Physical Vs psychological difference between the sexes

[Bumpitybumper]

So Mumsnet seems a very gender critical place when it comes to physical sex based differences. The majority don't support men competing in the female category in sporting competitions or men being allowed in single sex wards or changing rooms. The reason being men and women are so fundamentally biologically different that an ideology can't just erase these difference.

However I have noticed that the majority do not support the assertion that male and females may be psychologically different and as a class have different inclinations, behaviour and desires. Many reject the idea that girls may be drawn to different toys, subjects or types of play than boys. They reject the idea that women may naturally have predisposition as a class towards certain occupations and hobbies. They simply cannot accept that women have different desires when it comes to having children and also raising them and the role they play in providing care.

I feel like the insistence that men and women want the same things and behave in the same way is because traditional feminine occupations and interests have been so undermined, undervalued and used to repress us in a patriarchal society. Rather than explore the idea of what women have a natural biological propensity towards and seeking equal value for these things, it is easier to suggest our feminine preferences are all a result of socialisation and conditioning and actually our underlying psychology is the same as men's. This seems very dangerous to me and almost playing into the patriarchy's hands.

Am I alone is seeing this distinction in how physical and psychological differences between the sexes are viewed?

How do we move to a more egalitarian society by discussing how women are more suited to caring roles than stem careers or other masculine coded roles?

Do you have links to the studies giving us this evidence? The studies I know have been critiqued for the index they use to define "more equal societies" in that they do not include levels of prejudice/attitudes about which professions are seen as being for men and which for women.

No one is suggesting women are more suited!!

Just more women may choose this.

But they can and should be encouraged in all the same range of choices as men.

Egalitarian means equal in opportunity not the same.

Yep, Jordan Peterson’s argument. But in those egalitarian societies (eg Scandinavia) there is also a greater number of women in senior leadership positions than in this country for instance. Reasons? Less sexist bullshit, more material resources like cheap childcare, men take on more of the caring burden. No, not perfect but it’s not the picture Peterson presents. In this country, you have women (very often involuntarily) forced out of work to look after their children and had they access to affordable childcare, that wouldn’t happen. In Scandinavia, there are also initiatives where those who do want to stay at home can claim a basic income to do so (so actually they don’t have to work). Take up of this has always been low, other than in some immigrant communities, suggesting that women prefer to be economically active, even when given the choice.

Google it.

Yes there are critiques, it's far from conclusive, but they are the societies generally considered the most egalitarian, so interesting to consider at least.

But the science shows that women choose those careers because they as a group are innately more caring/empathetic/people focussed? So is it inaccurate to say that, as a group, women are more suited to caring roles?

And we shouldn't worry about disparity in career choices between empathy/caring/people roles and systemising/assertive/object focused roles in the way that we currently do with STEM career schemes for girls. Because overall that's what women are just more likely to choose, especially when their choice is freer in a more egalitarian society.

@MalagaNights "Also there is evidence that given more choice in egalitarian societies women choose more caring roles and are more satisfied"

When you say this, what do you mean by 'more' caring roles? More than whom, and measured how? (I.e. do you mean a greater proportion of women than in the UK choose roles that are designated as 'caring'?) or do you mean women in those societies choose more roles designated as 'caring' than men do?

If there was evidence more women (not all or even a majority) would be happier being able to be with their children more, a basic income to stay at home with children (available to men and women) would be a good way to support and value this.

Also a great experiment to see the results.

Also maybe great for kids?

I wonder why immigrant communities take this up more? Do they value this role more or are women not encouraged into other roles so they are limited in choice?

Surely all interesting questions?

A few sources for the criticisms:
d-miller.github.io/assets/MillerEaglyLinn2015.pdf

blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/countries-with-less-gender-equity-have-more-women-in-stem-huh/

This non-academic article is interesting in demonstrating differences between countries in the percentage of women in science and engineering, and different trends as well. The variety suggests cultural influences, local labour market conditions etc. are also functioning.

Sorry you'll have to look at the studies.

I'm not supposed to be here. I'm sure you all imagine I'm some trad wife (which I've been accused of promoting!) When the reality is so different 😁)

I have a meeting I'm going in to.
At least we seem to have found there is something here that can be discussed anyway!

@MalagaNights - I would absolutely counsel a woman to consider the full implications of the choice in work preference - as it is not always straightforward. I career switched from female dominated healthcare to male dominated tech. I happen to enjoy tech, but even if I was lukewarm, it would still have been a sensible move (though not if I hated it). I get more wfh and flexibility so can spend more time with my kids (which would be classed a ‘feminine’ desire I guess).

I’m not saying that women should do jobs they hate to earn more money. But if there are 2 feasible jobs where 1 pays a lot more - consider doing the higher paid one as it CAN give you more options (eg save up to fund a career break to travel or have a longer mat leave or whatever). I do value care work personally - but I can’t make all of society value it. I am not in a position to hire anyone at work, but if I was, I would want to hire a collaborative, kind person rather than someone technically brilliant but competitive and aggressive.

Sorry you'll have to look at the studies.

I'm honestly not trying to have a go, but did you therefore not know which of those you meant when you posted it?

Does anyone in this thread actually acknowledge that saying 'women like X more' is essentially meaningless unless we can say what X is, how it was measured, what it is more THAN, how many women, under what conditions?

It needs articulating if we are even going to start discussing it, let alone proposing what we could do about it that would be valuable?!

It's all so painfully vague!

I agree.

But they still may at group levels make more choices towards caring roles.

I earn more than my husband and run a department.
I'm not all women.

I meant I'm referring to studies from memory. yes in a vague way as I'm on social media on the hoof.

I think it shows that women in those countries that run schemes aren’t willing to stay at home and give up on work for a lengthy period of time. I guess some of the immigrant communities are more patriarchal in their structure and maybe expect women to stay at home so that explains the higher uptake.
Given complete choice of money were no object, there are probably many people who wouldn’t work at all if they didn’t have to, whether or not they had children to care for. However, financial independence is a key factor to well-being and being economically dependent on a man isn’t really that great for women or something to encourage, given the unreliable nature of such support. The ideal is probably something in between: economic independence, flexible working, affordable care and a good work-life balance.
Also, the pro-tradwife journalists who try to promote dependence on men (Mary Harrington, Laura Perrins, Louise Perry) all work! They talk about women being hardwired to be carers and housewives but they all have jobs so maybe they should lead the way and give them up.

Right but there still might be biological differences but we all recognise that it’s bullshit to say all Asian people are good at maths or black people good at running

But acknowledging differences in a group level generally, does not mean that all of the group conform to those differences, does it? If you said "women in general are more empathetic" it doesn't follow at all that "all women are empathetic". Nobody is saying "all".

"Men in general are stronger than women" doesn't imply that there aren't some women who are stronger than some men, for example. Of course there are women that are stronger than various men.

Simon Baron-Cohen created the ideas of empathising and systematising, so I'd be wary of just assuming that these are generally accepted concepts which differ between men and women. The concepts are fairly close to the old arguments that women are emotional and men are rational.

In the paper which first reported these concepts, you can figure out that roughly around half the women tested (46% in one model specification, 51.5% in the other) did not actually seem to have what Baron-Cohen calls a female brain, but a balanced or a male brain.

The percentages of men who did not have a male brain were far lower (17% in one model specification, 40.4% in the other).

This could be because the questions he used might have been biased. The kinds of statements he lists in later sources as statements to agree or disagree with in the test look to me as if he puts systematising into the terms of male-coded professions, tasks, and hobbies, but doesn't really do the same for the assertions about empathising behaviour. There are many opportunities for exhibiting systematising behaviour within tasks, hobbies, and processions coded female, but those are not used in his tests. I believe that this biases the results.

Some examples for statements about systematising (I think these are from his book The Essential Difference or possibly from the test he offered to the general public around that time. My apologies for not writing down the source when I copied them):

1. If I were buying a car, I would want to obtain specific information about its engine capacity.
2. If there was a problem with the electrical wiring in my home, I'd be able to fix it myself.

11. I rarely read articles or Web pages about new technology. 13. I am fascinated by how machines work. 18. I find it difficult to understand instruction manuals for putting appliances together. 25. If I had a collection (e.g. CDs, coins, stamps), it would be highly organized. 29. When I read the newspaper, I am drawn to tables of information, such as football scores or stock market indices.

In chimpanzees it's true that the mothers of infants do much of the childcare (though older siblings of both sexes do seem to give a hand). But it's also true that in chimpanzees all the mothers are single-parents who also work (feed themselves and their infants), and it's also true that chimpanzee females are what we would call extremely promiscuous, but of course only during the mating season.

I have always been interested in which types of generalisations from other animals we humans are willing to assume that might also apply to us (usually when they do something in the same manner as we do) and which kinds we are less willing to accept as generalisations. So a study about young female chimpanzees modifying sticks and then treating them as if they were dolls (from the human point of view) was widely reported in popular press because it strengthens our prior beliefs, but another study reporting that in one community certain chimpanzees turned sticks into spears to hunt insects etc. with (from crevices in rotten trees) was not much reported as this was led by young female chimpanzees.

You are asking for a level of proof that doesn't exist because sufficiently robust studies haven't been undertaken yet. It is pretty much like this:

1. There are observable differences in the way the sexes behave.
2. Studies are undertaken to try and definitively prove that this is due to biology or socialisation, but this is impossible as nobody is raised in a vacuum so socialisation will always be involved in someway.
3. People use studies that show socialisation has an influence as proof that biology is irrelevant.

So we have loads of stats and data on what women currently do that is different to men and behave differently. What we can't do is prove why they make choices and behave the way they do. Insisting on a ridiculously high burden of proof for biological drivers while subjecting the socialisation hypothesis to no such scrutiny is hardly objective. It is ideologically driven, people don't want it to be true as it makes equality more complicated and difficult to achieve.

@Bumpitybumper I gave a made-up example upthread, as I'm also interested in what you do with the information once you have it. I'm not saying 'you need a high burden of proof' per se unless you're doing something drastic with it - because I realise you probably won't get it, so I'm saying if you found something, what does that inform? That's sort of my point - it's likely to be fuzzy, and not apply to hundreds of thousands of women, so what were you thinking you would use it for?

Here's what I posted if you missed it:

Let's pretend there is a really robust study that shows that 70% of women score 15% higher on empathy measures than 70% of men, with scores on bell curves with the appropriate overlap between groups.

What do you suggest we do with this information if it turns out this is entirely innate?

What do you suggest we do with this information if it turns out it's mostly due to socialisation?

I'm still really unclear on what you are actually suggesting, op, hence ppl drawing their own conclusions. Can you set it out clearly, please?

What we can't do is prove why they make choices and behave the way they do

This is going to be completely different for every individual. It's down to past experience, how much weighting is given to various factors (e.g. the commute to a job, the mat pay at that job, whether their old school bully works there etc etc ad infinitum)

How would you do your robust studies to remove the factor of socialisation? There is nobody alive today who hasn’t been socialised into their gendered role. Boys and girls get told from birth that they should play with certain toys and wear certain clothes. So I can’t see how you could ever do a study where you eliminated that and therefore your results would be unreliable.

(Also @Bumpitybumper - You are asking for a level of proof that doesn't exist because sufficiently robust studies haven't been undertaken yet.

The post you quoted by me wasn't to do with me asking for any level of proof - I was asking a poster to clarify what they actually meant when they claimed something, as it was unclear. Not to 'prove it' - just 'what is the thing that is being claimed'?).

I was referring to the fact that many now believe a woman is anyone who identifies as one, regardless of biology. I was suggesting that a lack of research into biological sex differences has contributed to this existential shift and to the rise in misogyny that has accompanied it.

It's an interesting idea but one that I totally disagree with, and can see no evidence for.