| > It can very well be that society is causing these differences. For example, I can claim that women are more agreeable because that's how they are raised by their parents, influenced by their teachers and tv shows, etc. It's a cycle. That is true. Though I think that's less likely. While I agree that this may not be the case for most people, I had my (relatively privileged) formative years in a background where boys and girls had equal access to all sort of different activities and a varied curriculum. From my own observations and information I've been presented I choose to believe (after all, this is simply a point of view among many in my life, and not what I preoccupy myself with most of the time) that it's more likely that evolution has a larger part of influence than culture, simply because it seems to also be the case for other aspects of life. A sibling comment referenced a book by Cordelia Fine (which I haven't read yet), which mentions on its abstract "Instead, sex, hormones, culture and evolution work together in ways that make past and present gender dynamics only a serving suggestion for the future – not a recipe". I think this is definitely true – these factors certainly intertwined – but a factor being a biological "serving suggestion" carries to me more weight than culture, which is malleable, fluid and man-made. > But that doesn't mean this is how it SHOULD be.
> The fact that women give birth and take care of children more than men can't (or at least shouldn't) account for this large gap.
> They don't tell us how things should be for the better. They just tell us how bad it is now. To be fair I don't think it should be one way or another. I don't hold opinions on how these things should or shouldn't be. I'm also curious to know why you feel strongly that things should be a given way, and that that objective warrants large-scale social reform. I feel more often than not, large-scale social reform, even with positive intents, ends up having unintended consequences. The Chinese cultural revolution, as an example close to my background, certainly comes to mind. > Go search for boy and girl toys online and see the differences. I do think most toys I see are crap, whether "girl" toys or "boy" toys. I think they're all geared towards consumerism rather than child development. I do believe however that these toys evolved into boy/girl toys because of the reasons I mentioned, associated with market selective pressure and getting kids to want to acquire things. All in all I think a few good wooden spinning tops with strings and a group of kids playing around with them among themselves as a group will be healthier for development than anything I might see on a billboard. Mostly I give my kid Legos, wooden blocks/gears/shapes/tools, lots of books, abstract things/widgets that seem to encourage reasoning, along with plenty of time in the woods and nature, observing animals, plants, mosses, things like that. Socialising with other kids/cousins of different but similar ages and genders is also very important. Which is also why I think raising kids in multigenerational households and with a large extended family around is so important, as seldom happens in the Western world it seems, but that's a different conversation. |