"Men and women are just different and have different skills and talents"

[reddaisy]

I have heard so many variations on that comment that I really need to properly articulate my objections.

My belief is that gender differences are often as a result of learnt behaviour and most of us are all complicit even if it just means buying a 'little monster' t-shirt for a boy.

Following on from the boat race thread where it was argued that for true equality, men and women should compete against each other, it is clear that there are biological differences between the sexes which impact on their performances.

I keep reading conflicting scientific reports on the differences between men and women's brain and what, if anything, that actually means about different skills/intelligence etc.

So, can we talk about this and explore the perceived innate differences between men and women?

So could it then be that men aren't empathetic because they aren't motivated to be so - such that when provided with (financial) motivation that suddenly changes?

That's what I think. There are likely to be exceptions but I think this is generally the case and it gives me the rage.

There's also something interesting hovering at the edges of my brain to do with subordinate groups switching off empathy, and the difference between empathy and sympathy.

This kind of links to something I remember about increased rates of violence amongst minority groups. I think when you're put in a subordinate position and treated badly you either react by "blaming" upwards, downwards or inwards.

Some people place the blame upwards towards e.g. David Cameron and so switch off empathy towards him because he's had an easier, more privileged life than most people so it's hard to acknowledge his difficulties because of his clear advantages.

Many people turn the blame inwards, in fact women as a group are socialised to do so - so they look for what's wrong with themselves to cause them to be in a situation rather than looking for the true external cause. They are capable for expressing empathy with people/women in similar situations because then they can see the inequality, but they can't extend it to themselves.

Others will blame downwards - either because they know they haven't got power to blame upwards or because they see a situation as a fight for resources so they're trying to establish a subordinate hierarchy that places them at the top. There may also be a desire to distance themselves from other subordinate groups in an attempt to associate themselves with more powerful groups which then turns off empathy. Men, who are socialised to believe in their "right to rule" may also try to gain this power in the home environment when they're denied it elsewhere.

See, this is all interesting because I've definitely read something which says that the more advantage a person has in society, the less empathy that they have. That richer people actually lose empathy compared to if they've come from a disadvantaged background. The people who are more empathetic have less power to actually make effective changes but the people with power lose empathy.

Shame I have no idea what it was though or where I read it.

Really interesting thread.

I thought that empathy is where you can imagine what it's like to be in another person's shoes as in BE that person, rather than imagine YOURSELF in that situation. Not many people do the former, but are all too ready to do the latter (and give reasons why they would never find themselves in that situation).

Ok I've read this entire thread, which hardly ever happens (I may have glossed over a bit when it started talking about horses)! Its very, very interesting. A lot of the female = higher empathy stuff in Psychology comes from self report data, specifically using Baron-Cohens EQ measure which I have problems with (too many to go into detail here). A good argument against comes from Cordelia Fine in the experiment mentioned above where if men where given financial reward for recognising emotion in pictures of peoples faces the differences in success between men & women disappeared. This I think comes from the behavioural expectation that men are not supposed to be able to recognise emotion (cognitive empathy), and therefore do not admit to it ... not that they are unable to.

There is some neuropsychological data to suggest differences in response within the brain as a result of observing an 'unfair' situation or one designed to provoke an empathetic response. However - I believe that the error is in assuming that a neurological difference in adult brain responses indicates an innate difference which somehow justifies the status quo and every gender stereotype out there (including the horses!). There are very few neurological differences in male & female brains at birth, these differences occur due to the external social influences (among others) i.e. how we raise our children and in fact, external social pressures may induce biological change which results in a difference in male/female neural response in empathy.

I think my point is, in response to the OP, that men & women are not that different and any behavioural differences are strongly socialised.

Late to the party but....

I donate time to a fair trade organisation that spends its time patting itself on the back quite a lot. But there is no recognition of the inequality we find even in fair trade. I try to ensure that the money cascades down to all workers on farm and plantations but a lot of the time the part time picking work done primarily by women is still massively underpaid even in fair trade. And we have issues with the lack of female run farms, I know third world so we are bound to run into issues but even organisations that are supposed to be about fairness has cultural blinkers.

In terms of the differences as we grow up I like to think that all my kids have been brought up the same with the same values and freedoms. And they are all completely different in attitude and behaviour. The socialisation that they had was different through the friends they had and the different interaction with adults as my 2 oldest are by my XH and they spent time with his new family. On the up side of that though DD was exposed to astronomy at a very young age with XH so that is where her love of science comes from wanting to please daddy (I tease her on that a lot).

Sausage, until there is equality, you can never be considered late to this party

That is interesting about the fair trade organisation - there are issues even in companies trying to do something ethical.

daisy part is the organisation just not digging into issues and a lot is the whole structure in third world countries. When the wages for people under fair trade can be two or three times higher than similar work people will accept whatever they are given. I can't emphasise because I do not have any experiences that can possible relate and I am wary of sympathy becoming nothing more than pity.

I studied psychology because of that need to understand people, as a protective mechanism. It had the added benefit of fitting with my role as a woman -women like understanding people, don't they? Well you know what, I actually like business, and wheeling and dealing (which is part of what I do now) and now that I've reduced my perceived threat level (by dealing with the abuse) my actual (non-feminine) traits are coming out.

Sort of at a tangent, I was in a work session this week on mentoring - it was saying that women are often mentored on thing like how to build a team, how to persuade people, how to resolve conflict, etc, etc - how to do all the people stiff. But men are more likely to get mentored on the actual business stuff, looking at the financials, and shareholder value and all that sort of stuff; when they're looking at who to promote, that's the stuff that really counts, whereas all the people stuff is added extras, nice-to-haves, but not essential in the same away that making and saving money is.

(We watched this TED talk, if anyone's interested in where I got it from. )