ahem… two words for you: Single Life and Cloning ! 
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
_____________dimorphism ____
SYLLABICATION:* di·mor·phism*
______NOUN:* The existence among animals of the same species of two distinct forms that differ in one or more characteristics, such as coloration, size, or shape.*
Unbelievable. Are there still people walking the streets of Straight Dope that don’t understand the nature of evolution? Does anyone here really, truely, believe that man and woman evolved very different body shapes as they were being carefully selected by nature for their acumen in dealing with widely different social roles without evolving very distinct and different brains?
If so, may God have mercy on your future developement. She and I know, by golly,that you all will certainly need it. :smack:
Building on Astro’s thought (hi ya, Astro!), in Ecology it’s an axiom that, in any given niche, the generalist will always outsurvive the specialist.
Women are built for survival, as they generally outlive males at all ages. To be a surviver, particularly in a dire situation or environment, one must possess a wide variety of skills. They need not be exceptional, just serviceable. And varied. If you’re pregnant, have other young children, living in a draught, famine, or ice age, it is not particularly beneficial to be a master at chess or bridge or theoretical mathematics. These talents, while admirable in their own right, will not guarantee that your dna lives on.
If you have ever noticed, those (particularly males) who so highly specialize usually accomplish that at the expense of other components of life. Although I would like to do more research on the matter, who among us could not recall a genius in a specialized niche who is often barely functional at other things? Sometimes genius equates to “poster child for useless people” when it comes to other functions in life.
It would have been an evolutionary dead end if many human females, who are primarily responsible for insuring the survival of their and the bio dad’s genetic future, were to so highly specialize that they lost the ability to get their offspring to adulthood.
At the risk of sounding cold, males are far more expendable from a reproductive point of view. All they need to do is fertilize a few eggs to further their own genetic lineage and, well, from the practical female standpoint, all that’s really required is a handful of good breeding males to accomplish that. You know, just go to the stable and pick out a beauty. :–)
It’s this expendability, probably coupled with the fact that females no longer need to choose the male who is the best protector and provider, that allowed for this evolutionary quirk of high, but often impractical, specialization. I could imagine that, for example, a prehistoric male who had the time and ability to specialize in perfecting tools and/or weapons would be an asset his group. But there may be a personal cost to the individual if it left him distracted from survival, or ill-equipped to deal with day to day life without the support of a troop.
It is interesting to note that, in other primates, it is usually the females who develop innovations, modeling those behaviors to their offspring while males lag behind the learning curve. Go figure.
So, what’s the unspoken half of the equation? What is the genius’ ability to adapt? Can that same level of genius be applied to other areas? Is it transferable? What are the costs of genius as compared to the benefits?
Interesting topic.
It’s not absurd that there are noticeable differences in the the physiology of men’s and women’s brains. What’s absurd is that those differences would manifest so simply and directly as a “women aren’t as good at physics as men”.
If there is some truth to the old saws like “women navigate by landmarks, men by dead-reckoning”, you’d expect that the collection/combination of gender-based variations would result in much more subtle differences that might be, at best, statistically detectable. There might be some consistent effect in certain professions, but even that’s doubtful: to the extent that women, with their “different way of thinking” penetrate a particular field, they would also modify the practice of that field. If women are more empathic than men, and they become a significant proprotion of lawyers, then you’d expect the practice of law to be subtly affected as well.
In other words, to the extent that men are more suited to physics because of the physiology of their brains, that’s only because men, as the only physicists, have defined the practices. As women become physicists, the field becomes more suited to them as well.
Exactly. Once practices have adapted (don’t hold your breath - its academia - it’ll take forever), then I believe men and women will be able to compete equally on the intellectual playing field. Until then however, for a woman, its going to be like being the only left hander in a right handed world.
Angua:
“… to the extent that men are more suited to physics because of the physiology of their brains, that’s only because men, as the only physicists, have defined the practices. As women become physicists, the field becomes more suited to them as well.”
Is this called the dumb blonding down of physics?
Er no. What its about is not redefining the practices of the subject per say, but the working culture.
So what will change will be the criteria for a “good” or “excellent” professional and career advancement… not mastery of physics ?
That is what it seemed to me. When in fact we are discussing the ability of the brain to handle certain things. Changing the rules will mean we will recognize more women as "top" ... but not that women have more or less ability necessarily than before ? Thou naturally if the rules arent as severe or male centered more women will seek to advance in the career....
Milum SYLLABICATION - as for this… why only colors and form ? Why is it so outrageous to think brains will be different if behaviour is different among males and females ? Hormones play a good part in much of our body construction.
Now if males and females thought alike you would have one set of skills only… by having two sets of mental skills and abilities you give humans more chances of surviving. More efficiency with specific tasks…
Any psychologist will tell you a 2-3 year old boy plays differently from a 2-3 year old girl. I think that is awful little time for “gender” training" alone to determine things. If there is “gender training” sufficient to account for all the differences then society certainly needs to change in order to foster more equality among the sexes if a 2 year old is already subjected to this much sexism.
No, what will change will be that to become a brilliant physicist, one will not have had to have had an uninterrupted career from 22 till middle age, but women who are brilliant physicists will be able to have a career break, without the whole starting from scratch again thing that happens currently. I know plenty of brilliant female physicists, who, if they had been men, would have professors by now.
I know many women scientists-in-training who don’t want to use their Ph.Ds for scientific research, but for teaching.
I think Angua’s explanation takes care of this observation. Teaching allows for a more flexible lifestyle. There’s not much burning of the midnight oil in teaching.
But I don’t this explains all of it, and I hope no one thinks of me as an evil essentialist for what I’m about to say.
I think women tend to value social interactions more than men do, and I don’t think all of it is due to upbringing. Research requires that one shed much of their social longing. Not only must you eschew emotionality, but you have to expect long, lonely nights in front of a chromatograph or a simulator or a microscope or a PCR machine…waiting a dark eternity for an insignificant beep, blip, or squiggle.
Wanna go see a movie tonight? No, I have to count nematodes.
Why don’t you visit more often? Because I have experiments to do every weekend, plus papers to write.
You sure are boring. Don’t you have anything else to talk about besides science? What else do you expect? I don’t have a life outside of the lab.
Why don’t you do something to your hair? Why? My hair doesn’t have anything to do with my data!
My lab has a bunch of grad students, but the hardest working ones (IMHO) are me (of course) and the only male Ph.D student in the lab. There are many nights when he doesn’t leave till 7:00, even after having a full day of courses and teaching. He’s married, but his wife doesn’t seem to mind that he stays late. And then there’s poor little me, who has no significant other or outside-of-school friends and little desire for either. I’m a proud woman, but sometimes I feel like my social isolation makes me more “male”. The other female grad students all have active cell phones, boyfriends/husbands, and lots of friends. But they won’t be graduating within five years, like I am (well ain’t I speeeeeecial).
Research = nerd. Research = having no life. Sure, once you get tenure you can have a life and not be a nerd, but if you want to be a big-time scientist, you have to pay your dues.
Also, research is much more competitve than teaching is. Guys like sports more than women because it seems they are more wired for competitiveness. My male colleague jumped right into proposal writing his first year, with full confidence that he had what it took to get funding. When he got rejected, he started looking towards the next year. I still can’t even fill out an application for a grant without doubting my abilities…and I’m about to graduate!
When his proposals were turned down, my male colleague coped with the rejection by calling the reviewers “cocksuckers” and “assholes” (really). When my manuscripts get turned down, I denigrate myself. It’s a n of 1, I know, but I still think women are more likely to back away from competition than men. I think this is part biology, but also part cultural. Women who are competitive are called worse names (like aggressive bitch) than competitive men (ambitious, maybe arrogant).
Finally, women who do research tend to be attracted to fields that are more society-oriented. Nursing, sociology, psychology, biomedicine, ecology…these are more “practical” and less esoteric than, say, astrophysics, physical oceanography, and organic chemistry. I think this ties into the socialness of women. We tend to be nurturers, and we like to relate what we do to the welfare of others. It’s not easy to get that warm, fuzzy feeling when you’re studying quantum mechanics.
There are ideas floating that since intelligence conveys a survival advantage, and since females do the choosing when it comes to picking with whom they will mate – females are more likely to mate with a male who shows signs of intelligence over one who does not. In fact, “kindness” and “intelligence” are listed as the two most desirable long-term traits that females look for when choosing a mate. If males are selected for intelligence it appears to follow that the genetics making one ‘male’ might also convey some advantage in intelligence.
One thing that was mentioned in this thread that is interesting is that we live in a male setup. That much of how things work were done by men for men and thinking of men… one more reason for me to embrace the “feminist” cause.
I think women need to shake up a bit some of these structures. A lot of the way the world works now is cold and unforgiving. Excessively competitive or overvalued. Let’s hope the women do this before the embrace male ethics and mentality too much.
In the meanwhile we men must keep making an effort to learn how to clean, cook, cry and take care of kids… my brother is a better “mother” than his girlfriend ! (He is only 21 and has a 3 year old girl). Proud of him. Talking to some “oldtimers” and they admit they barely knew how to hold their kids. They only held them longer when they were a bit more “rigid” at 3 months of age !!! Hopefully we are getting better…