Is there a deeper picture that we are afraid to talk about?

[speakout]

I have deep feminist views.But trying to understand the taboo surrounding sex differences.
I have been mulling over this issue in the past few weeks. My 17 yo DD is going through University application atm, hoping to do child nursing, but considering adult nursing too. So in the past month she has been attending interviews at different Universities for her courses. Often all day events, lots of group stuff, role play etc, usually involving 60 or so potential students at a time.
So in the past month over 4 Universities and meeting 200 fellow potential students she has met 4 males.
In her last interview for child nursing ( just been offered a place :)) there were zero males in a bunch of 70 potential students.
Can someone please help me understand this.

Ask a 13/14/15 year old gender-typical boy if they'd considered nursing as a career. They scoff. Ask a girl, or maybe a very non gender typical boy and they say, yes, maybe.

Skimmed this. I can recommend last septembers issue of scientific American. If I remember correctly it showed that it is not possible to tell if someone if male or female from their brain.

It is possible that people who feel that they physiologically match their birth sex, e.g. By the way they want to behave around their children could mistakenly think that is gender normal because of the socialisation. Because it is much easier to be a sham than dad, we don't notice the men who might be happier in that role?

I have a very gender typical teenage boy who wants to be a primary school teacher. People run coach trips to look at him

I do think that women are different from men, in so far as they do menstruate, have babies, can breastfeed and so on, but this does not mean they are the only sex who can care or nurture. There should be provisions in society for mothers to care for their children and not be discriminated against. I think on balance, things like maternity leave, childcare provision, part-time and flexible working, protection against discrimination help with that. (The GP example is a prime example of why there are more women, it is a locally-based, community form of medicine which is manageable in part-time and flexible roles within a team; hospital consultants will mostly be men on the other hand because of the years of studying and long hours required).

I don’t think women should be expected to do both full-time work and all the childcare (the double burden). If a woman is on unpaid maternity pay, she cannot be expected to pay half the bills in the name of equality. If a woman is working, she cannot be expected to do all the housework or childcare. Women often lose out because equality is seen as working outside the home, bringing in money. I think it is fine to be the main carer (I am), but it is not fine to be discriminated against because of it (which is what happens). And the vast majority of people in caring roles are women.

Sorry, should add that the same provisions should be available to men - but men don’t need physical time off to recover from birth or to breastfeed.

yes, teaching is generally held in more respect than nursing ive found. My teenage ds and lots of his friends want to be teachers at the moment too as they look up to their mostly male teachers. Ive never heard any of them consider nursing, plenty are thinking about medicine.

I've read T Rex, its excellent and really nails the myth of the blue and pink brain. I was always pretty 50/50 on nature/nurture but I think that book showed that its far, far more to do with socialisation and gender expectation, from before a baby is born. The natural differences between 2 women or 2 men can be far more extensive than that between an average man and woman. I think its got worse in recent years too with all the ridiculous pinkification of baby girls, which is why women in STEM are actually falling from when I was doing it.

I think there's also a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to 'innate sex differences'

I have two kids, there's a Grand Canyon of difference between their interests and personalities, including how empathetic, thoughtful, and caring they are - but they're both boys. Their cousins the same.

I also think that night waking is based on responsibility not innate difference - when DP knows I'm not there to do stuff for the kids, or if I'm ill, he wakes up just fine.

My DS (13) and his friends (4 girls 3 boys ina group) are highly aware of sexism. Ds was disgusted that he couldn’t opt out of football whereas girls can at his school. He does 5 hours dance a week. I don’t want to say he’s gender typical because I don’t know. But he never liked cars or balls or fighting or superheroes but he’s really into tech. He would not be a nurse as he is squeamish.

grass I think your point is a very interesting one- about the investment in each child that is required by the two sexes and why that might be a contributing factor.

I’m a woman. My partner is a man. I hated being at home with my kids when they were babies, i found it excruciatingly boring. I love my kids but I love my work. I’m lucky that I do an interesting job. DH changed his job so he could sometimes do the school run and be more help to me, so I could pursue my career but also because he didn’t want to miss out on the experience of being a parent. As a result, we are perhaps a rare example of a more or less 50/50 split, though it’s true that I do much of the emotional labour and he takes the bins out. They were both breastfed till one year old but after that he got up more than I did in the night and early mornings because he finds it less difficult to go without sleep.

All of this personal information proves nothing about our innate or learned gender roles other than that it is perfectly possible to organise parenting in a manner that is much more egalitarian. We are happy. He likes ironing, I hate it. I like talking to the kids about emotional stuff he hates it. We both cook. We both wash up. We both take the kids to activities, etc etc

I admire anyone who treats their kids well and enjoys family life but it is a nonsense to suggest there is a magic quality that females have as parents.

I guess it’s a bit like a tree. We all start on the same trunk but at some point get diverted down different branches by society or resources available to us and our choices become more and more limited. You can see the other branches but it gets harder to reach them.
But saying that you can look at how different cultures develop in different countries - this is a clear example of how environment and society shape us- yet in all, bloody all of them, men are dominant.

Bertrand- quality shmality. After leaving religion I will never again allow a philosophy to tell ME how to think. If need be I will set up my own brand of feminism where the aim is for women to be in charge for a change!

DH changed his job so he could sometimes do the school run and be more help to me

Read that back. Be more help to you or take a more active role in parenting and running a household? Women really need to start taking notice of the language we use, especially around children. When my boys ask if I need help with anything my reply is usually no but the dishes need doing/washing needs put away etc. I make it clear every time, they're not 'helping me', they're just doing stuff that needs doing.

"Women really need to start taking notice of the language we use, especially around children"
Absolutely. When dp and I agreed tgat I would be a SAH parent we talked about how we would make sure our children saw us as contributing equally to our family. We watched our language like hawks!

Animal daze Bertrand read it back again - be more help to me IN MY CAREER!

FYI just listening to conversation downstairs when I got out of shower
DH “is it week two this week?” Sound of stuffing PE kit in to bag.
This is not because it’s mother’s day. I have never had to deal with school uniform or PE kit EVER. he does all school washing, ironing, hanging up, organising PE kit, though I usually buy it because I get the CB

Maybe I should add for clarity, what I’m saying is that DH does assume that he is as much a parent as I am and always has done. I don’t need to ask him to do this, he just takes responsibility.

Also my career is one that it is necessary to be completely dedicated, otherwise I’d get nowhere. He has been like the wife at home. I couldn’t have had the success I’ve had without him. So glad I didn’t end up with one of those DH you hear about on AIBU.

Interesting that on the one hand we have
Female behaviour is innate because of biology.

And on the other hand you have female behaviour is learned because of socialisation...

Then from left field we have "gender is innate because of ladybrain"
Men who identify as trans are not seen leaving well paid jobs to look after children. In fact men who "come out as trans" after being the father figure for many years usually leave their family behond to go chase their dream with a take-no-prisoners attitude and are not "caring" at all.

Believing gender behaviour to be innate is a worrying road to take because it allows people to adapt that to mean "I have an innate gender different to my observable sex"...

The only thing you can prove is that men and women have physiological observable differences. Behaviours sort of wrap around these but are shaped by these physiological basics.

"Women really need to start taking notice of the language we use, especially around children"

Yep

Dh will say 'do you want me to hoover for you'

I kept pulling him up on it (which i feel guilty about as he is such a hands on husband and father...did all the wakings, cleans the bathrooms etc) and now he has stopped doing it

Maybe I should add for clarity, what I’m saying is that DH does assume that he is as much a parent as I am and always has done. I don’t need to ask him to do this, he just takes responsibility.

Yes but that should just be the default, it's not particularly praise worthy. A better way of wording it could be 'i was able to pursue my career ambitions because my partner fulfilled his responsibilities as a parent/member of the household', or something along those lines.

Animal daze respectfully, please don’t police my words. Also, I’m not making the point that it’s “worthy” but in the context of the OP that somehow females are magical parents. I don’t think that’s true. I think the OPs DH might assume parenting is her role and opt out but that’s another conversation. The point I’m making is that it’s not ‘natural’ for the female half of a het partnership to long to be with her kids and take on all the nurturing. And that she bases her ideas on anecdotes from her life.

I basedmy post on anecdotes from my life to show that the opposite point can be made. Do you see?

I'm not policing your words, you're obviously free to say whatever you want, I just don't think it's helpful to women to describe men doing their fair share as helping. We all know the vast majority of men who do muck in do actually think they're helping their partners, however it's off track a bit from what OP posted. I already said i think the reason OP's DD didn't see any male entrants on the courses she's interested in is because caring roles are traditionally carried out by females and therefore lower paid.

And your argument about doctors does not hold water. 52% of registered GPs in the UK are female.

As a PP said, on the grand scheme of graduate medicine, a GP is the entry level job for someone with a medicine degree.
Within most professions, the figures tend to reflect female dominance in the entry level of the field, with male dominance once the large salaries requiring additional qualifications are taken into account.

GPs are pretty evenly split, 52/48%
For consultant registrars, the female rate drops to 32%
And once you get up into the specialist roles, 89.9% of surgeons are male.

Similarly, in the legal profession:

89.9% of paralegals are female, the job is seen largely as a cop out or failure for a male.
61.5% of Solicitors are female
But a massive 82% of judges are male.

The percentages are shifting gradually, but I can't see it ever being balanced anywhere near evenly. Whether this is down to discrimination, career progression stalling due to family commitments, or simply women just not wanting those jobs, I don't know.

Animal daze ok for the last time, DH is helping me with my CAREER, not with the childcare. I think the misunderstanding is yours. Many women let their own careers suffer because of childcare while their partner’s career surges ahead because they just do a bit of ‘helping’ with the kids.

My DH CHANGED HIS JOB read my first post again! He did this because he wanted me to succeed and because he wanted to be more of a parent than he could have in his old job. This is pretty unusual for a male, neither of us expect praise for it, but it proves the point that what the OP saw as gendered nature, through their own personal experience is a nonsense. People are people,the most important thing is partnership, mutual support, practicalities and compromise. But that is not as super sounding as hearing every whimper through the night and feeling an urge to care for people.

We are on the same page animal but your hair splitting is getting in the way.

Im off now to enjoy Mother’s Day 😃

I have had a boy and girl child.
I have noticed differences in them from an early age.

OP, I found this BBC experiment about how we treat babies as a result of gender stereotyping very interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-40936719/gender-specific-toys-do-you-stereotype-children

padotp (not just in response to you, but picking up on your post) what I mean when I talk about biological difference is that women do have specific needs relating to their reproductive systems which men do not (I recall needing to point out when we moved to a new building at work that there were no sanitary provisions in the female bathrooms, the male building team and mostly male colleagues of mine just did not need to think about it). Women need maternity provision because they give birth. And so on. So men and women are biologically different and they have distinct needs based on those differences.

Where I run into difficulties is with saying that this difference leads to innate feelings about oneself and one’s role in the world. It doesn’t- there are a whole range of historical, cultural, societal and familial norms which shape how people view their role in the world. The days where woman = wife and mother are passed; however, I think being a female human is still mainly surrounded by expectations of being caring, nurturing, doing a more pastoral care type role. Women are judged in a way men are not for how well they fulfil that role.

I am not even going into gender because I am not sure what it means. I used to think it meant socialised sex roles as distinct from sex but it now means socialised external appearances, I think, and the way you want to present to the world. It is not to do with socialised sex roles. Trans-identifying men are not queuing up to do the night feeds and dirty nappies and cleaning the toilets and floors and making sure World Book Day costume is complete. Etc. So gender was originally seen as a way of marking out society’s expectations of women as distinct from men and showing such expectations were contingent on time and place and could be changed, but it doesn’t capture that any more. Gender itself is seen as innate, but somehow in a way that is distinct from biological sex. Whereas the fundamental differences between men and women are biological, but -aside from certain adjustments - should not be a barrier to female participation in the world.

I think it's mostly socialisation.

I rejected femininity fairly young (I worry that girls just like me are probably expected to trans now, but that's another topic). So I missed out on or rebelled against a lot of the expectations and socialisation. I've never had the desire to care for other humans (though I did work with animals for a long time, they're ok).

There are some innate biological differences, yes, but I think the whole 'I think I wanted to give up work because hormones' is a bit facetious. I'm still breastfeeding my 18 month old and I love her to bits (as does DH), but I was happy to go back to work when she was 11 months! Mat leave was like an extended holiday from life where it was easier to keep on top of the laundry but quite mind-numbing.

The extra hormones have not left me with any additional desire to care for any other humans.

I think you either have it or you don't, but boys are more likely to discouraged from caring roles by societal expectations, and women are more likely to do them out of a lack of choice, because they fit around the family (because we're still the 'main carer' in most cases).

I think the socialisation from birth is even worse now if anything, and it's one of the reasons DD is often dressed 'like a boy' because I'm hoping that people will see a dinosaur hoodie and assume she can do whatever she wants, because I know that most people unconsciously think 'fragile' when they see pink dresses. Obviously when she's old enough to choose she can choose, but we will be making sure she knows she can still do anything she wants.

Ditto if we'd had a boy he'd have had all the choices in the world (I wouldn't have dressed him in pink dresses to prove a point, because I think it's the socialisation of little girls that's the problem at this age, I don't think the issues around the socialisation of boys come in until a bit later).