Boys are innovators. Girls are compliant. Views?

no he isn't and your position isn't the same as his, it is the same as OPs.

Which is that the reason girls didn't get to be inventors, discover things, have adventures as women is that GENDER STEREOTYPES and societal expectations that they adhere to those gender stereotypes prevented them from having the education to do that.

OP, tell him about people like Caroline Herschel who was her brother, William's housekeeper when they came to live in the UK and he was the king's astronomer. She did what her brother did (and took care of the household) in that she observed the heavens with him, and then she wrote down all their obvservations (his too, because ... men don't do "secretarial" work)

It is posited as pretty much the truth that she discovered several comets and Uranus. Even though her brother is credited with that.

And make sure that you make your boys learn how to do all the stereotypical girl stuff of housework etc.

Do you love this man? Because he sounds like a misogynistic cunt.

Add Rosalind Franklin, Hedy Lamarr, and all the women whose ideas were stolen from them or history ignored.

I work in a Stem field - plenty of very mediocre men who don't do their jobs very well, despite relying on the labour of women to keep their homes comfortable and look after their children.

I have two girls. Eldest I would say is more compliant and was easier because of that. The second one isn’t and challenges everything- wants to do everything herself or be involved always. As a person I’m probably compliant but will challenge and am the person in the house more likely to get on with things.

same parents.

The need of labels or putting children into boxes are the issue. Let them develop and just be. Pink isn’t a weakness as my glitter loving daughter who is in the top of science and maths - and gutted computer teacher when she didn’t select it for GCSE options as she was one of the ones to get python.

Women have invented and innovated a hell of a lot more than they have been given the credit for, that's for sure. Relegated to the status of irrelevant assistants to brilliant men or simply forgotten by history.

Given the insane restrictions on educational opportunities for girls and women throughout the majority of history, and the lack of time and opportunities that come with a life of mandatory domestic labour, I'd say the achievements of women as a class are remarkable.

Your husband is a fucking idiot. I suppose he thinks he's one of those male geniuses at the end of the bell curve does he?

That's a criticism of ideology and the institution of which she was a part. I recognise she was and is controversial, but it's a basic fact that she was a woman and achieved a vast amount over a lifetime of commitment.

That does not suggest a submissive / compliant personality to me.

Do you agree my wider point though? Innovation and determination are not sex based qualities.

Wow, your DH sounds irritating to say the least.

He should read The Confidence Code just to see what a struggle it is to be a confident “disruptive” woman. We constantly have to “behave” according to social expectations and stereotypes. The more men there are in a room, the less likely a woman is to put up her hand to say anything. We are stunted literally by their presence and general over confidence in their own abilities which diminishes ours unless we work at it.

Men’s brilliance and obsessions has to date been facilitated by the patriarchy meaning women had to stay at home and raise children or care for others. University and career progression wasn’t on offer to them until relatively recently.

Even now we still pick up most of the chores, child-raising etc.

How do you find time to become a disruptor with all of that going on?

Obsessive behaviour often associates with ND whIch is 50% inherited.

He speaks in a patriarchal tongue. Your boys simply have testosterone running around them. That’s all. That’s the behaviour.

That's why women have wrists, so they can flap their hands.

@jannier perhaps I should rephrase to say that sex-based variability in IQ/intelligence is a hypothesis rather than a proven theory, which has many examples of research that shows this greater variability as well as some criticism and controversy.

The issue with this idea is that variability is specifically about the outliers, at both ends of a bell curve. The idea is often used to justify sexist/misogynist ideas about all men/women or about the average/typical man/woman, which just is nonsense.

Your husband's wrong. Girls are socialised to be compliant and even as a parent if you treat a girl and a boy the same, the girl is being fed constant subliminal messaging through the choice in toys they're given (dolls, toy vaccuum cleaners, sparkly, pink things to make them look pretty and appealing...), plus the way they're treated by teachers, seeing adverts on TV depicting women in caring, household roles, etc. Men like your husband hype the male ego up at a young age and give boys easy access to inventor type roles, whereas girls don't get the same emphasis/support and grow up having to work harder to prove that they can do the same things. Often careers are over before they can even really begin because women fall pregnant and end up being stuck at home in a caring role for 18+ years.

There's more social stigma if girls grow up pushing boundaries and after a while it becomes so uncomfortable that I think a lot of females just stick to the status quo. Look at the stick women are currently getting for supposedly being single 'crazy cat ladies' - we get ostracised for not fitting into the idealised social norm. Thankfully it's mostly just verbal for those of us in westernised society and we don't get burnt on the stake anymore, but I do think that historical trauma like that is ingrained in all of us.

And you married him.

Numerous inventions by women were not allowed to be invented by women so a male got the credit instead. Esther Lederberg,Jocelyn Bell, Rosalind Franklin, lise Meitner had their nobel prize winning work claimed by their male compatriots. Ada lovelace is only finally getting recognition for her work to create the first computer program, Katherine Johnson only now more recognised thanks to hidden figures.

Men have made innovations sure, but their path is often historically smoother and their words accepted more than the women who dared to step out and reject the shackles of society.

Also. Girls academically wipe out boys on average from primary school to university results.

How was mother Theresa non - compliant? She was probably the most compliant, complicit, complacent fundamentalist Catholic cult figure in recent memory. She complied with the teaching of the patriarchal church.

When your boys were toddlers, was he the type of parent who smiles as their child hits another child at soft play and says "Ahh yes, it's why men are better at sports. They practise using their muscles more." It just sounds as if he likes turning any negative behaviour of his kids into something to boast about.

Can you provide the research behind this? I'm not aware of anything showing this.

Lots of research has been done looking at how adults treat children according to the perceived gender not ability....the one where the babies were dressed as boys then girls and introduced to the same group of adults to play....babies perceived to be male were rolled about, brick building etc then as presented as females cuddled and sang too ....

No. This is not true.

Non compliant woman include (without limitation):

Madame Currie
Amelia Earhart
Margaret Thatcher (love her or loathe her, she broke the glass ceiling and remade Britain)
Rosa Parks
The Pankhurst sisters
Madonna
Mother Theresa
Catherine the Great

All woman that history will remember as change makers in their fields.

There are numerous other histories including the woman in NASA, at Bletchley Park etc, where we would have been buggered but for the innovative of women.

So I think it is sexist to say that innovation and compliance are sex based qualities. It's a version of the old trope that men are rational but women are hysterical.

Nothing at all to do with differences in education and opportunities then....girls taught piano and sewing how to be in charge of a household and boys sent off to boarding schools for proper education not finishing school to learn how to be a lady.....your not going to learn the principals of engineering doing a sampler. The few who did break out had enlightened fathers who educated their daughters and encouraged them at a time when women were fighting for the vote.

Does dad do housework and cooking?

This! And I say it as an outlier female.

Stereotypes, whether cultural or biological, exist for a reason. But they shouldn't confine individuals, or limit reasonable expectations of behaviour.

Slightly more boys are born because they're more likely to get killed off doing something stupid.

There's also a tendency to devalue women when saying that they do certain things better than boys - as if female dispositions aren't important.

Unfortunately, it seems that you are married to a misogynist.

The real question is, what are you going to do about it and how are you going to ensure that your two sons don't internalise their dad's sexist beliefs?

You only have to look at the road safety statistics to see that men are less compliant with rules than women on average. But tell that to Katie Price.

We'll never know for sure whether differences on average between the behaviour and achievements of the sexes are due 100% to socialisation or to what extent biology plays a part. Because we can't raise a representative sized population of babies in a gender-free lab.

But that should make no impact on how we treat individuals. There's far more variation between individual men and between individual women than there is between the average man and the average woman.

Don't fight him on nature vs nurture because you'll never win. But never let him get away with a blanket "men"/"women"/"boys"/"girls". Clock in every single time with "on average". And let him know every time he's verging on Andrew Tate territory.

@WhoTheFriggIsAlice no, that’s not mainstream. I was the child that took stuff apart. I have nieces and nephews who’d fit that description.

You husband is a sexist arsehole.

A woman wrote the first computer programme, by the way.

I took two ten-year-olds to an event about engineering for kids. One boy one girl.

At the hands-on activity the boy set-to immediately picking apart components left by previous participants and building something that looked cool. The girl looked at the instructions of the challenge, took time to think about the problem that needed to be solved and built something that solved it. Much less flashily than the boy's creation but it got the job done. She was the better engineer.

These are just two individuals. There will be many boys who behave differently from that particular boy and many girls who behave differently from that particular girl. Generalising about these kinds of traits is sexism. Brains develop in the direction that they are trained to develop and ongoing sexism like your husband's will perpetuate sexism into the minds of the next generation too.

Is that a joke? How can you be married to someone with that ridiculous attitude? It's all society and culture that affects gender role and expectations, it's nothing to with biology. You really need to be very concerned about his views passing on to your sons.