That’s it? You don’t have the courage to come out and say that women are more inconsistent workers than men? You have no point regarding what should be done with your inferences? Seems kinda pointless to me.
Shagnasty, asking for sources is standard in any debate. We are mostly acquaintances and strangers here. Unsourced opinions are just that unless they are supported.
The first source you provided seems to be based on studies on rat brains, correct me if I am wrong please. I find the interpolations to interpreting men’s feelings based on chemical findings on rat brains to be a bit thready. I am not saying that differences in brains according to gender do not exist, but that whether they exist in rat brains seems to be a leap to discussing male/female intuition. The first part of the article reports study findings, the second part is the writer’s opinion based on her opinions about those studies.
The second source about IQ and possible differences because of xx or xy seems to be based on standardized testing, which does not differentiate between biological and environmental factors so seems to me to be an invalid source on which to base a theory.
The third source also is based on standardized testing, which again, does not control for environmental/biological differences.
From your fourth link:
- “gonadal hormones are only one of a myriad of influences on aggressive behaviour. Since testosterone is present in males that are not aggressive as well as in those that are, it is obvious that another factor(s) is involved, such as cognition and environmental circumstances which have been found to affect the expression of aggression.”
In sum, we need to be careful in jumping to conclusions about causes based on correlations between body parts and hormones and behaviors.*
I am not understanding how the last link you posted from Wikipedia supports your assertion that “most of feminist theory and psychology were based on these incorrect assumptions.”
In what way was feminist theory based on sex assignment? Could you show sources? Was all feminist theory based on this?
One reason for showing your sources is that it gives specifics to those with whom you are conversing.
Hamlet, is this your opinion:
or are you asking Shagnasty if it is his, or both?
Like I said, those were just sample articles. Sexual differentiation of the brain has hundreds, if not thousands of researchers in the U.S. and has for decades although the ranks are growing now. I tried to stay away from too many specifics because this is the type of thing that takes up whole courses and books.
However, Scientific American is always good for this type of thing. It presents rigorous scientific scrutiny in a way that is accessible to most any intelligent and interested person. It has done several excellent sex differences articles in the past. Here is one from 2002 and I encourage anyone in this thread to read it if they are interested in the neuroscience of sexual differentiation:
The first paragraph in the above article addresses one of my points:
I got the idea that earlier feminists were convinced that sex differences were purely superficial by studying the history of psychology. Psychology and feminist thought are closely linked at certain points and this was one of them. There has always been a debate about nature versus nurture. However, nurture was once considered to be a much bigger component than it is now. Psychology once had the idea of the Tabula Rosa, a blank slate that let the environment mold an individual in almost anyway through development. This idea turned out to be inaccurate in many, many ways including such ways as gender identity. I cited the studies of children that were assigned the wrong sex because it was considered challenging to the current thought at the time. You can’t take a child and make it whatever gender you choose through surgery. By that point masculization or feminization of the brain has already occurred through exposure to sex hormones and the results are usually disastrous if you choose poorly. This includes cases where he or she doesn’t know that sex was reassigned.
Very interesting article, thanks. From that article:
and
Not all of the early societies established home bases:
Wikipedia states:
From your posted article:
So far this is theory still being established, is based on correlational evidence so far, and even if it is true, and it very well may be, does not give cause for women to be discriminated against because of differences from men.
Trying to get back to the PMS question, from whence some of this came, do you believe that PMS would make women any less productive than men, who might be distracted from their work because of more urgent libido?
The reason I posted the bit about hunter/gatherers being nomadic is that the selective pressures would not have been so different between genders as the author of that article theorizes if the home bases he conjectured were not well established.
I posit that physical strength and body type would have been more likely to determine division of labor. Hormones may have something to do with physical strength, but the simplest explanation to me would be the person more physically able to do a task would be the one to do it.
Ok I just lost most of my post, will try to reconstruct them:
My point is all things being equal a inconsistant worker is less valuable, it doesn’t matter if the worker is f or m. That is exactly what I wanted to say, want I wanted to imply and what I wanted you to infer. Nothing more nothing less. It is very simple and I hope that you can understand it.
If modern day feminist is about diversity is good, they I am a feminist. I strongly beleive this, but diversity will cause inequalities.
Agreed, perhaps the currrent power structure is more understanding for these variablities in productivity, perhaps due to the ADHD trait.
IF I know you as a employee and I know this is not a factor with you they I have no reason to count it against you. This does not negate other aspects, like hieght discrimination, ADHD factors and the chance of pregnancy and leaving the position, perhaps even tieing up your current position with the family medical leave law which makes it harder to promote females (since you might have to ‘hold’ a higher level position for someone who may not come back).
I said variability is a factor, not the only one, but all other things being equal can be a deciding factor. You are argue that you can have a high productivtiy worker who is also variable, but that does not negate the variable factor and a equally productive consistant worker will usually be seen as more valuable - the key is all other factors being equal (yes it is a BIG factor)
I haven’t said they didn’t, just not in a work environment. Women do have a tough row to hoe. I did read something while searchign for a cite on this where somewhere in some society that women would work during their non-bleading time and have a retreat during their bleading time, where they could remove themselves from society and be tended to by other women. I didn’t really look too much into this as it wasn’t what I was looking for, but it does show how a woman work scedual might evolve.
This could very well be a factor, I haven’t considered it.
This is what feminism is up against, if they are really experencing this or not they are serving to reinforce gender sterotypes.
Brainglutten the former is an attempt to establish equality the latter sex discrimination aka sexism - working to give one gender an advantave w/o o corosponding advantage to the other.
I believe that some psychologists believed this, and some feminists picked up on it. This did not mean all feminists believed it or gave it as a reason women should be liberated. It was not the basis of feminism.
No one should be discriminated against on the basis of gender, sexual preference, skin color, age, any of that, so it really does not matter what causes differences in men and women, nature or nurture.
The bra-burners did us a great service in bringing these issues into the limelight. I believe they were women of great courage.
[QUOTE=Spider Woman]
So far this is theory still being established, is based on correlational evidence so far, and even if it is true, and it very well may be, does not give cause for women to be discriminated against because of differences from men.
[quote]
It isn’t one theory. It is a whole group of theories that look at different aspects of sexual differentiation. If you say that it is a “theory” that male and female brains differentiate at all based on biology, then I will have to ask you what controls the menstrual cycle? It may sound trivial but the brain structures like the hypothalamus that control the menstrual cycle via feedback loops are involved in a whole lot of other things too. They are different in males and females for obvious reasons.
It is true that most of neuroscience relies on animal models. That is true of cancer research too and is just the nature of experimental biological sciences. Pesky ethics boards block some of the cooler research we could do on humans.
Also, much of higher level biology and medicine is correlative. Look at the risk factors for heart attacks or other diseases for example to see correlation used in real-live medicine. Correlation isn’t always weak evidence and if you combine it with evidence from other sources like animal models, it can be quite strong.
[quote]
I wasn’t the one arguing about PMS. I think people should do whatever they can with their strengths. My wife and mother are extremely successful in their careers. I hope my daughter is too one day.
The only area where I think it should be used politically is to see that equality of opportunity won’t always guarantee an equal outcome for some endeavors that are linked to sex traits. That can go both ways.
Whether or not it is a theory or a group of theories (which eventually may all come to shelter under the same umbrella), none of it has been firmly established or unequivocally proven.
The hypothalmus controls the menstrual cycle. There are, of course, differences between men and women. The point is, those differences do not mean one sex is better than the other nor does it mean that feminism is baseless.
I am not quite sure what this means. It could be that brain function may stack the cards slightly for certain occupations, according to gender. It is doubtful that this would preclude one sex or the other from a certain career because of a slight disadvantage.
I believe that patriarchal society developed not because of male superiority but because of superior strength. Civilization’s tools: language and law, to name two, enable us to live together without reverting to the law of the jungle.
While it is interesting to study what makes us different from each other, those results should never be used to justify discrimination.
In 1970 or '71, Elizabeth Janeway said :
(this is reconstructed from memory, I don’t have it in front of me; apologies to Janeway for any unintended misrepresentations here)
She’s still correct. We have never observed males and females out of context. We have considerably more reason now than we did in 1971 to believe that there are some hard-wired differences, but we still don’t know for sure what the expression of those differences might be, apart from the form that they take in society as we know it.
There is very little good to be obtained from assuming certain specific innate sex differences, and none from taking such assumptions and expanding them from the level of general trend to universal axioms defining people according to sex.
Meanwhile, it also remains true that the priorities and values of many social institutions (including the employment-world and the competition therein, cited in this thread in juxtaposition to the desire to be with one’s children some of the time) are patriarchal priorities and values. Note that I did not say male priorities and values.
The egalitarian philosophy and tendency to suspend pro forma assumptions about innate differences between the sexes, and to declare in favor of sex-neutrality as the best means towards gender equality, is the keystone of liberal feminism, not radical feminism. Be that as it may, liberal feminism is in many ways congruent with radical feminism. Radical feminism goes on to look at the nature of the institutions themselves, so that when people say “But it is difficult to attain gender parity in the workplace because women aren’t as seriously competitive, they often drop out to do child care, it’s not just that the workplace is blindly unfair to women”, the radical feminist can show how the very structure of the twin institutions “home” and “workplace” are part and parcel of the general pattern of patriarchal social organization, as is the workplace-value given to competition of this sort, and all that that entails.
This stuff is far more accessible and sensible than any other theory that attempts to explain how society works without proclaiming that it works exactly as it must and should be working. It is of our lifetimes, not from some long-dead era. Its authors describe a world we recognize easily from everyday life when we read their descriptions. If you’ve read it and still don’t agree and see no wisdom or insight in it, well, fine (so we disagree on that), but for anyone who hasn’t read it, … you need to fight some ignorance on a really local and familiar level!
This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve been in a good 20 performance reviews covering hundreds of people, and PMS, inconsistent behavior, or anything sex-linked has never, I repeat never, come up. And I have never even sensed undercurrents of this kind of behavior. Performance review, and promotion review, has always been based on factual data about what people have done, not speculation on what they might do, if they might leave to have a child (and some have) or any of the other things kanicbird is convinced are so important. The people covered, btw, have been engineers and computer scientists, so I’m not talking about traditonally female jobs.
I’m sure that in some places the issues that kanicbird discusses still come up, which goes to show that some men are still sexist, as if that should be a surprise.
I’ve worked with plenty of women, managed plenty of women, and have been managed by women, and have never seen any impact of PMS or anything else. I’ve probably wasted more time at work thinking about sex than any woman here has spent dealing with periods. 
Sure I got it. I’ll just file away the rest of your drivel outside of this one point as irrelevant tripe then. Thanks for clarifying your audacious position.
Inevitable gratuitous sexist joke:
What’s the difference between a woman with PMS and a pit bull with rabies?
Lipstick! 
Here’s mine : What’s PMS ?
It’s when women get in trouble for acting the way men do all the time.
Backtracking a bit, to the first page of this thread:
Do you have any examples of policies which are described as family friendly which you feel is female biased? I suppose some might exist, but in my experience, family friendly policies tend to be aimed at both male and female parents.
From Norway you would be aware of the new legislation pushed through by your new left extremist government which sets a 40% female quota for the board of directors on private share-holder companies. While no one would see it as family friendly demands, it’s definitely going to artificially raise the percentage of women in the top – at least on paper, when the companies will have to stuff their boardrooms with female stooges. Gender quota set for company boards of directors
Another example could be the difference between the maternity (paternity) leave laws of Denmark and Sweden. In Sweden a part of the leave is specifically set-off for the father, and cannot be transferred to the mother. Whereas in Denmark the parents are free themselves to decide who takes the leave. On the face of it such could be seen as singling out men for positive discrimination, however the paternal-leave is not there for the men’s sake, but to try to force men to take more leave with their children (and mothers less leave), thus artificially raising the number of fathers going on leave.
Anyway such state sponsored social engineering approaches are pretty much bust. A comparison between Scandinavia and more liberal economies, such as Britain and the USA will show that the USA has been far more adept in getting women out into the workforce and in particular into the top levels of private companies, while females in welfare Scandinavia are much more traditional in their career choices and predominantly choose to work in state care-giving positions or the state bureaucracy, where the pay is bad and the career opportunities worse – but security is high. A recent report from Denmark lays the blame squarely on the welfare model, and not least the long and generous maternity leave, and the high tax-rate.
Whoa, amazing how claims that point to hard-wired differences between the sexes tend to get the evil eye almost by reflex. It looks like the discredited theory of the Blank Slate is alive and well.
Anyway, perhaps the terms suggested by Christina Hoff Sommers can be useful. She wrote a book that indirectly answers the OP’s question: Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women. Her terms:
Gender feminism: “says that a change in gender roles and the patriarchal structures of society is needed to achieve true gender equality”; it is “a kind of feminism that criticises contemporary gender roles and wishes to abolish them completely”.
Equity feminism: “associated with the ideas of equal legal and civil rights and many of the original goals of the First Wave of the Women’s movement: the establishment of women’s right to work, vote, etc.”; the aim is to establish “full legal equality of woman and men and equality of opportunity; without preferential treatment or the need to constantly portray women as victims”.
(quotes / definitions taken from here and here and here on Wikipedia.)
It is ridiculous to expect physical and neurological and consequently behavioural differences between men and women to magically vanish just because some groups want them to. It seems far more reasonable to extend to all people the same or similar opportunities, and let them decide which they wish to pursue. Thus framed, equity feminism sounds reasonable, and gender feminism sounds militant and extreme. Given that gender feminism has dominated in American academia, it is perhaps not surprising that it is viewed negatively.
The reason feminists in general are sometimes viewed with disdain is that they are thought to belong to extremist or militant factions. There are hardcore feminists who advocate outrageous ideas such as that men should make up no more than 10% of the population, or that women should be lesbian by default. As usually happens, the idiots on the fringes tend to spoil it for everyone else throughout the spectrum.
When people today say “bra-burning feminists” they conjure an image not of First Wave and related feminism, not of women who struggled to earn important rights, not of the victories won decades ago; they are probably thinking of angry / butch / militant / feminazi / gynocentric / misandric gender feminists foaming at the mouth from the fringes of the modern world.