To the extent there is a difference between the sexes, it is far outweighed by the variation within the sexes. A good book on exactly this question is Same Difference.
At a cocktail party a dozen years ago, a Boston-based executive involved in marketing research was holding forth on the different effects of television advertising on men and women. She claimed that women act upon the advertising they see (i.e. they buy the advertised items) at a rate almost three times that of men.
One effect of this she cited is that even on shows where the audience is largely men (e.g. football) a substantial percentage of the advertising will be aimed at (or at least adjusted for the presence of) women - they need be only about 25-30% of the audience to have an importance (in advertisers’ eyes) greater than that of the men.
Right. But it seems to me that this sort of statement is both self-evident and not very meaningful. “Variation within the sexes” implies comparing the individuals of one sex. And even in a small group, the range of individuals is going to be significant.
Let’s take an objective and indisputable difference between the sexes: say, adult height. The average difference between men and women is real - probably something like 6-7%. But it would be very strange in even a small group of men to find that height varied over a range of less than this - twice this much would hardly be unusual.
So it seems that there’s not much value in comparing variation between individuals with variation between large groups.
It is neither self-evident nor meaningless. Suppose that we had a measure of unwillingness to ask for directions. Men may score slightly higher than women on average, but, because of a high variation within groups, nearly half the women could score more highly than nearly half the men. Under such circumstances, to say that men are more stubborn about asking for directions would be a sophist statement because the mean as a measure of central tendency really isn’t giving an accurate picture of what’s happening out there.
A real example has to do with math scores. Boys score more highly than girls on average, but the difference in means is small and the variation within groups is quite large. Now we have a situation where any randomly chosen girl is indistinguishable from any randomly chosen boy. If we went with the idea that the comparison of variation between groups vs. variation within groups is meaningless, then nearly half the girls will be shot in the foot and nearly half the boys will be thrown into fields that they’re not equipped to handle. (Sloppy language, yes! But I think the idea is clear.)
I’ve known plenty of men who ask for directions, who get emotional, who are afraid of spiders, who are neat, who are verbal, who are morality-governed, and so on. Unfortunately we’ve been innundated by authors who have latched on to the gender-feminist notion that there is an unfathomable divide between the sexes and they’ve used it—consciously or not—as a lever into fame and fortune by exploiting our prejudices. The truth is that they’re peddling sexism pure and simple, and they do people and society significant harm.
As I mentioned before, Same Difference is an outstanding book, IMHO.
When my kids started preschool, the headmistress told us during the first parent meeting that she had come out of school believing boys and girls were the same, nd that any differences were caused by culturization. She then pointed out that belief disappeared as soon as she started working with real children.
I think the big difference is that men learn by experiencing. Give a man something to assemble, and he’ll take a look at the front of the box to see what it should look like, and then go right to work. He literally learns through his hands. Give him a location to drive to, and he’ll start driving – turning left or right when it “feels” like he should turn.
Every male teacher I ever had, at some point during the year, wound up telling stories of something that happened to him or a friend that explains whatever point he was trying to teach. Women teachers stayed closer to the textbook, and tried to get the class to discuss the problem to reach a solution.
Women, IMHO, learn by instruction, be it from the directions, or from someone explaining what should be done.
In the end it means that men
a) are results-oriented, and women are process-oriented
b) work alone to figure something out, while women work as a group
c) look at problems as something they need to solve, while women look at sharing the problem as the first step to solving it
There are major physiological differences bewteen women and men. For one, women emotional thinkers, whole men are physical. Men and women, instinctually, are attracted by different things. Women tend to be more spiritual - it seems that they are hardwired that way. Men sometimes lose their heads over pretty girls. There are advantages and disadvantages to being either one. Think about it.
Generally, women tend to think and react emotionally to situations more than men. Men tend to think mechanically and instinctively more than women.
Men tend to be “goal” oriented and methodical in their approach to something. Women tend to be a little more concerned with the feelings they encounter (and engender) in the process, which to them is as important as the goal itself.
Men notice those things which pertain or appeal directly to them, sometimes to the exclusion of all others. Women notice the details and do not dwell on the overtly obvious.
These things are readily apparent if you have ever followed the “Survivor” TV shows.
Men work straight ahead to the goals of shelter, fire and food. Women help by trying to make the resulting mess into a more homey enviroment. The men will often (and unintentionally) offend or upset the women while trying to run things. Women are often hurt by off-hand comments, being ignored and not having their suggestions given equal weight.
Quiz the teams about their surroundings, experiances and each other, and the men will remember the arguments they had among themselves and where the fire was placed. Women will tell you what color the flowers were, where every important utensil is placed in camp and the name of the other members wives and children.
I suppose it could be called a “sophist statement”. It’s also true according to what’s stipulated in your example. It’s certainly the case that many people are sloppy with probability and statistics, and tend to draw conclusions not warranted by the facts, such as (in this example) concluding that any chosen man must be more stubborn than any woman.
How does the idea compel the actions you predict? If something is held to be meaningless, something else that’s meaningful will be needed as a basis for rational decision-making.
As have we all. Because the variation within the groups is vast, even a pronounced tendency for the average of one group to differ from the average of the other in no way means that individuals far from the average of their group and closer to the average of the other group must necessarily be rare.
The essential point here is that the variation among individuals in almost any large group of humans will be large - much larger than almost any difference between the groups. For an example, let’s consider the group of professional truck drivers and the group of tenured college professors. Can we agree that there will be a difference in the average IQs of the two groups? Yet the variation of IQs within these groups will certainly be much greater than that difference. And I once met a driver at a truckstop on I-80 in Wyoming who was a serious latin scholar, and with whom I fell into a discussion about relativity.
As the mother of a boy and a girl, there are differences. Although all differences are generalizations and there will always be boys who like to play dress up and girls who like hockey.
My own feeling: If there were only women on the Earth, we’d have no idea farts were flammable.
No way! I am female and I need at least 30 minutes, if not more to “decompress”–and I almost never talk about work. I used to, when I was in my 20’s, but only after that down time…
This is totally true.
Differences I have noticed (and appreciated) over the years. With most men, I can say ‘I dont’ like X(annoying habit, person, social event, product)whatever". Some may ask me why, but most say OK or whatever.
If I am with a woman or women who happen to like X–jeebus, do we have to do a little dance of “well, I like X, but <insert qualifying characteristic here>” or “X has never worked for you, so maybe that’s why you don’t like it.” “have you tried X with sauce/in the afternoon/in blue/in wool/out of town?” etc.
Until all are in some sort of agreement and a group consensus can be made. Drives me nuts. Why can’t I not like X and you can? I don’t care that you like X…
Aagh! Men just let you not like something.