Monday was Human Rights Day. While the definition of that seems to be ever-broadening, from contraception to healthcare, recent statistics c
By: Nicole Russell
Published: Dec 11, 2018
Monday was Human Rights Day. While the definition of that seems to be ever-broadening, from contraception to healthcare, recent statistics cycling through the news again seem to provide a salient point about gender differences, the so-called “wage gap” and even human rights.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, in 2015, men dominated the 20 most dangerous occupations in the United States. Logging is the most dangerous job in the U.S., followed by fishing. Mining is the 20th most dangerous profession. More men than women occupied these jobs by anywhere from 85.4 to 99.9 percent.
Still, very few feminists, or anyone really, make a stink about the gender gap in casualties on the job. Perhaps because men earn so much doing it? Or they don’t deserve recognition because the patriarchy discovered logging and it’s getting what it deserved? Whatever the reason, it’s rarely mentioned, certainly not by feminists. I didn’t see “safety at work” anywhere in the #HumanRightsDay memes or tweets — but I did see calls for healthcare, contraception, and awareness of global warming as human rights.
Jordan Peterson, America’s favorite Canadian psychologist and gender rabble-rouser, wrote about this recently on his blog. He said studies, and his anecdotal research (he’s traveled to Scandinavia several times this last year), show that all this work to make men and women more equal has actually had the opposite effect. “Societies become more gender-equal in their social and political policies, men and women become more different in certain aspects, rather than more similar,” he wrote. However, when it comes to work and safety at work, men really do fill roles that are not only dangerous, but essential for a functioning, safe society.
More interestingly, Peterson argues that men choose these hazardous occupational roles because of their innate wiring, not in spite of it. In other words, women, and some men, can wreak havoc all they want about how men and women are equal, but real life proves differently.
There are other sex differences, as well, but they aren’t as large, excepting that of the aforementioned interest: men are comparatively more interested in things and women in people. This is the largest psychological difference between men and women yet identified. And these differences drive occupational choice, particularly at the extremes.
In a study Pew Research Center did in 2017, but published in the summer of 2018, and which I can’t believe didn’t go viral, they asked 4,573 Americans what they valued in each gender and described those values with 1,500 different words. The results were fascinating in that they were unsurprising. In other words, even during this third — or fourth? — wave of feminism, women still used words like “strong,” “provider,” and “honest” to identify positive traits in men. Men still used words like “beautiful,” “kind,” and “compassionate” to describe positive traits in women. Americans in general used words like “powerful” in a positive way to describe men, but when it describes women, it’s seen as negative. Beautiful as an adjective was nearly almost always used to describe women; provider was almost always used to describe men.
It’s clear how innate wiring in men and women, along with society’s view of the differences between men and women, despite feminism’s efforts, combine to encourage or support the fact that men occupy the top 20 most hazardous jobs at a rate of nearly 100 percent. This also may help people realize why some of those occupations are quite lucrative. Yet this irony (a lack of safety for men perhaps, but a bounty of free birth control for women) doesn’t seem to matter to feminists.
Let me clarify: Men don’t want it to matter either — they certainly don’t want women clamoring for their safety on the job. But statistics show gender differences and choices caused by those differences influence the market as well as any kind of pay gap.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
A major discussion at the very centre of the gender debate, asks: why are men and women different?
Are they different because we tell them to be different? Through toys in childhood, TV in adolescence, and a continual bombardment of gender norms from society, our media, our family, our friends, from everyone.
Is our gender shaped through society, through ‘social constructivsm’?
Alternatively -
Are our gender preferences innate?
Are we born masculine or feminine; born with our gendered thinking, like we are born with our sexuality?
Are the preferences, behaviours and temperaments of men and women, part of our biology? And if so, are they immutable?
So many questions.
Well, a new study from 2018 has reopened the debate.
Showing that the more equal and wealthy a society, the more men and women grow apart in their behaviour.
That’s right.
The wealthier and more equal the country, the *more* its men engage in risk taking behaviour, and the more altruistic its women become, for example.
It’s an annoying spanner in the works for the social constructivists, and feminists, who insist we are all the same blank slates – and are simply brainwashed, or coloured in, by society.
But are we?
Preferences concerning time, risk, and social interactions systematically shape human behavior and contribute to differential economic and s
Abstract
Preferences concerning time, risk, and social interactions systematically shape human behavior and contribute to differential economic and social outcomes between women and men. We present a global investigation of gender differences in six fundamental preferences. Our data consist of measures of willingness to take risks, patience, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity, and trust for 80,000 individuals in 76 representative country samples. Gender differences in preferences were positively related to economic development and gender equality. This finding suggests that greater availability of and gender-equal access to material and social resources favor the manifestation of gender-differentiated preferences across countries.
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More studies:
Men's and women's personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of development assume gender differences result p
Abstract
Men's and women's personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of development assume gender differences result primarily from perceived gender roles, gender socialization and sociostructural power differentials. As a consequence, social role theorists expect gender differences in personality to be smaller in cultures with more gender egalitarianism. Several large cross-cultural studies have generated sufficient data for evaluating these global personality predictions. Empirically, evidence suggests gender differences in most aspects of personality-Big Five traits, Dark Triad traits, self-esteem, subjective well-being, depression and values-are conspicuously larger in cultures with more egalitarian gender roles, gender socialization and sociopolitical gender equity. Similar patterns are evident when examining objectively measured attributes such as tested cognitive abilities and physical traits such as height and blood pressure. Social role theory appears inadequate for explaining some of the observed cultural variations in men's and women's personalities. Evolutionary theories regarding ecologically-evoked gender differences are described that may prove more useful in explaining global variation in human personality.
Using data from over 200,000 participants from 53 nations, I examined the cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: ext
Abstract
Using data from over 200,000 participants from 53 nations, I examined the cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and male-versus-female-typical occupational preferences. Across nations, men and women differed significantly on all four traits (mean ds = -.15, -.56, -.41, and 1.40, respectively, with negative values indicating women scoring higher). The strongest evidence for sex differences in SDs was for extraversion (women more variable) and for agreeableness (men more variable). United Nations indices of gender equality and economic development were associated with larger sex differences in agreeableness, but not with sex differences in other traits. Gender equality and economic development were negatively associated with mean national levels of neuroticism, suggesting that economic stress was associated with higher neuroticism. Regression analyses explored the power of sex, gender equality, and their interaction to predict men's and women's 106 national trait means for each of the four traits. Only sex predicted means for all four traits, and sex predicted trait means much more strongly than did gender equality or the interaction between sex and gender equality. These results suggest that biological factors may contribute to sex differences in personality and that culture plays a negligible to small role in moderating sex differences in personality.
Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which
Abstract
Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (N = 17,637). On responses to the Big Five Inventory, women reported higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than did men across most nations. These findings converge with previous studies in which different Big Five measures and more limited samples of nations were used. Overall, higher levels of human development--including long and healthy life, equal access to knowledge and education, and economic wealth--were the main nation-level predictors of larger sex differences in personality. Changes in men's personality traits appeared to be the primary cause of sex difference variation across cultures. It is proposed that heightened levels of sexual dimorphism result from personality traits of men and women being less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in developed nations. In less fortunate social and economic conditions, innate personality differences between men and women may be attenuated.
We investigated sex differences in 473,260 adolescents’ aspirations to work in things-oriented (e.g., mechanic), people-oriented (e.g., nurs
Abstract
We investigated sex differences in 473,260 adolescents’ aspirations to work in things-oriented (e.g., mechanic), people-oriented (e.g., nurse), and STEM (e.g., mathematician) careers across 80 countries and economic regions using the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We analyzed student career aspirations in combination with student achievement in mathematics, reading, and science, as well as parental occupations and family wealth. In each country and region, more boys than girls aspired to a things-oriented or STEM occupation and more girls than boys to a people-oriented occupation. These sex differences were larger in countries with a higher level of women’s empowerment. We explain this counter-intuitive finding through the indirect effect of wealth. Women’s empowerment is associated with relatively high levels of national wealth and this wealth allows more students to aspire to occupations they are intrinsically interested in. Implications for better understanding the sources of sex differences in career aspirations and associated policy are discussed.
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There's no "patriarchy." Men and women are just different.
Hell, here's four studies of primates that show comparable sex-linked tendencies, preferences, habits and instincts as humans:
Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18452921/
Toy story: Why do monkey and human males prefer trucks?: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755553/
Young female chimpanzees treat sticks as dolls: Growing evidence of biological basis for gender-specific play in humans: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101220121109.htm
Sex differences in response to children's toys in nonhuman primates: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513802001071?via%3Dihub
Social constructivism is complete horseshit. Not only is "Patriarchy Theory" an explicit denial of evolution, but a full-blown conspiracy theory.
Given that humans are sexually dimorphic and exhibit many of the typical sex-linked behavioral traits that any objective observer would predict, based on the mammalian trends, the claim that our behavioral differences have arisen purely via socialization is dubious at best. For that to be true, we would have to posit that the selective forces for these traits inexplicably and uniquely vanished in just our lineage, leading to the elimination of these traits without any vestiges of their past, only to have these traits fully recapitulated in the present due to socialization. Of course, the more evidenced and straightforward explanation is that we exhibit these classic sex-linked behavioral traits because we inherited them from our closest primate ancestors.
Abstract
The underrepresentation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a continual concern for social scientists and policymakers. Using an international database on adolescent achievement in science, mathematics, and reading (N = 472,242), we showed that girls performed similarly to or better than boys in science in two of every three countries, and in nearly all countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled. Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality. The gap between boys’ science achievement and girls’ reading achievement relative to their mean academic performance was near universal. These sex differences in academic strengths and attitudes toward science correlated with the STEM graduation gap. A mediation analysis suggested that life-quality pressures in less gender-equal countries promote girls’ and women’s engagement with STEM subjects.
Maybe stop telling people that not doing things they don't want to do constitutes a societal problem? And that their empowerment to decline is somehow a manifestation of "oppression" because their choices aren't the "correct" or "default" ones?
Where does your opinion lie on the matter of sex and gender and the relationship between biological sex and gender roles/ gender prescriptions as a social construct.
We don't ask the same questions about tigers, peafowl or bees.
Sex-based behaviors (gender) are real. We can see them in other primates in a way that mirror ourselves.
Socialization processes, parents, or peers encouraging play with gender specific toys are thought to be the primary force shaping sex differ
Researchers have reported some of the first evidence that chimpanzee youngsters in the wild may tend to play differently depending on their
Nobody wonders whether the peacock grows feathers and shows off for the females because of social expectations.
Nobody wonders whether the female mantis eats her mate because she's "fIgHtInG tEh PaTrIaRcHy!"
There are very real human sex-based averages that are derived from the evolution of our species, the pressures it has been under, the variations that have been most successful, and what each sex has needed of the other.
Men's and women's personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of development assume gender differences result p
This means that, for example, boys are more inclined towards thing-based activities - careers, toys, pasttimes - while girls are more inclined towards people-oriented activities... on average. This is replicated cross-cultures.
Using data from over 200,000 participants from 53 nations, I examined the cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: ext
We investigated sex differences in 473,260 adolescents’ aspirations to work in things-oriented (e.g., mechanic), people-oriented (e.g., nurs
Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which
Of course there are girls who want to fix trucks for a living, and boys who want to be kindergarten teachers. They are still girls and boys who will grow up to be women and men. And nobody should get in their way.
What you like doesn't define what you are. But what you are is still statistically significant, because it offers societal-wide information. The society-wide trend doesn't predict or define individuals, and individuals don't negate a society-wide trend. Which many people don't seem to understand.
Here's a good example. Average intelligence of women and men is the same.
While the means are the same, male intelligence is more variable, so you'll find more highly intelligent men at the higher end, and more really stupid men at the lower end. You possibly know at least one highly intelligent woman who is smarter than most of the men you know. That doesn't change the societal-wide trend.
This is simply a fact. You can get angry or offended, but it doesn't stop being true.
And in a similar way, men and women having different average interests, tendencies and behaviors - e.g. women tend to be more socially-oriented, men tend to be more action-oriented - makes sense in the light of evolution and the demands and pressures our primitive ancestors were subjected to by the natural world and the battle for success. And the demands males and females put upon each other.
Several authors have accused neuroscience and psychology of promoting sexism through the differentiation of psychological predispositions of
Nobody gets angry when we mention that humans are prone to pareidolia - interpreting or perceiving meaning where it isn't there, such as a smiling or pouting "face" in the front end of a car. Evolutionarily, it makes sense. In the same way, noticing that sex-based differences are real might make people angry or offended, but that offence doesn't matter as far as what is real.
The idea that "gender is a social construct," then is nonsense. It's a denial of evolution itself, a denial of the way we came to be as a species. To suggest that the same tendencies we see in our primate ancestors - e.g. maternal instinct in female chimps carrying sticks - is some kind of social brainwashing requires believing that those tendencies disappeared from humanity's evolutionary line, then re-emerged, identically, as socially imposed roles.
That's creationism. Actually it's worse. Xian creationism simply asserts that everything is as it always was. Everything was created in its current form. Gender creationists must assert that humanity wound backwards to a blank slate state, then had the wherewithal to form a conspiracy of oppression to reinstitute the same vestigial traits back into society. Oh, and this happened either sufficiently far back in our development to precede or dispersal throughout the lands of Earth, or coincidentally every society on Earth came up with it more recently. Gender social constructivism is evolution-denying creationism.
This level of magical thinking makes me long for the days where Xians rambled about the laws of thermodynamics that they don't understand. The talking snake and donkey seem almost reasonable.
The domains that produce this kind of thinking are not science-based, they're political and ideological, such as Gender Studies. People in these fields don't study biology, they don't study demography, they don't study anthropology. They don't even study basic statistics.
Feminist theory, which is where "gender is a social construct" was really incubated as the justification for patriarchy theory, is not scientific, and is opinion (grievance)-based, not evidence based. One of the most tragic examples of this is the John/Joan case, where David Reimer was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
Finally, on 14 March 1980, Reimer's parents told him the truth about his gender reassignment, following advice from Reimer's endocrinologist and psychiatrist. At 14, having been informed of his past by his father, Reimer decided to assume a male gender identity, calling himself David. He underwent treatment to reverse the reassignment, including testosterone injections, a double mastectomy, and phalloplasty operations.
[..]
His case came to international attention in 1997 when he told his story to Milton Diamond, an academic sexologist who persuaded Reimer to allow him to report the outcome in order to dissuade physicians from treating other infants similarly. Soon after, Reimer went public with his story and John Colapinto published a widely disseminated and influential account in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1997. The article won the National Magazine Award for Reporting.
This was later expanded into The New York Times best-selling biography As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (2000), in which Colapinto described how—contrary to Money's reports—when living as Brenda, Reimer did not identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers (who dubbed him "cavewoman"), and neither frilly dresses nor female hormones made him feel female.
Human nature is not as malleable as some people would like you to believe. You are a sexed being. How you "identify" can't change what you are. That doesn't mean you can't do what you want, express yourself how you want, but you are what you are.
This is only controversial to the people who want to push the story of humans being infinitely moldable, existing as divine gender thetans imprisoned in vulgar meat bodies.
Now, it is true that some of these tendencies and behaviors will tend to be limited or shaped by the culture of the society. But they're not constructed wholesale. For example, Japanese society is highly structured around honor. So male and female behaviors will tend to be expressed through those norms; male aggression and female agreeableness may take unique culturally influenced forms. But they're not created by them. Societies which have different pressures - e.g. in the freezing north regions of North America, vs the arid deserts of Africa - will unsurprisingly produce different cultural expectations upon men and women. Recognizing that isn't a form of bigotry, it's an acknowledgement of reality.
There's a reason stereotypes exist - because there is an element of truth in there, even if it's a tiny seed. If there wasn't, we wouldn't be able to recognize or apply them. They exist because humans are prone to cognitive shortcuts, as we have a lot of information to process and making choices or decisions doesn't always allow one to sit down and think things through methodically. Our ancestors wouldn't have had the time, and probably wouldn't have had the cognitive power.
"Girls like dolls, boys like trucks," is a very dirty shorthand. At its core is a demonstrable truth regarding societal-wide averages and tendencies that takes several paragraphs to explain more accurately (and some people will still be determined to be pissed off, no matter how you frame it). But stereotypes are not all we are, and there's no reason not to acknowledge them, but put them aside, or try to. And certainly no reason to use them to structure society itself, "fixing" girls who like trucks and boys who like dolls.
I don't know if that answers your question. Suffice to say that just as a scientific view of the world makes a god unnecessary, a scientific view of the world make social constructivism (postmodern creationism) unnecessary. We can explain the world without resorting to magic or conspiracies.
P.S. Reminder: social constructivism is a social construct.
One sex cannot be understood except in light of the other. Men and women have co-evolved, each shaping the other both physically and psychol
By: Paula Wright
Published: Feb 19, 2023
If any man could draw up a comprehensive, infallible guide to navigating this treacherous territory, we would certainly erect a statue to his everlasting memory. There is a Twitter account dedicated to exploring and enumerating precisely the distinctions and differences between the acceptably erotic and the intolerably sexist. It’s called @SexyIsntSexist. It is, of course, under the control of a woman.” Neil Lyndon. Do men really understand what sexism is? The Telegraph 20/5/14
I created Darwinian Gender Studies (DGS) in 2008 as a cross-disciplinary area of study and research which utilises insights across the evolutionary behavioural sciences, including but not limited to, evolutionary psychology, biology, anthropology, ethology, palaeoanthropology and cultural evolution. It represents the consilience of the natural and social sciences, as envisioned by E. O. Wilson.
Back then, my planned PhD thesis was to be in developing an evolutionary, bio-cultural model of ‘patriarchy’ which challenged the premises of the feminist conception of patriarchy. Even in 2008, the project foresaw that political correctness, social justice and toxic feminism were taking us deep down the postmodern rabbit hole. My goal was to build bridges of understanding between the sexes not walls of fear and mistrust, which is what feminism does today. To learn about humans and humanity; what we are, and what we are not.
Two things we are, which we cannot cease to be and remain human, are a sexually reproducing, moderately sexually dimorphic, pair-bonded species. These are basic facts of our human nature which cannot be erased by social engineering.
Within DGS, I interrogate orthodox feminist concepts, such as patriarchy theory, objectification theory, gender, power, mating strategies, and sex differences and similarities, using humour and evolutionary explanatory models such as natural and sexual selection, parental investment theory, female choice, signalling theory, life history theory, intersexual competition and intrasexual competition.
History has demonstrated many times, that whenever our species attempts to take control of biology and bend it out of shape to ideological goals, human tragedy always follows. It’s a lesson we still don’t seem to have learned, as in spite of overwhelming evidence, many people still hold fast to the idea of an endlessly flexible human nature, and indeed, human nature is flexible, but a blank slate it is not. Neither however is it a crude caricature of immutable deterministic drives and instincts as often painted within the straw man of biological determinism. Human nature is very much mutable, but not infinitely or arbitrarily so, and here lies the nub: Within what may seem like infinite variations of human action and reaction to what life throws at us, our predispositions on an average scale are actually predictable. There are enough constants within this calculus to recognise the existence of an unmistakably human nature. This nature will vary and recalibrate between individuals and ecologies (variation is one of the engines of evolution) but these variations dance around a constant, evolutionary fire.
“Those who journey from political correctness to truth often risk public disapprobation, but it is notable that most never lose their tolerance or humanity. They may question the politics of race, but not that racism is bad; they may question campaigns about women’s pay, but not that women and men deserve equality of treatment.” Browne, A. (2006) The Retreat of Reason: Political correctness and the corruption of political debate in modern Britain. Civitas
I was, and am, standing on the shoulders of many female evolutionary scientists and philosophers who came before me such as Barbara Smuts, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Anne Campbell, Helena Cronin, Griet Vandermassen, Catherine Salmon, Maryanne Fisher, Bobby Low, Helen Fisher, and many more. Over the last 50 years, their scholarship has revealed that, far from feminist fears to the contrary, evolved sex differences do not equate to inferiority. Via evolution, we in fact see true equality expressed in discrete and fascinating ways.
These women (and many men) have illuminated the role females play as potent agents of evolution via the phenomenon of female choice. This is sadly still an unsung revolution – unsung by feminism, not evolutionists – as it shattered the male perspective biases that once dominated biology and Darwinism. These women did this, not with rhetorical declarations of war against ‘patriarchy’ but with logic and critical thinking.
When it comes to the principles of natural selection – the struggle to survive – men and women differ very little. Rather, it is in the principles of sexual selection – the struggle not just to survive but thrive enough to have offspring and allow them to thrive also – that the main differences start to become manifest. It is a categorical fact that none of these differences equates to any moral inferiority. No genuine evolutionary scholar would ever make such a claim.
Feminists have long claimed that logic is an exclusively male trait. So much so that to counter the “male” scientific method they felt the need to create “female” method – social constructionism - which ironically invokes every negative female stereotype they claim to want to refute. They did this not because social constructivism was a better tool – it is untested – but because it was the binary opposite of the scientific method.
Women, in fact, have nothing to fear from logic. Yet feminists do fear it, as philosopher Janet Radciffe Richards notes in her book The Sceptical Feminist,
“…in spite of girls doing better at school than boys, feminists are still woeful at rationality…feminism has some tendency to get stuck in the quagmire of unreason from time to time [but] it cannot be denied that adopting an anti-rational stance has its uses; it can be turned into an all-purpose escape route from tricky corners”
They also fear it because it falsifies the very premises feminism rests on – especially female inferiority.
This is a description of all feminisms today: radical, intersectional and all other tribes battling for dominance in the victim narrative – including ideological men’s rights, MGTOW and “red pill” groups. All feminisms eschew logic and reason for dogma and ideology and all are in thrall to the flying patriarchal spaghetti monster in the sky. Ask a question about female oppression, you already know the answer: it’s the patriarchy, stupid. And ideological men’s groups have their own version of patriarchy, known as gynocentrism. Both concepts are intellectually myopic.
I created DGS all those years ago because I wanted the opportunity to have a role, however small, in helping us better understand ourselves as a species.
It is true that as a woman I am perhaps more interested in the unique selection pressures women face due directly to their sex. As an evolutionist and a realist, however, this bias does not make me blind to the fact that men face their own unique selection pressures due explicitly to their sex.
The truth is, one sex cannot be understood except in the light of the other. Men and women have co-evolved, each shaping the other both physically and psychologically via sexual selection. Men desire power and resources because women desire men who have power and resources. And female conflict, well that doesn’t look like male conflict, and so often goes unseen, especially by feminists.
From an evolutionary perspective, feminism can be categorised as the study of the conflict between the sexes – intersexual conflict – aka the “battle of the sexes” with a particular interest in proximate, conscious mechanisms of how men can oppress women and how this oppression can be countered. But this is only half the story. Evolutionists posit that to really understand intersexual conflict one must also analyse intrasexual conflict. We do this because we observe across species that competition within a sex is always far more intense than between the sexes. An evolutionary lens also broadens the enquiry to include an analysis of ultimate, unconscious mechanisms of not just how, but why, men pursue the goal of power and resource control. What do men want to do with power? To create strong alliances, subdue rivals, protect against enemies and attract mates.
Much is known about male intrasexual competition. We have had 2000 years to work it out – its role in shaping cultures and empires – for better or worse. Far less is known about conflict - and conflict resolution - between women; female intrasexual competition (FIC). It is the pink elephant in the feminist room. Do we have the same amount of time to understand female intrasexual competition? For better or worse? I don’t think we do. The epidemic of female-on-female bullying in nursing has long been acknowledged in academia, yet nothing is done about it. In the UK it costs the NHS billions of pounds in workplace attrition, sick leave and low efficiency. It can also cost lives, as a “culture of bullying” was highlighted in the official reports on two scandals in UK maternity wards where both infants and mothers lost their lives.
In another example observe the rise of intragender conflict in the West. Third-gender people exist in many cultures, but only in the West are males who identify with the female gender trying to use it as leverage to get access to sex-based rights and privileges. Then we have feminism itself a battleground fraught with female intrasexual competition, which is often mistakenly called “internalised misogyny”. Women too, it seems, want to create alliances, subdue rivals and attract the best mates.
Using FIC as a lens to look anew at hot feminist topics such as the beauty industry, cosmetic surgery, anorexia, and the endless wars of attrition between the many tribes of feminisms brings fascinating new insights, as all these phenomena seem to be expressions of female competition not male oppression.
Nonetheless, there is still a comfortable consensus among all feminists that the beauty ‘ideal’ is a tyranny perpetrated upon women by the patriarchy. “Feminists down the ages have argued that the oppression of women is played out on their bodies, their clothes, their style of adornment. To politicise dress has been one of the enduring projects of the women’s movement.” (Walter, N. 1999) Naomi Wolf tackled this concept in her seminal book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. It suggested that this patriarchal strategy is one of ‘divide and rule’ as it “creates a climate of competitiveness among women that divides them from each other.”
Competitiveness is the keyword here. Perhaps the idea of sanctioning the idea, nay the fact, of female intrasexual competition seems frightening for feminists because on the surface of it, it threatens the very notion of a ‘sisterhood’. Yet we know that men are murderously competitive with one another, as homicide rates attest, and this does not seem to threaten their notion of ‘the patriarchy’.
The evidence actually shows that the beauty myth may not be a tyranny perpetuated on women by men, but on one other - if it is a tyranny at all! And it reveals a much more complex and fascinating picture of female agency which goes far to liberate women from the doctrine of passive femininity.
The fact is, women are fiercely competitive with one another, but as the existence of feminism attests, this does not stop women at least trying to cooperate to face challenges, though, as feminism also shows, its own willful ignorance of human nature means feminists cannot agree on anything for long. This explains the many tribes within feminism, and the fiercely defended hierarchies that exist within feminism itself.
I do not deny that these revelations are tricky for feminists to negotiate, but that is no reason for not taking them on. That female intrasexual competition exists is not in doubt. The degree of it however will vary from culture to culture. We know dominance hierarchies exist in many species and all apes. Humans add to the mix competence hierarchies which allow for the utilisation of innate talents and the division of labour which has allowed our species to become far more than the sum of its biologically determined parts.
We also know females have a large role in the construction and maintenance of such hierarchies, for better and worse. Women are individuals and as such are often not united in their interests. An individual’s environment is crucial to how they calibrate their own needs. Yet, ironically, the collective structure of feminism, suppresses the evolutionary mechanism of individual female choice. The epithet “choice feminism” is regarded with contempt by most feminists today.
“If we do not know what we are capable of…then we do not know what to watch out for, which human propensities to encourage, and which to guard against.” Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
Further reading: Griet Vandermassen Sexual Selection: A Tale of Male Bias and Feminist Denial ; Griet Vandermassen: Who’s Afraid of Charles Darwin: Debating Feminism and Evolutionary Theory; Anne Campbell: A Mind of Her Own: The Evolutionary Psychology of Women ; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy: Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding ; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy: Mothernature ; Susan Pinker: The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap ; Christina Hoff Sommers: Who Stole Feminism? ; Cindy Metson & David Buss: Why Women Have Sex; Women reveal the truth about their sex lives, from adventure to revenge (and everything in between) ; E.O. Wilson: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge ; Jerome H.Barklow (ed): Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists
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We recognize that the evolution of peafowl, bees, seahorses, angler fishes and marsupial mice has resulted in males and females whose physiology and behavior development has influenced and responded to each other. Yet somehow, that female and male humans behave as they do as a result of the other is somehow unreasonable or even "sexist." Like creationist Xians, this is a denial of evolution and of humans as members of the animal kingdom.
It seems like the "god did it" dragon of "tHe PaTrIaRcHy," then, was conjured to fill the gap in the combination of denial of biological sex-based differences (directly responsible for the formulation of gender ideology; and itself a denial of evolution), and denial of intrasexual competition between women ("On Twitter, women are more misogynistic than men") in order to obscure female agency.
If "gender studies" had been based on science instead of Marxian psychosis and postmodern fantasy, it might well have been harder for the Queer Theorists to find a solid ideological foothold and enthusiastic collaborators.
Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which
Abstract
Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (N = 17,637). On responses to the Big Five Inventory, women reported higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than did men across most nations. These findings converge with previous studies in which different Big Five measures and more limited samples of nations were used. Overall, higher levels of human development--including long and healthy life, equal access to knowledge and education, and economic wealth--were the main nation-level predictors of larger sex differences in personality. Changes in men's personality traits appeared to be the primary cause of sex difference variation across cultures. It is proposed that heightened levels of sexual dimorphism result from personality traits of men and women being less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in developed nations. In less fortunate social and economic conditions, innate personality differences between men and women may be attenuated.
Using data from over 200,000 participants from 53 nations, I examined the cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: ext
Abstract
Using data from over 200,000 participants from 53 nations, I examined the cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and male-versus-female-typical occupational preferences. Across nations, men and women differed significantly on all four traits (mean ds = -.15, -.56, -.41, and 1.40, respectively, with negative values indicating women scoring higher). The strongest evidence for sex differences in SDs was for extraversion (women more variable) and for agreeableness (men more variable). United Nations indices of gender equality and economic development were associated with larger sex differences in agreeableness, but not with sex differences in other traits. Gender equality and economic development were negatively associated with mean national levels of neuroticism, suggesting that economic stress was associated with higher neuroticism. Regression analyses explored the power of sex, gender equality, and their interaction to predict men's and women's 106 national trait means for each of the four traits. Only sex predicted means for all four traits, and sex predicted trait means much more strongly than did gender equality or the interaction between sex and gender equality. These results suggest that biological factors may contribute to sex differences in personality and that culture plays a negligible to small role in moderating sex differences in personality.
Men's and women's personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of development assume gender differences result p
Abstract
Men's and women's personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of development assume gender differences result primarily from perceived gender roles, gender socialization and sociostructural power differentials. As a consequence, social role theorists expect gender differences in personality to be smaller in cultures with more gender egalitarianism. Several large cross-cultural studies have generated sufficient data for evaluating these global personality predictions. Empirically, evidence suggests gender differences in most aspects of personality-Big Five traits, Dark Triad traits, self esteem, subjective well-being, depression and values-are conspicuously larger in cultures with more egalitarian gender roles, gender socialization and sociopolitical gender equity. Similar patterns are evident when examining objectively measured attributes such as tested cognitive abilities and physical traits such as height and blood pressure. Social role theory appears inadequate for explaining some of the observed cultural variations in men's and women's personalities. Evolutionary theories regarding ecologically-evoked gender differences are described that may prove more useful in explaining global variation in human personality.
In the world of Blank Slatism, men and women are regarded as essentially interchangeable. Their desires, preferences, ambitions, and differences are only artificially imposed through socialization and "oppression" (i.e. tEh pAtRiArChY). Women aren't actually more maternal because it makes sense evolutionarily, but because they've been tricked into it. The differences between men and women are given as prima facie proof of "oppression." Or, more specifically, the oppression by men of women. This necessarily means that the more egalitarian a society, the more "the same" men and women should be.
Except, the exact opposite is true. In reality, the more freedom, the more equality is available, the more opportunity for sex-based differences to significantly diverge and magnify. When subsistence pressures are alleviated, other diverging priorities and motivations such as personal fulfilment or upward mobility can be pursued instead. Sex-differences attenuate (narrow) in less egalitarian societies. And this is replicated again and again and again.
To people who recognize humans as a species of the animal kingdom and who don't deny evolution, this is obvious and uncontroversial.
However, to people who adhere to evolution- and biology-denying ideologies, such as PaTrIaRcHy Theory, this is inconvenient and blasphemous. More to the point, not only should they reevaluate these creationist beliefs, but perhaps it's time they questioned the bogus theology ideologies that fabricated the entire idea into existence in the first place, and why they let baseless assertions of faith take priority over the merest shred of rigor and integrity.
Why favorable conditions produce larger sex differences.
By: David C. Geary
Published: Dec 3, 2022
Many human sex differences are now acknowledged, but their origin and practical importance continue to be vigorously debated [1, 2]. The default assumption among many social scientists and much of the lay public seems to be that any differences are largely (or perhaps entirely) the result of social factors, such as stereotypes or gender role expectations for boys and men and girls and women [3]. For some, these beliefs are comforting because they provide a sense of control over matters that are important to them, and an expectation that with appropriate social policies and shifts in social mores, sex differences in culturally important outcomes (e.g., the numbers of women and men in computer science and engineering) will eventually disappear. One implication of this assumption is that sex differences that vary across time and place must per force be driven by social rather than biological factors.
However, the expression of many traits that facilitate reproductive competition for mates and drive mate choices have evolved to signal the underlying genetic and physical health of the individual, and thus their expression can vary across individuals, contexts, and time [4, 5]. For people, social factors, including formal laws (e.g., prohibition of polygynous marriages), informal social mores, and wealth and political developmental (e.g., broad legal rights) are also associated with variation in the magnitude of sex differences for multiple traits [6]. But while these social and contextual factors can both restrict or facilitate the expression of biologically based sex difference, they do not create them.
Biological Constraints
Darwin’s [7] sexual selection, that is, the social dynamics that emerge with intrasexual competition for mates and intersexual choice of mating partners, is the primary source of sex differences across species [for review see 8]. Sexual selection results in the evolution of traits that support competition and choice, and the evolutionary emergence of sex differences for these traits, as illustrated in Figure 1.
[ Figure 1: The male kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) from The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, Vol. II, by C. Darwin, 1871, London, John Murray, p. 255. Males compete by locking horns and pulling and pushing each other as a display of physical strength and stamina. Females are hornless. ]
These traits can be physical (e.g., body weight), ornamental (e.g., colorful plumage), behavioral (e.g., mating displays), or supported by brain and cognitive systems (e.g., bird song). The key result is trait exaggeration in one sex or the other. But this exaggeration can also create a vulnerability for the seemingly advantaged sex [4]. Larger, exaggerated traits consume more cellular energy (and result in more oxidative stress and other cell damaging processes) to build, maintain, and express, making them especially vulnerable to energy and nutritional short falls, as well as to other stressors [9]. By analogy, a poorly working furnace will result in a more rapid drop in ambient temperature in a 300-square-meter than a 100-square-meter house. Basically, the ability to fully express these traits depends on the overall condition of the individual, which is why they are called condition-dependent traits, and the condition of the individual will depend in part on social and ecological conditions.
The factors that sap the development and expression of these traits are well-captured by the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Figure 2), that is, infection, famine, and intense social competition. Exposure to these conditions, as well as some man-made toxins, compromise exaggerated traits more than other traits and therefore reduces the magnitude of any associated sex differences [5, 10, 11]. There are, of course, individual differences within each sex in sensitivity to these stressors, such that some individuals are compromised more strongly than others, but the overall results are smaller sex differences for the population and more variability in the affected trait across individuals.
[ Figure 2: Dürer’s 1498 woodcut, The Four Horsemen, From the Apocalypse. The first three horsemen represent plague (infectious disease), famine, and war (social competition), and sex differences in sensitivity to these stressors are common. The fourth horseman is death. ]
An example is provided by beak color in the male zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), which influences female mate choices. The color is a good indicator of the male’s current health and his ability to withstand stressors. Poor early nutrition [12] and intense social competition in adulthood [13] can result in larger decrements in males’ than females’ beak coloration that in turn signals poor health and compromised competitive ability. Similarly, exposure to certain toxins can have sex- and trait-specific effects. Bortolotti and colleagues [14] showed that exposure to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) resulted in duller plumage coloration (influences female mate choices) in male but not female kestrels (Falco sparverius), and Jašarević and colleagues [15] showed that prenatal exposure to BPA (bisphenol A) disrupted male but not female spatial abilities (supports males’ searching for mates) in the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus). In all these studies, typical sex differences were reduced or disappeared entirely with exposure to these stressors.
[ Figure 3: The red beak of the male zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) is an indicator of the quantity of carotenoids in the diet and the ability to efficiently process them. When exposed to stressors or pathogens carotenoids are diverted to the associated physiological reactions, resulting in a bleaching of beak color. Creative Commons License ]
Turning closer to home, we find similar patterns in people, as is nicely illustrated by changes in the sex difference in height with changes in overall health. Among primates, larger males than females indicates an evolutionary history of physical male-male competition. Our male ancestors were larger than our female ancestors going back at least four million years [16], indicating a long history of such competition.
By the logic above, variation in nutrition, disease risk, and social stressors represented by the Horsemen should result in variation in the magnitude of the sex differences in physical size, such as height. More precisely, height differences between the sexes should have increased over time as developed nations kept the Horsemen at bay with improvements in public health (among other factors) and be larger today in developed than in developing nations. Indeed, from 1900 to 1958, the sex difference in height increased 36 percent in Great Britain [17]: In 1900, the average British man was 11 cm taller than the average woman, but this increased to 15 cm by 1958. For young adults in nutritionally stressed regions of Nigeria, men are 7.5 cm shorter than their better-nourished peers, whereas women are 3.2 cm shorter [18]. The result is a sex difference in height that is 38 percent smaller than it would be if these adults had received better nutritional and medical care during childhood and adolescence.
Although much remains to be learned, there is evidence for similar sex-specific vulnerabilities in cognitive and behavioral traits. For instance, male-male competition is associated with more rough-and-tumble play (play fighting) for males than females during development across species [19]. In keeping with a long evolutionary history of male-male competition, boys engage in rough-and-tumble play more frequently, with more vigor, and with greater zest than do girls. The highest rates occur in groups of unsupervised children and in safe contexts, where boys engage in various forms of playful physical assaults and wrestling 3 to 6 times more frequently than do same-age girls [20].
Barrett and colleagues [21, 22] demonstrated that chronic malnourishment through the prenatal and early preschool years undermined the rough-and-tumble and dominance-related play of boys more than girls. Overall, the most active and socially potent children were well-nourished boys and the least potent were malnourished boys, with girls somewhere in between the boys’ groups independent of the girls’ nutritional status.
It’s not just boys and men who are vulnerable to the Horsemen. Girls and women have advantages in folk psychology (sometimes called emotional intelligence), that is, in language, reading facial expressions and body language, and in making inferences about the thoughts and feelings of others (called theory of mind) [23, 24]. I’ve suggested that these advantages have evolved due to female-female competition through relational aggression (i.e., disrupting the reputation and social networks of competitors) and the benefits of forming and maintaining intense friendships that provide critical social and emotional support in adulthood [25].
The nutritional deficits associated with anorexia nervosa severely undermine these social competencies in women and more so than it does for men with similar nutritional deficits [26, 27, 28]. Moreover, these women’s social competencies improve if they recover normal weight. As with men’s height, women’s verbal memory, an aspect of their language and social competencies, improves more rapidity than that of men, resulting in a larger sex difference, as populations become healthier and wealthier [24].
The punch line is that favorable conditions, those that reduce risk of disease and poor nutrition and that keep social stressors in check, will result in larger sex differences in evolved traits. Ironically, these conditions are most common in wealthy, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) nations [29]—those that promote gender equality. The irony follows from the belief that the promotion of gender equality and overall favorable conditions will reduce and eventually eliminate sex differences [30], but it does the exact opposite.
Social Constraints and Opportunities
The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not the only factors that can influence the development and expression of sex differences. In many species, the pattern of sex differences, such as the intensity of male-male competition and the rigor of female choice, can vary with here-and-now social conditions, such as the number of competitors and prospective mates in the local community [31].
Social influences are even more important for people. Formal laws and informal social mores create constraints and opportunities that can substantively influence the expression of evolved biases. The imposition of legally imposed monogamy in WEIRD nations, for instance, reduces the intensity of male-male competition, resulting in less violence and crime, and intensifies female-female competition for high-status mates [25, 32]. These nations also create more social and economic niches and afford greater room for the expression of individual preferences and the expression of many sex differences.
As reviewed by Schmitt and colleagues [33], sex differences in many aspects of personality, self-esteem, and cognitive and psychological functioning are larger in WEIRD, gender equal countries. For instance, women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men and men are more Machiavellian than women, on average. These differences are larger in more egalitarian countries. One potential reason is that religious prohibitions and proscriptions increase social cooperation and decrease self-serving behaviors in men and this in turn reduces the sex differences in these areas. The release of these prohibitions enables fuller expression of underlying differences; in this case, a decrease in men’s agreeableness and an increase in their use of Machiavellian social strategies [34].
Occupational segregation also increases in WEIRD, gender equal countries, presumably due to underlying differences in preferences for working with and helping people as contrasted with working with things [35]. Girls’ and women’s greater interest in other people and relationships follows from their greater investment in children and their need to develop BFF (best friends forever) relationships that serve as a source of social and emotional support. Boys’ and men’s greater interest in things likely follows from an evolutionary history of tool making, most of which is done by men.
Stoet and I found there were proportionally (relative to the number of women and men in college) fewer women than men studying and working in non-organic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, such as computer science, in gender-equal Norway and Finland than in Algeria [36]. In fact, the pattern was found throughout the world, whereby wealth and gender equality were associated with proportionally fewer women entering these fields. Women in less wealthy and less gender equal countries appear to pursue these types of degrees for economic reasons. As economic niches widen and countries become wealthier and more liberal, women (and men) pursue careers that are better aligned with their interests.
In a follow-up study, we examined the occupational aspirations of nearly half a million adolescents across the 80 developing and developed nations that participated in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of academic competencies [37]. In this assessment, students were asked, “What kind of job do you expect to have when you are about 30 years old?”, which we termed occupational aspirations. As shown in Figure 4, there was not a single country in which girls were as interested in non-organic STEM fields (e.g., engineering) or blue-collar things-oriented occupations (e.g., carpenter) as were boys, and not a single country in which boys were as interested in people-oriented occupations (e.g., teacher) as were girls. There was nonetheless considerable cross-national variation in the magnitude of these differences.
Across countries (median), there were about 4 boys for every girl aspiring to a things-oriented occupation, and about 3 girls for every boy aspiring to a people-oriented occupation. In keeping with our earlier finding for STEM degrees, for every girl who aspired to enter a things-oriented STEM occupation, there were 5 boys. Again, the ratio was larger in gender-equal countries. In Morocco and the United Arabic Emirates, respectively, there were 1.5 and 1.7 boys for every girl aspiring to a things-oriented STEM occupation, as compared to 4.5 and 4.8 boys to every girl in gender-equal Sweden and Norway. These patterns mirror those found one hundred years earlier [38].
[ Figure 4: Percentage girls and boys aspiring to work in people-oriented occupations (panel A, red), things-oriented occupations (panel A, green) and STEM occupations (panel B, blue). Note that in all countries, more girls than boys aspire to a people-oriented occupation, hence all (red) points are below the line of equality (45˚); similarly, in all countries, more boys than girls aspire to a things-oriented or STEM occupation, hence all green and blue points are above the lines of equality. Creative Commons License ]
These differences were larger in adolescents from blue-collar backgrounds. Many girls from higher-income families aspired to white-collar occupations that were neither clearly things- or people-oriented (e.g., accountant, manager) or were higher-level people-oriented occupations (e.g., physician). The latter findings are consistent with changes in women’s occupational choices from 1972 to 2010 in the U.S., where there was an increase in women working in professional occupations but there was not a shift to more engagement with male-typical blue-collar or white-collar things-oriented occupations [39].
In other words, there are stable sex differences across time and place in many occupational aspirations and choices that likely result from deeper differences in interests in people and relationships as contrasted with an interest in working with things. In WEIRD countries there has also been secular changes that improved women’s educational and occupational opportunities. These improvements, however, are concurrently associated with larger sex differences in aspirations for and segregation into things-oriented and people-oriented occupations. As noted, these amplified sex differences are not restricted to occupations, and emerge in many social, behavioral, and cognitive traits.
Conclusion
The critical point here is that change in the magnitude of sex differences across time and place are part and parcel of the expression of evolved biases, and not necessarily evidence that these traits are largely or solely caused by social and cultural factors. To be sure, social (e.g., prohibition of polygynous marriages) and cultural (e.g., overall wealth, personal liberties) factors can and do have substantive influences on human behavior and well-being. These social and cultural factors can modify the expression of sex differences, but they do not create them de novo.
We have to stop seeing disparate outcomes as inherently unfair. It assumes the same capability, priorities, desires and values. Such as that pay, rather than lifestyle or fulfilment or something else are the measure of success for everyone.
The most equitable societies are the ones with the least opportunities. When everyone works in the rice field for 12 hours a day, everyone gets the same result.
Reminder: James Damore was fired from Google for simply stating these unremarkable facts.
