Tag: gender differences

Venus vs. Mars

Excerpts of a typically excellent post at Public Discourse, “Women, Abortion, and the Brain“:

Women’s brains are, of course, in many fundamental ways the same as men’s. Men and women think and reason in similar ways. But recent research shows that there are some significant differences in the brain and brain-related psychology of the two sexes. And a few of these differences can make a very large difference with regard to decision-making and its emotional consequences.

The part of the brain that processes emotion, generally called the limbic system, of women functions differently than that of men. Women experience emotions largely in relation to other people: what moves women most is relationships. Females are more personal and interpersonal than men. (Differences show up as early as a day after an infant’s birth: newborn baby girls look at faces relatively more than boys, who focus more on moving robotic figures.) There is wide consensus among scientists and researchers on this fundamental issue.

Recent research has also studied the ways in which males and females cope with stress. Whereas men’s behavior under stress is generally characterized by what is called “fight or flight,” women respond to stress by turning toward nurturing behavior, nicknamed “tend and befriend.”

Men’s and women’s brains also work differently in handling memory and memories. Men are more apt to recall facts of all kinds, on the one hand, and a global picture of events, on the other. By contrast, women remember people (for example, faces), details of all kinds, and emotion-laden narratives—and they may return to them obsessively.

I am only passingly familiar with the research that supports these observations, but they comport well with what I have seen in five decades as an adult. I offer, as just one of many possible examples, my daughter, who — untypically, for a woman — is much better with numbers than with words, and who has succeeded in the male-dominated field of investment banking. She is nevertheless strongly “feminine” in her emotions.

Radical feminists and egalitarians to the contrary, women aren’t just men with different anatomical features. There is a good case to be made for the injection of “feminine” traits into the worlds of business and politics. But there is no case to be made for enforced equality of pay or representation.

Individuals should be dealt with as individuals, not as “group members.” It is the levelers who are guilty of group bias, given their insistence that males and females are alike in their stock of mental and physical abilities — except that females are superior, of course.

Related posts:
Sexist Nonsense
Cornered by Gender?

Cornered by Gender?

Tanya Khovanova, writing at her math blog, plays a variation on a theme introduced by her guest blogger, Rebecca Frankel, about three weeks ago. Frankel, as I note in “Sexist Nonsense,” wants to redefine gender to exclude two things that make a big difference between males and females: testosterone and estrogen. By Frankel’s logic, males and females would be equal in ability, if only it weren’t for that pesky matter of gender. As I put it in “Sexist Nonsense,”

So “ability” now has a new definition. It is a hypothetical state of equality that is disturbed by a natural difference between males and females. And the fact that this natural difference has an influence on performance is somehow “proof” that males and females are born equally able. By that kind of reasoning, the fact that I cannot see well enough to hit a major-league fastball proves that I belong in the Hall of Fame, along with Babe Ruth. If you’re looking for “sexist nonsense,” look no further than Rebecca Frankel’s hypothesis.

In “Math Careers and Choices,” Khovanova laments that some women choose not to pursue academic careers because they are “cornered” into making such choices. She gives as evidence the cases of three women, plus her own case (described in an earlier post to which she links).

These are the main features of the cases:

  • All four women (including Khovanova) had academic ambitions.
  • In the all cases except Khovanova’s, actions by husbands (pursuit of their own academic careers) made it difficult or impossible for the women to pursue their own academic careers. (Khovanova’s description of her own situation suggests that she, in effect, abandoned her husband by choosing not to return to Israel with him at the end of their family’s visit to the U.S.)
  • Financial considerations and parental responsibilities led all of the women to drop out of academia.

How were these women “cornered”? And if they were in some sense “cornered,” why is it any more lamentable because of their gender?

As far as I can tell, they entered freely into marriage or freely abandoned it (in Khovanova’s casse), and (in this day of “a woman’s right to choose”) bore their children willingly.

Although one husband allegedly played a psychological power game to get his way, that kind of game-playing (as almost any husband can tell you) is far from the sole province of ambitious male academics.

That the husbands had better academic prospects should come as no surprise, given the findings that Frankel attempts (and fails) to refute in the post I discuss in “Sexist Nonsense.”

In each case (except Khovanova’s) the woman and her husband made a joint decision that furthered their family’s financial security. Khovanova made a similar decision, in order to advance her son’s education.

That is to say, the women were not “cornered.” They were acting in ways that seemed best in view of the circumstances in which they found themselves as a result of preceding choices, which they made freely.

If any of the women (including Khovanova) was “cornered,” then so are the countless men and women who are unable to pursue their fondest dreams because ugly reality intrudes.

Who promised us a rose garden? Who promised women (or men) an academic career, a career as a major-league baseball player, or a seat in a space shuttle? No one, that’s who.

Khovanova — a mathematician who loves logic puzzles — has committed the Nirvana fallacy:

the logical error of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume that there is a perfect solution to a particular problem.

Sexist Nonsense

Rebecca Frankel, writing at Tanya Khovanova’s Math Blog, says:

The article Daring to Discuss Women in Science by John Tierney in the New York Times on June 7, 2010 purports to present a dispassionate scientific defense of Larry Summers’s claims, in particular by reviewing and expanding his argument that observed differences in the length of the extreme right tail of the bell curves of men’s and women’s test scores indicate real differences in their innate ability. But in fact any argument like this has to acknowledge a serious difficulty: it is problematic to assume without comment that the abilities of a group can be inferred from the tail of a bell curve….

[I]magine that you had a large group which you divided in half totally at random. At this point their bell curve of test scores looks exactly the same. Lets call one of the group “boys” and the other group “girls”. But they are two utterly randomly selected groups. Now lets inject the “boys” with a chemical that gives the ones who are very good already a burning desire to dominate any contest they enter into. And let us inject the “girls” with a chemical that makes the ones who are already good nonetheless unwilling to make anyone feel bad by making themselves look too good. What will happen to the two bell curves? Of course the upper tail of the “boys’” curve will stretch out, while the “girls’” tail will shrink in. It will look like the “boys” whipped the “girls” on the right tail of ability hands down, no contest. But the tail has nothing to do with ability. Remember they started out with the same distribution of abilities, before they got their injections. It is only the effect of the chemicals on motivation that makes it look like the “boys” beat the “girls” at the tail.

So, when you see different tails, you can’t automatically conclude that this is caused by difference in underlying innate ability. It is possible that other factors are at play — especially since if we were looking to identify these hypothetical chemicals we might find obvious candidates like “testosterone” and “estrogen”.

The first comment, by Sue VanHattum:

There is also the work of Janet Mertz et al, showing massive cultural variability in the percentage of women in the far right tail, making it clear that there is more nurture than nature in this.

Thank you for this post. I hadn’t known about Tierney joining Summers in this sexist nonsense.

My comment:

So “ability” now has a new definition. It is a hypothetical state of equality that is disturbed by a natural difference between males and females. And the fact that this natural difference has an influence on performance is somehow “proof” that males and females are born equally able. By that kind of reasoning, the fact that I cannot see well enough to hit a major-league fastball proves that I belong in the Hall of Fame, along with Babe Ruth. If you’re looking for “sexist nonsense,” look no further than Rebecca Frankel’s hypothesis.