Women

"In general, women are less capable of mathematical reasoning than men"

In itself, this is an interesting statement.

So lets make some more:
"In general, women are more capable in house cleaning than men"
"In general, women are less capable of leading a country than men"
"In general, women are more capable in cooking a diner than men"
"In general, women are less capable in being lawyers than men"
"In general, women are more capable in sewing than men"
"In general, women are less capable in the financial world than men"
...

Hey, this might be fun!
... i mean, fun 50 years ago...

Blanket statements. They do a disservice to the diversity of the world.

And when counter-examples are found, they are called just exceptions that do not alter the reality of "The Nature of Things".
The good ol' "Heads I win, Tails you lose" attitude.

And then IQ tests are given around, and it is found that black children from the Bronx have lower IQs, and some (not Gil) are claiming that "modern science" has proven the intellectual inferiority of blacks ("they may be better than us in sports, but heck! we have the brains!")
After all, they have their genes, and we have ours, right? We are also wired differently from them, right?

Bull.


"It's unreasonable to get upset over it"

Re-bull.


"Men and women have differently developed brains. We know from long experience, and now from modern study, that women and men are wired differently"

Another blanket statement that doesn't say much, but that can be mis-used.
On one side there are anatomical differences in the brain (subtle one still), on the other there are sociological differences. Easy to use one to justify the other, or to try to maintain the differences.


"One of the general differences is evidenced in mathematics, toward which men generally have greater inclination"

And women have a greater inclination towards house-cleaning, cooking, sewing, blablabla...

Re-re-bull.


"daytime television is not only aimed at women, it is aimed at the lowest common denominator (to speak mathematically!) to obtain the largest audience. That's who Oprah is spiritualizing to."

As a former broadcaster, you should know that virtually all tv timeslots are now aimed at the lowest common denominator.
That's why "The West Wing" won't survive it's second year (my prediction, but I may be wrong).

The worst though are the Saturday and Sunday morning time-slots with their preacher$ and faith-healer$ and bull-$h... well, I think there are certain words I can't use here.
Just to say that Oprah is just another guru among the multiple gurus, no better but no worse than the Schullers, the Robertsons, and other clowns of mass-media mediocrity.

I do personally dislike the "Marianne-Williamson" approch that the Oprah show has taken on, and since then have not watched it much.
But as a show that balances the excesses of constipated conservatism, it's much better than nothing.


I'm done for now.
I haven't disproven any of what Gil said.
Again, I think that his posts conveniently serve both him and myself.
I just needed to underline a few passages.

"I have to learn to make short posts like yours IP!!"

Actually, I was in the middle of a mega-post, then I just decided I was too lazy to finish it and replaced it with those two sentences.

It was a choice between that and "Two words: Sophie Germain."

Happy Labor Day! WOW! Am I up late!

Juntel, thanks for leaving me out of your indictment. I can't defend the some of the folks you're attacking. You're right.

But I would stipulate that there is nothing wrong with general statements, as long as it is understood that they are general and are not to be abused in the way juntel described.

Diversity is not disserved by general observations. Rather, that is what gives the diverse its context and renders its uniqueness more enjoyable.

And there ARE mental as well as physical differences between the genders and science has closed that debate and is in the process of even more precisely quantifying it. In fact, at some point, they will be able to match these qualities to specific sections of the Human Genome.

In the military, where such things must be known as a matter of course, some interesting things have been found. Some women with great capacity not only for the spatial relations, but hand to eye coordination as well, are preferred as pilots in the military. There are hard reasons for this wired into women, the kind of thing that renders them able to consistently outperform men in many areas beyond the kitchen. Our understanding of these differences from individual to individual, our ability to quantify it, and to analyze it en masse has greatly increased over the last few decades.

And it has proven that a lot of stereotypes have some truth in them. And that every stereotype is routinely broken.

And, as a broadcaster, don't get me started on the ridiculous filth and empty trash that passes for televised entertainment and information.

And don't expect me to defend the televangelists. For the most part they are gloryhounds, panhandlers, charletans, hypocrites, blind guides, lecherous oafs, greedy swindlers, and misguided quacks. I despise their tawdry sets and tacky costumes and affected mannerisms.

I rather expect to see my King one day say to them, "Away from me! For I never knew you!"

(And with that, the little hobbit fervently hoped that he would not be found in that number!)

Good job, Gilthalion!
Yeah, those general statements are probably correct, but are, again, general. In science fairs at my school, someone ALWAYS does the old right-brained/left-brained experiment, and it ALWAYS ends up that more girls are right-brained and more guys are left-brained. Therfore, it would follow that guys would be better at algebraic-type math then girls. However, it would also then follow that women are naturally more adept at geometry and spacial reasoning than men. This is probably more an environmental thing than a mental thing, but my math teacher commented last year when we were doing our schedules, that it usually ends up that the AP Caluclus class is mostly male, and the AP Statistics class is mostly female. Interesting...

Women are found to be better at hand-eye coordination? Huh; I seem to have been left out! Just kidding

Actually, I got that "happy homemaker" bit (no wonder women were drugged up on Valium in the 50s!) off another message board. Someone posted it, and I copied and pasted it. But Gil. must know where it's ultimately from...

BTW Gil. I'm still waiting for you to post all these scientific studies... You keep talking about them but don't give us a source. Don't worry, I can understand all that scientific stuff.

All I know is that it came from a Fifties Home Economics text book.

As for the studies that have quantified the differences between the genders, they are multitudinous and have been discussed throughout the media in recent years. I'm sorry I (conveniently) don't have them at my fingertips. I didn't realize anyone was waiting for them, perhaps I breezed through the previous posts too quickly.

(This started as a joke!)

Now, I hope this is not followed with a "My study can beat up your study" discussion!

Why is it so hard to accept that women and men are generally quite different? I should think it obvious!

Little girls and little boys, in studies that control for for different nurturing environments, will play with different toys and engage in entirely different forms of play.

Men are more mathematical. Women are more verbal. This is firmly established and is no longer seriously questioned, except by institutions that have a Feminine axe to grind.

If you have been taken in by the Feminist myth (and since this is a recent phenomenon that seeks to overturn what has long been accepted, the burden of proof, still unmet, is on the Feminists) that men and women are different only because of training and indoctrination (which play their considerable role), then perhaps I should roust myself and dig this out.

Or are y'all just teasing me? Do I really need to take some time to formally present recent data to buttress the long knowledge of history? I thought all of this was rather informal. You might be more convinced if you looked yourself!

(The lazy hobbit, reflects that in the time he wrote this post, he might, out of courtesy for the reasonable request, have already found a study or two.)

EDIT:
OK, here is a more or less comprehensive discussion of the matter. The scientists on the program (I assume produced for Public Television) refer to many studies and give a good overview of the best data we have on the subject. I should have done this to begin with! There is a lot more to be found, but this should be satisfactory.

Men, Women and the Brain

This program was taped for airing before a live audience and produced by WETA, Washington, DC.

www.dana.org/dabi/transcripts/eyb_0298.html

"Little girls and little boys, in studies that control for for different nurturing environments, will play with different toys and engage in entirely different forms of play."

Girls and boys that are presented with barbies and gijoes tend to react thusly in those studies (if, conveniently, memory serves well): the boys will play with the gijoes in a war-like fashion (aggressivity), and girls will play with both, in family role-playing fashion.

Hmmm... boys playing with barbies could make them look like "sissies"... isn't this why they don't play with them? Couldn't it be cartoons that thaught them to play thus with gijoes?

As for girls and family role-playing, how much of that is due to genetic determinism, and how much to learning from their mothers, ie their role-model?


"Men are more mathematical. Women are more verbal. This is firmly established and is no longer seriously questioned, except by institutions that have a Feminine axe to grind"
and
"Feminist myth (...) that men and women are different only because of training and indoctrination"

Gilthalion, the Nature/Nurture problem is far from being resolved and understood, including when it concerns gender issues.
Yes, there are anatomical and mental differences in men and women in general (as well as between men alone, and women alone), but at most this implies possibly different approaches to same problems, and not which problems can be solved better by which gender.

That women are not as present in science is a fact.
And if you look at that human history you like to point out, you'll see that for thousand of years women have been prevented from going into science, by blatant sexism or other reasons. Only in the past two centuries has this changed; and even then, only in the past 30 years has this really changed.

To say that human experience and history has shown that women are not science-oriented or math-oriented, is no better or wiser than to say that blacks aren't either, since also they are not as present science-wise in human history and experience.
You'll agree with me, I hope, that this reasoning based on human history is false and valueless

I cannot base myself on human history and experience of the past to say wheter or not women (or dark-skinned people, or red-headed people, or whatever) are science- or math-oriented. The variables that have interfered are too numerous, and those interferences still exist to this day in some instances (coming from both men and women!).

Studies have not determined yet all the answers.
There are studies, there are results, both none are widely accepted, because all have been found to contain ingrained biases (since last I checked).

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I just saw Gil's edited post: Very great link Gil, thanks!
And I don't even have to change my text above.

I'd like to quote here one of the female doctor in that show:

" DR. MARTHA DENCKLA: (...)[W]hen I went to college and I announced that I wanted to go to medical school, I was immediately greeted with derision by the dean who said, "You? You weren't even allowed to take the fourth year of math in high school because you were a B student, you weren't a good -- " I said, "Well, I want to go to medical school." And I found myself a tutor who helped me to overcome what had been my relatively mediocre math performance, and marched on to medical school.
Now, it's true, I did not become a radiologist, I did not become a surgeon, I did not become a lot of different kinds of doctor that is probably more based upon the kind of spatial ability that I never had. On the other hand, I not only got into medical school, but I even became a neurologist where I had to learn all of this excruciatingly spatial stuff about where everything is in the brain. So motivation, interest, some compensation, may be something we want to hold out to people. We don't want to just stereotype them the way I was very much in danger of being stereotyped as "The kind of girl who's good at languages and literature," you know, which is how I entered college. And I think that's the kind of thing that we want to study these differences minutely, in order to be able to liberate people from."

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"Out of curiosity, how old are you?"

I am however old you think I am.

You may make your deductions through my association with IronParrot, my rhetorical patterns, my political affiliations, my entertainment preferences, or even through recursive reasoning about the following statement.

I will neither confirm or deny any inferences you may make. Period.

"If so, give them time, they may grow out of it."

Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It's not my concern.

"Otherwise I suggest you try meeting women in other places than where you currently try to meet them."

I don't try to meet women, except in one activity which I am forbidden to discuss by the EzBoard Terms Of Service. Running into them and being forced to put up with them is another issue altogether.

"I could retaliate and say most men are idiots... Quite a few of them can be at one time or another."

This is interesting. But do you know what the difference is between the "average" man and the "average" woman is?

Ah, scratch that, I'm not going there. Suffice it to say that I'd rather talk about football with a male idiot than cosmetics and Oprah with a female idiot.

"Again, perhaps your not meeting the right women. Or the women you meet aren't interested in these things."

I have a bone to pick... but I won't do that here. I doubt that our esteemed leader bmilder would appreciate some of the things I'd say. If you want to know what I'm talking about, swing by IronParrot's board, and I'll enlighten you.

"One can be highly intelligent and not have had exposure to these things"

Um... not in Canada.

Up here, you're LEGALLY REQUIRED to have 9 years of grade-school math. And _anyone_ can get access to a computer. (Forget football... that was a footnote)

To Gil: OK I went digging in my old psych. textbooks. Of 3, only one found it fit to even mention the gender differences. And yes, it did mention that females tended to do better on verbal skills and that males tended to do better on math and spatial relations.... BUT the differences in each of the categories were very slight.
For the verbal skills, the study quoted (Sherman 197 stated that for "850 females and 850 males who were tested the diffderences attributable to sex accounted to less than 1% of the variability between their scores."
Spacial ability: "In no investigation [as of 1983 the year my text was published] does sex account for more than 5% of the variability, and in some studies with very large samples, sex accounts for less than 1% of the variability. Usually this difference is not reliably found before the age of 16 (Hyde 1981; Sherman 197 ."
Mathematics: "There are no apparent differences in mathematical ability in grade school. However, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974). after reviewing much of the research concerning sex differences in this ability, suggest that after the age of 12 or 13 boys show a greater increase in mathematical ability than do girls... In studies that do not control for the amount of math background, the difference in performance between girls and boys can be quite large. When prior experience in mathematics courses is equated, however, differences dissappear or are very slight (Hyde 1981; Sherman 197 ."

Can we attribute the differences to nature or nuture? As juntel points out, that is a vey thorny question and hard to resolve. I would ask the following, though: If boys and girls had different inherent capacitites in the fields of mathematics and spacial relations, would it not make more sense that these differences show up from the beginning, and not only in adolescence? It seems to me, especially in the math field that girls are not encouraged to take the same math courses as boys. The girls seem to be taking the watered down version.

TO JL: I wasn't trying to suggest you were trying to meet women for any particular activity. If you prefer to associate with men that's your perogative. But maybe if you actually tried to meet women on a friendly basis and strictly that, you'd be surprised. But that's up to you; you're free to do with your life as you will.
As for the bit on math, I stand by what I said. See above. Anyone can have access to a computer, but last I looked, computer knowledge wasn't a matter of intelligence. It's a matter of interest, and someone can be intelligent without being interested, and so has not taken the time to learn. It doesn't mean that person lacks the capacity to learn about computers if s/he so desires.

I see no need to further debate my point regarding the very real and substantial differences between the male and female thinking apparatus.

If you read through the link I provided, even juntel's pull quote, my point is substantiated. There is no debate that there are physiological differences between the genders that account for greatly differing capacities in various areas. This is simply what the research demonstrates.

This is hard science, not psychology.

Again, there is no reason to be upset over it. This is not new. It is old, well known, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. What's new is the modern feminist assertion that Nurture is All.

I think that when the Nature-Nuture issue is debated in terms of Nature vs. Nurture there is no chance of reaching understanding. It's not one or the other. It's both.

I've never argued that women have been unfairly repressed, practically enslaved.

And I think the content of my posts demonstrate that I do not think in monolithic generalities and stereotypes. A lot of folks do.

Folks of my viewpoint are unfairly subjected to that sort of thing all the time! The ancient wisdom is mocked and scorned, or lightly dismissed, even when science verifies what has long been known.

And that's not new either!

Ancient Wisdom goes along with Ancient Unfairness and Ancient Blindness.
It is not altogether bad: it has beaten the path on wich we walk.
But the path isn't the goal, the journey is, and on that journey we have seen over and over again that this Ancient Wisdom, although respectable and usefull in its time, has a lot to be desired in certain domains. The path led us here, but we had to change, because the destination wasn't very palatable to us, due to the unfairnesses it led us to for certain domains.

The gender issue is such a domain.

If Ancient Wisdom is to be kept unchanged, no evolution in the societies is possible.
And that, I'm sure, is a lesson that even that Ancient Wisdom teached our ancestors: no Wisdom is so wise if it doesn't teach its own limitedness and eventual need to be replaced.

I have also to point out that I personnaly don't believe that Nurture is all... in fact, I don't even think that the majority of feminist (or not) psychologist and searchers think that Nurture is all: I think you just focus on a minority groupt within "feminist" researchers that think that way.
I am myself bewildered by statements like: "Women's menstruation is a social phenomenon, not a biological one", but such statements is in the extreme minority of the hard-left-feminists (Dworkin et al). These kind of statements from these fringe groups are as idiotic to me as the statement: "Only a man can be the head of his family, that's his given natural role".

Also, I was mainly argueing about capabilities, not anatomical differences. Read my posts again.
And the link you gave, even though gives some details about anatomical differences, hardly supports the point of vue that "men are inately better at maths and sciences"; my "pull-quote" was to underline this.


(btw, love your new pic Gil!)

ARG! Are you all crazy? 30 LONG replies in two day!?! And you think I'm gonna read that?

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You're right!

"But maybe if you actually tried to meet women on a friendly basis and strictly that, you'd be surprised."

Honestly, I don't think I've ever tried for anything more.

I'm not going to get drawn into anything more here... show up at IronParrot's board (featured on the EzBoard front page - pub4.ezboard.com/bnicktheshadow.html ) for a debate. (No, I'm not just shamelessly plugging it - we've had some debates on subjects somewhat like this).

"computer knowledge wasn't a matter of intelligence. It's a matter of interest"

It's one of my benchmarks. Math is another. So is football - not applicable to the lighter gender. I have others - I simply used those as examples.

"and someone can be intelligent without being interested, and so has not taken the time to learn"

Potential is worth NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

It doesn't matter if I'm the fastest freakin' wide receiver this side of Jerry Rice, if I don't strap on the cleats and get out there.

Heh heh heh!

I don't see how anyone reading that transcript can come to any other conclusion than the one's stated. And I will leave it there.

Ancient Wisdom is not the path that brought us hear, as juntel maintains, it is what we have learned on that long bloody evil path. The ancient evils you name are not inextricably bound with the wisdom we have learned. Wisdom lies in avoiding the very things you name.

It is as much folly to cast aside age old wisdom as to keep age old wickedness. I don't understand this ongoing fascination for a discredited social theory. This is biology, or even anthropology, not sociology, and especially not psychology. (Unfortunately, EVERYTHING is politics!)

Good and evil have not changed. Old and young remain as always. Night and day continue. Male and female are the same. I maintain that these not only have not changed, but will not change.

Cultures and societies are another matter!

"Male and female are the same. I maintain that these not only have not changed, but will not change"

That the male human animal and the female human animal as biological entities have not changed, I will not try to deny (at least for now; it all depends on what would be considered as change).

But biology, contrary to what is thought by some, isn't the only part that defines us as humans.
To deny the importance of the social environment created by groups of humans is simple blindness; a blindness that Gil fortunately isn't affected by, since he acknowledge in a recent post that both Nature and Nurture are important (unless I misread his post, in which case i'm sorry).


"Good and evil have not changed"

Well, in a lot of case what is good for one is evil for the other.
Unless one thinks one has the absolute truth...

I don't understand this ongoing fascination for ideologies claiming absolute truths...

Ok... Now I've been with my woman all week-end, and finally take the time to answer this thread.

First, in answer from a post two days ago (I think), I believe you're somehow younger than me Johnny, and I'm 20 (well, almost 21)

Second, I just wanted to point out something, and that's probabbly the only thing I'll do in this thread. I'm now studying at Laval University. Here we mainly have two "Pavillon" for science. Le Vachon et le Pouliot It IS a fact that 95% of these pavillon's population is Male (Sadly ) And One of the pavillon social sciences is Le De-Koninck Well, this one is nearly 90% female in population! (In fact, we sometime go there to have a look at all these nice girls)

Wheiter it's education, different biological structure of anything else you can think of, Women tends to go more into social sciences and men more into sciences and math. As Gil said, this is a fact.

Just wanted to tell you that

Shan

...as it is a fact that more than 90% of nurses are female

...as it is a fact that men are the majority as heart surgeons, brain surgeons, surgeons in general...

Go back 50 years Shan and Gil: what were the percentages then?

Facts, contrary to contrary popular beliefs, do NOT speak for themselves.
To conclude from the above facts that men are better surgeons and women better nurses is as easy and as wrong as saying that facts say that whites are more intelligent than blacks because the great majority of Nobel prize winners are white.

Bull, re-bull, and re-re-bull.

(btw, off-topic: qu'est-ce que tu étudie a l'UdeLaval Shan?)

Juntel Informatique... en fait, je me suis inscrit en informatique de Génie, mais les programmes d'informatique (de Génie, math, de Gestion) ont été modifiés pour créer un seul programme avec différente concentrations. Donc je suis en informatique, 2ème année, président du comité d'initiation et éditeur en chef du journal étudiant.

And now to get back to the topic, I NEVER, EVER said that this proved they were better at it or anything, I just proved that more women chose to go in these fields. Maybe they are better, maybe they like them better even if they are not good at it, maybe social pressions tell them to go in these programs, I let you choose your answer.

But one thing I'm sure, I didn't tell it proved that specific gender were better in specific domains.

Shan

I didn't say you said that.
You kept away from a conclusion on aptitude, and I saw that.

I did however want to make clear that a conclusion on aptitude would be wrong, even though you didn't make yourself that conclusion.

Call that a "pre-emptive comment", although I'm not sure this is the right expression...

Maybe the future society will be such that more women will choose careers in sciences; but to attain that state, alot of prejudices and stereotypes will have to be let go.
Lets hope our societies mature towards that wiser state.

(Si t'as besoin d'aide en Math un jour, ou tu veux en discuter, j'suis la.)

Pour ce qui est des maths, je me débrouille pas si mal (A en algebre linéaire et B- et stats) (Je fais donc parti des "standards" nommés avant, bon en math mais moins bon en perception spatiale )
Et avec un peu de chance, c'était mes derniers cours de math Ã* vie (Youppi! )

And for the comment, you're forgiven
I hope society will be like that a day but saddly, I tend to believe it's utopic to hope that.