A scientific study just published in the "American Psychologist" provides serious reasons to doubt the assumption that there are many innate differences between the sexes.
by Oliver James
Our three-year-old daughter often refuses to wear anything that isn't pink, and she takes care of soft toys like a mother; And although our eight-month-old son does not show a preference for the color blue or a tendency to watch football with me on TV - it is surely only a matter of time.
Still, a scientific study just published in the "American Psychologist" provides serious reasons to doubt the assumption that there are many innate differences between the sexes. Janet Shively Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison showed that in most cases the psychological differences were small or non-existent. It turns out that there is no difference between the achievements of boys and girls in mathematics. According to the popular opinion, during adolescence there is a sharp drop in self-esteem in girls; It turns out that this is what happens to boys too. In most respects, both sexes communicate in the same way - forget all the talk about the male tendency to get into other people's words or to underestimate self-exposure relative to women.
Only a handful of the all-encompassing wonder answers of evolutionary psychology survive Shively Hyde's scrutiny. It is true that women have less physical strength; They do not masturbate as often as men and are less willing to have casual sex; They rarely attack physically. However, the research as a whole shows that to a very large extent - as far as gender differences are concerned - we begin our journey as a smooth plane. And it provides one of the strongest scientific foundations ever provided for the leadership of gender-equal social policy. But, really, how could we ever doubt it?
One reason for doubt was our children. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't stop little Jimmy from playing with toy guns, while little Jemima showed no interest in them. It seems so convincing (genes have appeal even when we want to explain the less sympathetic characteristics of our germs).
A second reason is that evolutionary psychology arose from the ashes of the social sciences, while the market economy removes all the obstacles that stood in its way. Books such as "The Selfish Garden" by Richard Dawkins gained wide circulation, and bookers of scientific documentaries, especially Sarah Ramsden from Channel 4, jumped on this train. They were followed by the BBC, which chose to hang on to Robert Winston, a fertility expert with no psychological qualifications and friendly to the whole family.
One of the accepted methods was to show that there are differences between electrochemical patterns in the bodies of women and men, or that different parts of the brain have different sizes. The fact that this could have been due to differences in education rather than the Y chromosome was rarely considered. However, it is clear that the way of growing has a profound effect on biology. Some studies show that the hippocampus area in the brains of women who have experienced sexual abuse in childhood is 5% smaller than in women who have not experienced such trauma. Similar evidence exists regarding brain waves and hormones.
A study conducted in 37 countries and which showed that the more a country encourages women's economic independence, the less they are attracted to rich men - received little coverage. So is the finding that while in the Anglo-Saxon world (which has undergone Americanization) women's risk of suffering from depression is twice as high as men's - this difference has disappeared in many parts of Scandinavia that implements gender equality.
Praise God, the rampant genetic determinism of the 80s and 90s—which also found justification for the position of the rich and the poor (reclassified as the underclass)—is finally beginning to fade. In Shively Hyde's research we find powerful evidence of what many may have been thinking for some time.
The author wrote the book "They F*** You Up - How to Survive Family Life"
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The whole thing sounds a little strange to me. In many animals there are noticeable differences between male and female, both in appearance and behavior. I would also expect great variation in humans.
A man can be the father of hundreds and thousands of children. A woman can be a mother to single children. It's hard for me to imagine that it wouldn't result in a huge difference between the sexes. I am convinced that the competitiveness between men, and also the violence, are direct results of these differences.
Beyond that, culture also influences, and not only after birth. Strong men used to know how to protect their family, and there is no reason why strength cannot be inherited.
Here is a hypothesis: in European Jewry, wise men could raise more children than less wise men, therefore the Jews are wiser. With the Christians, capital was inherited by feudal lords who did not have to work, so intelligence has no advantage....
But it's no longer about genes...
"A study conducted in 37 countries and which showed that the more a country encourages women's economic independence, the less they are attracted to rich men - received little coverage. "