious women who are go-getters and doing wonderfully well, but because I like deriding lazy women, by whom I am apparently surrounded. What I see has influenced me, and if it was the latter, then I would have agreed with your “wired differently” (with laziness in that wiring) approach. Unfortunately for you, its the former. Not just the ones I am dating. Almost all of them. Diminutive angels in the attic – they are not my style. But thats my opinion. I am quite happy being around women who can hold their own. Not a big fan of the kind who cough up excuses and make up half-baked theories like your own.
Kate posted a climate change story a while back about how measurements of deep ocean temperature indicated that the earth was in fact *not* heating up; in response to the data, one of the prominent employees of the global warming narrative asked — straight faced, apparently, and in the spirit of inquiry — “where’d all the extra heat go?”
You can see that same feckless illogic that insists, for emotional/professional reasons, on a certain outcome, and then rejects all hard evidence to the contrary, among those who promote gender-parity initiatives in all areas of the hard sciences.
Men aren’t smarter than women, or vice versa; that’s been settled for all practical purposes, and to the extent that any discussion gets shoehorned into that personal-politics dispute, it’s a complete dead end. But the use of Title IX by Congress to force this understanding where it doesn’t fit is idiotic. It’s simply the case that at the *extreme* tail ends of one particular skill’s — math/spatial ability — distribution there’s more men than women, i.e. more uber-genius men (as opposed to self-described geniuses — there’s millions of those), and, concomitantly, more dummies.
Harvard President Larry Summers was drummed out of his post a few years ago by angry individuals with a purely emotional point to make — the insisted-upon point being that their emotional point had to be publicly acknowledged by all who disagreed with them, and in the name of social justice, as being the epitome of applied logic. But all Summers did was point out factually in the middle of a long, dry speech that “…if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not even talking about people who are two standard deviations from the mean…it’s talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations from the mean, in the one in 5,000, one in 12,000 class. Even small differences will translate into very large differences in the available pool…”
Imagine the sort of people who would shake their heads — “No. No.” — at such a statement, and then gear up for a decades long institutional war agains such outrageous attempts as Summers’ to be, how you say, “reasonable”.
It needs to be pointed out, repeatedly if necessary, that the differences at the extreme ends of distributions of a narrow, particular attribute have absolutely nothing to do with toy trucks vs. Barbie, or who’s king chimp, or who does the chores; we’re talking about minute, Asperger-y tailing ponds trickling out from the production from millions of years of evolution.
Let’s hope that emotion and political resentment aren’t considered legitimate trump cards to be used against plain old facts.
I have never believed in quotas for anyone, women or “people of colour”. It is ruining any country which mandates it. We no longer have the best person for the job, we have whover fits the quota. Feminists are one of the most deadly threats in the western world and,as a woman, I am totally ashamed of them.They don’t want equality, they want power and will step on anyone to get it.
It is indeed interesting, EBD, that the ratio between the genders regarding what might be called Aspergian personality types, which are known to be related to structural variations in the brain, is of the same order of magnitude as the ratio between the genders regarding aptitudes in areas such as mathematics, physics, and engineering.
I think this raises an interesting question. To what degree are those fields an abstract notion that can possibly be subject to social manipulation, versus to what degree are those fields actually the result of the natural proclivities of those who possess the sort of brain structures which produce those results?
If the fields are more a matter of the result of the efforts of brains of some type, then what sense does it make to push people whose brains aren’t of that type into those fields. Wouldn’t that just destroy those fields?
Or maybe that’s what the extreme genderists want: to destroy
the fields that produce the evidence that prove them wrong.
Hey, Orlin (@10:22 a.m.): I thought you were going to ask why your wife has so many SHOES… 😉
Why is it that I can’t pass a shoe store (all the better if it’s discount) without having to have a look-in? Why is it that I have, probably ten times the number of shoes (make that twenty, if we’re counting shoes, not pairs) my husband does?
Mystery…even to me!
bert- To assume that women stay at home to raise children due to laziness is just plain wrong. To assume that sacrificing time with your children for status in the working world makes one a superior woman is profoundly shallow theory. Both require sacrifice and both require personal commitment. But perhaps you are too intellectually lazy to look beyond your oversimplification of the issue.
Gotta jump in here with my two cents. Humanity is not an exact thing. Yes, for the most part men and women are “wired” different and the thought processes are different. They are also different physically and I’d personally like to thank God for that too. Saying different does not equate to being better (or worse).
I agree with DrD in the nursing field. It is also the same in the radiation therapist field and I have not seen any reason why men are in the minority.
I guess the bottom line is “Vive la difference”.
Y’know Bert, not all women need to work outside the home to feel fulfilled, or to live up to YOUR expectations. Since I was making a decent living while our kids were at home, we decided that her being home with our kids was a great idea. Of course we could have used more income, but we didn’t NEED more income.
Now that the kids are gone, we are fine with her staying at home, traveling with me on trips, and generally keeping our tax bite down. Because we still don’t NEED more income. This leaves her to volunteer her time freely with whatever cause she feels can use her not inconsiderable skills.
And by staying out of the work force Bert, after 21 years out, she helps ensure that people of your obvious intellect are free to ask every day “Would you like fries with that?”
What, by definition, can a male do that a female can’t? Produce sperm. What can a female do that a male can’t, by definition? Produce eggs, yes, but more than that. Only chicks have wombs, guys. And since, historically speaking and at least for now, wombs are required for the propagation of the species, one can see how they get special dispensation.
Other than that, the genders are interchangeable upon principle. Even men can nurse a baby (using a cow-tool, though there is some interesting evidence that babys who get no female human milk in the first weeks tend to a higher incidence of certain kinds of problems later in life).
Nevertheless, independent of the principle, it turns out that statistically, even when not constrained by artificial social limitations, there are natural variations between personality types and skill aptitudes, and there are correlations between genders and personality types.
To demand that humans behave a-statistically is folly. Yes we should let everyone roll the dice equally, fair and square. And then we should let the chips fall where they may. But to say that because one doesn’t like the natural outcome, thus the game must be fradulently rigged? English has a two word phrase for that: “organized crime”.
“To assume that women stay at home to raise children due to laziness is just plain wrong. To assume that sacrificing time with your children for status in the working world makes one a superior woman is profoundly shallow theory. Both require sacrifice and both require personal commitment.”
Children remain children till what 17? Then they go off to college. In fact by the time they are 15, they are capable of helping with most chores. There is nothing to stop you from working after that. But to avoid studying math on the basis that you will one day have children and will want to raise them – that is merely an excuse for laziness. There is nothing to stop you from getting trained, taking two decades to raise a child, and getting a job after the child leaves. Instead we have a lot of women who sit back and pat themselves on the back and do absolutely nothing. And attribute it to the fact that they are women and therefore different to men.
The laziness lies not in the raising kids, it lies in the fact that having kids can be used to deflect any criticism about not undergoing training. Training that would later benefit them. I dont doubt that raising kids is difficult. But I do believe that avoiding intensive training is. And not doing anything after they leave home is equally lazy.
“Y’know Bert, not all women need to work outside the home to feel fulfilled, or to live up to YOUR expectations.”
Nobody does, frankly speaking. Not men. Not women. You can do nothing all your life and be absolutely content with it. But at the end of the day, the only thing separating you and the man on the moon is the latters ambition and your laziness.
The difference lies in the skills. Technical skills are harder to attain. And laziness is the culprit here.
I like the way you played the “NEED” Angle. Well most men and women who go out and make millions dont NEED more than a certain amout of money. Doesnt stop them though.
Vitruvius, statistics mean nothing. Theres a gazillion behavioral pattern problems the moment you try to generate statistics – Hawthorne affects and whatnot. Humans do believe a-statistically. Unless they are dead.
Reminds me of that joke – Statistics are like skirts, they show you everything but do not reveal the important parts.
Laziness is not a behavioural trait that I see as correlated to gender.
atheist quebecois separatiste at 12:46 PM
“””””Women generally have higher EQ while men higher IQ.”””””
mr queerbeck, you don’t appear t understand the difference between EQ & IQ
and no, men do not have higher IQ’s, the bell curve for both sexes is the same and appexes at 100
rita
“””” Or that we would have different (and perhaps even better) ways of hopping from one continent to another? “””””
thee exact point I’v made many a time:-))))))
No, actually, person who can’t rise above the cheap slur of queerbeck and who has no aesthetic sense of how to format comments, the curves are not the same, and it’s not the center that’s interesting, it’s the tails, which are the regions in which individuals with exceptional aptitudes or the lack there of are notable. That these tails may or may not be correlated to gender is essentially irrelevant, unless we are faced with those who would attempt to push those who don’t belong in these tails into said space, or to pull those who do belong there out from that space, in the name of some fradulent agenda based on their own personal advancement.
“The difference lies in the skills. Technical skills are harder to attain.”
No they aren’t. They are hard to attain for those that don’t have an aptitude and/or interest. I went technical because it is easier for me “problem solve” than to regurgitate. I’m lazy.
Bert, I worked as a technologists for many years so your lecture is misplaced.
Your definition and logic is still wrong. Your definition of lazy is overly simplistic. You are taking one subject (math) and making it the lack if it as the main requirement in your personal opinion of laziness. You then compounding the error by attributing it to only one gender. Do you really not understand how obtuse this makes you sound? There is no consensus on why females are less successful in math and science. It may be teaching methods, social factors or brain wiring. I too would encourage girls to take math and science to keep all future opportunities available but to berate them for not doing so is exceedingly arrogant.
Here, here, Ural! It’s all about an aptitude followed up by decades of study, practice, and hard work, whether or not one is a flautist, historian, or zoologist. One of the keys to happiness is the insight to be lazy enough to work hardest at the things one has an aptitude for and a love of. If one is pulling when one should be pushing, or vice versa, one tends to harvest lesser results.
Vitruvius,
I can’t prove it, but I suspect:
1) In touring a shoe factory, guys would be more interested in the machinery than the shoes coming off the line.
2) Guys have an interest of what’s coming off the line at a tool plant … women don’t care to tour one.
3) Neither really care about the line in a winery tour.
Gym 🙂
This discussion makes me think of my grandmother. When you talk about 3D visualizing, I recall how I could point to a picture of a dress in the Eaton’s catalogue, and in a few days, my grandmother would produce the dress, perfectly sized for me. She had no pattern. She just measured and made it. I don’t see that much difference between constructing a garment or a cupboard. Except perhaps, you can’t insert a dart if the door doesn’t hang quite right.
That’s because when one inserts a dart in a door-frame it’s called a shim 😉
Rita,
Yes. The enablers were the invention of the printing press and
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/sewmachine.htm
Just funning.
Do you seriously think that, after almost 70 years after the invention of the jet engine, nothing better has been invented for intercontinental travel because “men ruled the world”?
Rita;
Here’s a link to an article that deals with what I was talking about. There’s lots more. I got a lot of hits when I googled it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060718180450.htm
Since scientists still can’t give answers to some of the questions you ask, I hope you’ll forgive me for not making an attempt. As far as I read it though, the right left difference is gender specific.
I can only assume that there has to be a reason for this difference, and that both men and women gained some advantage from it. Perhaps the spatial calculations necessary for a hunter to successfully throw a spear at a moving target are more efficiently processed in a specific part of the brain.
If it’s to be seen as an advantage, perhaps men gave up something for it, something that works to the mental advantage of women. Why is it that they are generally far better at organizing things than men? Why do so many guys have trouble getting out of the house with a matching pair of socks?
I’m no scientist, but as I see it, there is only one world out there, yet pollsters have recorded ad infinitum how differently men and women see it, think about it, and react to it.
To use a computer analogy, if two computers react differently to the same data feed, the answer as to why lies within the computers.
“I don’t see that much difference between constructing a garment or a cupboard.”
I believe you – since you have done neither. For me … it’s impossible to do what your Granny did. A cupboard – no problem. When Granddad or Dad were alive my role wasn’t to point out things in catalogs – it was to help (if you can call it that) with what ever they were doing … including cupboards.
Wait a minute, Bob, you mean my socks are supposed to match? Look, I’ve already agreed to trim my beard so as not to frighten the children, but really what do you people want from me?
And on that note 😉 thanks for interlocution folks, as always, great discussion this one, and as always thanks to our lovely and gracious hostess Miss Kate, without whom these exercises would not be possible. Thus so it is that I wish y’all the best, and good night.
Not sure how this adds to the debate but thought I’d throw it in anyways.
A year or so ago I was doing my rescue certification for scuba diving. One exercise required me to drag an “unconscious” person from the water to shore and perform artificial respiration from the water to shore.
As I exited the water, a number of people raced to assist me (assuming there was a real problem). My unconscious diver held his head up and told everyone to back off as he wanted me to do this myself. I did, but had he really been in difficulty, he’d have probably died by the time I hauled his ass to shore.
The next time I did the exercise, as I approached shore, I called to people on the shore and said “I need help. You, take his left arm and you, take his right. I want him up there where I can work on him and I want you to call for an ambulance.” I had to beat helpers off with a stick and ended up assigning others to legs. Of course I corrected them quickly that this wasn’t a real emergency but I got what I neede done. And I passed the exercise. The instructor noted that I was really good at telling others what to do and getting them to do just that.
There is more than one way to skin a cat…
Thanks to Kate, too, for allowing a free range of discussion on a topic the fembos have declared closed. It is, as we can see, far from closed.
I’m with Orlin on this one: “The answer is we’re wired by God differently — end of story.”
From the millennia-old Judeo-Christian Scriptures, whose God, and inspired writers, were no slouches: “Male and female, He created them.”
If men and women were intended for the same roles and were supposed to do all the same things in the same way, God–Nature for those who don’t believe in the Deity–would have created an androgenous version of humanity. He didn’t. He created us male and female to complement one another (go ahead: we can compliment each other, too!).
Until the fembos came along with the idea–emphasis on IDEA as opposed to reality–of an androgenous human (I guess they’d call it huwoman), humankind was moving along quite nicely, thank you. I’d say they’ve set us back. ‘So much for “progress.”
Correction to above post:
androgynous human (I guess they’d call it huwomyn)
That “y” is all-important. It turns a gender-specific female into a gender-neutral android.
No thanks, Gloria Steinem, Judy Rebick, et al.
I am only taking that one subject because batb mentioned it as something she did not like BECAUSE she was a woman.
“There is no consensus on why females are less successful in math and science.”
And here I disagree. Women are NOT less successful at any subject. The ones who take these subjects do well in them. Most women don’t. They avoid these subjects not because they are incapable of doing them but because of people like batb who will no doubt leave her daughter under the impression that studying these subjects is for boys. That is very different from not doing the subject because you do not have the intellectual capacity for it.
The former provides a readymade excuse for not doing anything and there will be no motivation to find somehting she is good at. The latter will more likely result in the girl establishing what she is good at and continuing. It is the setting of ambition at a very early stage that counts here. Successful women are the ones in whom drive is encouraged at a young age. They are told “you can achieve anything”, not “its okay, most girls dont understand that”.
Obtuse or not, I think its fair to say that when men and women are exposed to the same opportunities and have the same drive and training, the outcome is largely the same.
Hiding behind the “I am a woman, therefore I cannot do (math/science etc)” – that is just plain laziness. If you are a techie, as you claim, and I am sure you have female friends who are as smart/smarter than you who are doing absolutely nothing, try and figure out what the difference between you and them is. When did they stop and why?
And I suspect you will find a lot of “God wired me differently” talk amongst them. But that doesnt take away the fact that they are smart and capable, and would probably succeed. Unfortunately being surrounded by readymade excuses is just that much easier, especially when you don’t NEED more money.
Yawn.
bert: do the world a favor and just stay away from women.Please do not propigate and make any more idiots like yourself.
Thanks Bob. I did look up the article you mentioned and other related articles. It seems that although brain activity occurred in different areas for men and women doing the same tasks (thus suggesting that male and female brains are wired differently) both genders seemed able to accomplish the tasks. The study was done with 30 adults which is not a huge sample but certainly interesting. Looks like we’re not at the point of analyzing or explaining these differences, but I agree that this is important knowledge and points the way to further study. When more boys than girls have problems with autism or ADHD, and when more women than men are subject to depressive illness, understanding these differences might offer some clues to treatment and prevention.
It has never concerned me that research should show differences between genders or among races. There have been efforts at times, to suppress such information in the interests of political correctness but merely saying “it ain’t so” doesn’t change the facts. Problems occur when this research is used to justify placing people in “lesser” categories and thereby excusing repressive or discriminatory practices. To be told I couldn’t be promoted to a management position because I was doing so well as a secretary (my boss didn’t want to have to train another one) and that women were so “good at repetition and detail work” and so “poor” at seeing the big picture, was no longer just a matter of so-called research. It was a career limiting myth. (Fortunately, it propelled me out of that career path into a better one.) So, while it doesn’t bother me to discover that men might be better at spatial relationships than women, it would bother me if that information were used to deny a woman access to training or a job that she would be quite capable of doing–and doing well. Or even worse, determining that the jobs that women might be capable of doing better than men are not worth as much in terms of pay because they are considered “women’s” work–not because of the skills required or their value to the employer.
Ural, while I have never built a cupboard, I took a brief woodworking course and built one of those step stools that first year shop class students make. I still have it and am intensely proud of it. It’s solid. It’s level. And because I’m short, I use it nearly every day. This activity gave me profound respect for anyone who can build something–from framing a room in the basement to cabinets (which is surely an art form). For years, I made most of my clothes but I used patterns. Unlike my grandmother, there was no way I could have proceeded without.
I am proud of my ancestral women who spun, knitted, sewed and generally kept their families clothed and looking decent–all while growing gardens and canning produce to keep them fed. Equally, I admire my ancestral men who built houses and barns, grew crops and took care of large animals. They all managed to make a lot from not much. If circumstances had been different, I expect those men and women could have adapted to roles that were different from the usual. My grandfather assembled harnesses for his horses and my grandmother built a chicken coop. Obviously men can be good tailors and women can be good carpenters. It just happens that I’m not particularly good at either. 😉
No, bert, not taking math/science because you do not enjoy it is not a sign of laziness. No more so than not taking music classes. Regardless of whether I am wired as tone deaf or just do not enjoy music – not pursuing music does not make me lazy. It is just a preference that shows the uniqueness of individuals. I could be trained to play music but I would still show no fondness for it so those careers are best left to people who have a passion for it.