There is not a single active female member on this forum, and that's not a coincidence. Men and women are interested in different things, and it is just as much about biology as it is about culture.
No complaint from me there. My point wasn't that females were discriminated against in engineering, my point was that they can be just as good as males in engineering even though there are far less women working in the field.
There was a university study earlier this year that focused on why women were under-represented in U.S. politics. Many of the reasons were to do with the way women perceived politics and their ability in politics. While this may seem like just another 'cultural difference', it is ultimately a cultural difference that has been shaped by previous male-dominated culture. A 'catch-up' period, or lag, would still be expected as it was only 40, 50, 60 years ago that women were more severely under-represented in politics. I think in 1978, there were only one or two women in the Senate.
It's all to easy to say "well women aren't suited to be politicians, they would rather be housewives/nurses/midwives because it's their biology and culture" when it's more likely that this is just the way that society has sculpted the ideals and ambitions of women. This makes sense in light of the dramatic differences in the roles of women from other cultures. We'd expect more similarities between cultures if behaviour and personality of women was innate. I address this again later in this reply as I'm not necessarily arguing that women should be equally represented in politics. If it is the case that, on average, less women than men genuinely want to be politicians (almost impossible to say for certain due to confounding factors such as cultural bias), there is still a responsibility of us men to accept the imbalance of power and to make sure we don't abuse this imbalance.
I may as well address the caveman argument, just in case it arises. While it is true that men have been the hunters for much of human history, in most instances it is the women who have been found to provide the most sustenance for small groups of hunter-gatherers. Furthermore, men were obviously designated the role of hunters because women had to be there to look after young off-spring. This is no longer the case yet the ideology persisted right up until the last quarter of the 20th century.
Most of my younger years were fraught with frustration at my interactions with the opposite sex because I constantly tried to rationalise everything. The moment I realised that both genders operate on different levels and not everything a woman says has to make sense was the biggest epiphany I've ever had. Believing otherwise is a sure road to insanity.
I would agree, but this operates both ways. It is my argument that our generalisations about women are more harmful than theirs about men because we are in a more dominant position. Again, I would use the recent election as an example in relation to the statements made by Republicans on rape. We end up with male politicians saying stupid things like women dressing seductively are 'asking for it', whereas a woman in that position would say the problem lies with the behaviour of men, not women. The male generalisation is more harmful not only because it is more likely to be false but because males dominate politics and have more 'power'.
In my experience, these "generalisations" aren't unfair stereotypes, but a good assumption to operate on, like assuming that if you swim in a pool with a hungry shark, it will probably attack you.
In the example you gave, I don't have a problem with generalisations like that. I agree that both men and women operate on different 'levels' but that the confusion goes both ways, not just in the direction of men confused about the behaviour of women. The generalisations I refer to are the more harmful ones that assume women are not naturally suited for different tasks or things like that. The key lies with the validity of the premise as there are some generalisations that are true about the ability of women (and men) doing different tasks. False generalisations about men and women exist, maybe in equal numbers, but the false generalisations about women are more likely to have a negative effect because males tend to dominate the more powerful positions in society (such as politics). If there was evidence to suggest that only men should be politicians, then I wouldn't argue about inequality in politics but that men have a privileged position that allows us to be more resistant to negative generalisations. This is an extension of my previous musings on power imbalance.
Stereotypes though exist for a reason, it's an evolutionary mechanism which helps you err on the side of caution. If faced with a sabre tooth tiger, the caveman who assumed it was going to attack him like all tigers before it was much more likely to pass on his genes than the one who wondered if unlike all other tigers, this one might be different and he should try to communicate with it. If a stereotype persists, its because there is a ring of truth to it.
False stereotypes wouldn't necessarily be harmful to an individual's (or group, if you're a supporter of group selection) fitness and there's a few scholars (IIRC from class) who argue the benefits of stereotyping in cultures due to the fact that they are usually not accurate. Stereotypes help create a characterisable difference between "us" and "them" and, regardless of their accuracy, will be useful in reinforcing group cohesion. Also, If you need to convince your group that war with a neighbouring peoples is just, false stereotyping has its benefits. But I think it's main function is argued to be in group cohesion as previously mentioned. This is important as many practices of ancient cultures rely heavily on co-operation and would fall apart without a high level of co-operation. A co-operative group is more likely to succeed than a less co-operative group. Moreover, false stereotyping doesn't need to rely on the assumptions of group selection (which is quite controversial in biology) as stereotyping only needs to increase fitness at an individual level for it to also be useful in other ways at a group level.
I do agree that a stereotype generally has to come from somewhere, but that somewhere may not be representative of a group on the whole. It would be similar to someone drawing conclusions about a population based on a sample that is not representative of the population; which happens in statistics far too often.
I'm not saying men are better than women - the fact is that society evolved the way it is because it works, apparently rational and curious men need an emotional and nurturing counterpart in order for civilisation to work. Pretending we are not different is however not helping anyone.
Yeah, like I said in an earlier post, I'm not someone who thinks men and women should be equal in every respect. I think I said something along the lines of inequalities will always exist, and should always exist, but it is about balancing out the inequalities where their shouldn't be inequalities.
The inequalities in politics, for example, could be argued are due to the innate preferences of men and women where women prefer not to be involved in politics. However, it would be hard to argue that whilst ignoring the male-dominated culture that has shaped these preferences over the last few hundred years. Back in the 50s, it wasn't women telling men that they didn't want to work, it was years of men telling women that they shouldn't be working but should be home with the kids. Eventually, you end up with women believing that they shouldn't be ambitious and career-seeking. I mentioned earlier that it may be true that women are less ambitious and less concerned about careers than men (when controlled for the previous experiences, culture and history of humanity) but we have to rely on the validity of the premise as that is the most important part of an argument. The likelihood that male-dominated culture has shaped the perceptions and behaviour of women is surely higher than the premise that it is all innate. The fact that it is impossible to control for the past experiences and culture of humanity makes the likelihood so much higher for the former premise.
Based on some of what you've said, I think I need to make this clear: I don't think men and women should be equal in every respect because I know there are biological and behavioural differences that prevent this. When I argue against innateness, I'm arguing against generalisations that claim innateness when it has yet to be proven. There are obvious differences between the two genders that will naturally lead to inequality, some of these differences are surely innate while others may have been affected by our past history and culture. For many differences, however, it is nearly impossible or too early to tell whether they are innate or not. I think the chances of some of these differences being innate (e.g. females being less likely to run for office than males) is small and it is more likely to invoke our past history and culture as the factor that explains this observation the best.
What I also argue is that the balance of power tips in our favour and, regardless of whether this can or should be corrected, it needs to be recognised because the consequences of this mean that the actions of men can be more harmful to women than the actions of women can be to men. My example of this was generalisations. Relating back to my arguments about colonisation, those with the power have historically been the ones who influence the history and the representation of the less-powerful group. Examples of this include most of the Pacific, Africa, India, China, New Zealand, Australia and the Americas. Obviously, Europe isn't in that list because it has usually been the colonisers. These European countries have also usually been mostly white with males dominating the powerful positions.
MrC, I'm probably being unfair because at your age I would have agreed with you. Once you've lived or worked with the opposite gender long term however, I think you'll find your views will be substantially modified.
If I end up in academia, I'm not so sure. Largely due to the fact that the science that deals with this kind of stuff is a field closely related to what I study. Thus, I think I'm less likely to make generalisations that rely on weak or circumstantial evidence because I would criticise a journal article that did the same. While I'm more interested in osteology and palaeoanthropology than evolutionary psychology or behavioural ecology, I still learn about the latter two subjects and will be closely associated with the lecturers who are academics in those fields if I continue on to post-graduate study.
By the way, I take none of this personally. I see it as an opportunity to further my reasoning and arguing skills and verbal or written discussion also helps to better formulate ideas that you usually keep to yourself. I'm sure we've had heaps of discussions about differences in what we all believe but I've either forgotten everyone's personal position or don't hold it against them. I'm sure some people are getting sick of this already so I'm ready to agree to disagree whenever
