[ahmetnoid]

Still the problem here is we don't _really_ know whether this is genetic or shaped by our upbringing even when it comes to the most egalitarian societies. I'd like to see the same study done on the little left hunter-gatherers bands.

[wskinner]

We do know that gender differences in a variety of psychological traits are more pronounced in more egalitarian societies. See e.g. https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-women-e...

[aWidebrant]

The study in the topic seems to contradict this, although the summary is a bit confusing:

"Considering gender inequality, the authors report that “in countries of higher gender inequality, women’s stronger preference for working with people versus things compared to men was smaller.” However, this effect disappeared when cultural dimensions were taken into account.

"Instead, it was those countries with greater uncertainty avoidance that had larger differences in interests in people/things between men and women. Uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree to which a culture teaches its members to feel unpleasant in situations that are new, not previously known, surprising, or generally just different from usual."

[FeepingCreature]

So do egalitarian countries have high uncertainty avoidance?

[realjhol]

Guess what: we're a sexually dimorphic species.

The view that every group of people you care to select is "equal" (whatever that means) is manifestly false.

[kqr]

But this specific thing we do have a strong indication of! But a few hours after birth, infant boys spend a longer time looking at mechanical objects than faces, and vice versa. This is thought to be before any social imprinting has had time to develop.

It's funny that you write this comment in this specific thread, because as far as I know, it's literally the only gender difference we've observed truly since birth. (Besides some physical ones like which reproductive organs are in place, obviously.)

[gnull]

I don't know if it's really important to know for practice. Who care where it comes from if the effect is there and you have to live with it?

It's not that effect being caused by upbringing makes it somehow unimportant, or unworthy of being there.

[ahmetnoid]

because if it's biological then you have to live with it (till you get scalable affordable bioengineering) whereas if it's social imprinting then you don't "have to live with it", for that it's going against our biological encoding. Your comment suggest that we should not question upbringing which I disagree with.

[gnull]

Knowing a concrete cultural mechanism that is causing this could possibly open the way to engineering it (or close it completely, depending on what mechanism that is). But would just knowing "it's culture" help? I don't think (personal opinion) we're particularly good at predictably engineering culture.

Look at Sweden, it's been trying really hard and dumping lots of money into gender equality, but there's still very few women in tech. The fraction of women among Iran's CS graduates is greater than Sweden's. And, ironically, plenty of those Iranian women (I'm saying this offhand) go to do PhD in Sweden, to bring up the "gender balance" of CS departments that Sweden is so concerned about.

I'm really unsure whether society is easier to engineer than biology.

[jwrallie]

This is something really difficult to know, specially because genetic differences can shape behaviors that can be natural selected creating a reinforced loop that reflexes on culture and upbringing.

[ahmetnoid]

Very good point. But I'd like to get an accurate answer from science in general, I don't see why more effort shouldn't be put into finding the reason behind what's discussed here. culture and upbringing is a mix of biological tendencies and imposed constructs, and I'd like to know which is which.

[squokko]

Not sure you'd learn the most from the hunter-gatherers, who have the narrowest leeway in their survival and must have everyone doing exactly what they're best suited at. A fat rich society with more money than they can spend, like Norway or Qatar or Brunei, is likely more instructive.

[XorNot]

A hunter gatherer society would be the exact opposite of highly specialised ("doing what you're best at").

It has little margin for loss of function, so a poor performer is better and more likely to survive then losing the performance of the function entirely.

[nullsense]

I'm pretty sure what they meant was "if you need to go and hunt and kill your food, then the physically stronger members of the group have to go and do that, and that means someone has to stay and look after the kids and the members of the group who can produce food for the infants likely fit that bill"

[LouisSayers]

I'm sure there must be studies done on apes that would clarify that exact question.

[mpweiher]

There are. And they confirm, so the difference also exists in apes.

[obscurette]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gender-toys-children-toy-pref...

[throwawaylinux]

Why is that a problem, and if it was due to upbringing then why that would be a problem?

> I'd like to see the same study done on the little left hunter-gatherers bands.

I don't see what that would prove. Men being biologically better suited for many types of primitive hunting, and women having the responsibility of pregnancy and nursing infants, would have a massive influence on the culture and structure of those societies.

[defrost]

So .. you've had no actual experience of living with hunter gathers then?

The women do a lot of work digging ants [1], digging lizards, trawling through sands for cockles [2] (and leaving massive midden piles in their wake over centuries), and retire to a life of painting and laughing at the quaint notions of the clueless.

Many such cultures share childcare across a wide network of extended kinship [3], both male and female - everybody works to bring food, tools, and culture to the group.

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-16/honey-ant-hunters-and...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegillarca_granosa

[3] https://aifs.gov.au/resources/policy-and-practice-papers/str...

[throwawaylinux]

> So .. you've had no actual experience of living with hunter gathers then?

This is not an argument.

> The women do a lot of work digging ants [1], digging lizards, trawling through sands for cockles [2] (and leaving massive midden piles in their wake over centuries), and retire to a life of painting and laughing at the quaint notions of the clueless.

Great.

> Many such cultures share childcare across a wide network of extended kinship [3], both male and female - everybody works to bring food, tools, and culture to the group.

And yet despite having nary a biology degree among them, even they will tell you that men can not gestate or nurse a child. And that men are biologically more suited to some types of primitive hunting.

[ehnto]

Those are just two points out of a long list of actions required in a society. I don't think it really adds that much weight to the argument, even though it is true.

To go back to your other comment:

> Why is that a problem, and if it was due to upbringing then why that would be a problem?

It would be a problem for upbringing as that is something adults have agency over. It's a bias that may not need to exist.

A great example of that is when women were highly represented in computer science as it was initially becoming a field of study, but later got pushed out by boys who'd had technical skills nurtured in them when they were young while the girls did not. Oversimplifying that a little bit, but most of us have experienced it or seen it in action.

Women in STEM is a supply issue that starts with parenting, and continues all the way along the pipeline, with schools, universities and peers all filtering girls out of the pipeline that puts butts in seats in tech roles, even though they're perfectly capable of the roles.

[throwawaylinux]

> Those are just two points out of a long list of actions required in a society. I don't think it really adds that much weight to the argument, even though it is true.

I think it does add a lot of weight. Certainly it casts doubt to the idea that you could observe a primitive hunter gatherer society to rule out any kind of cultural bias.

> It would be a problem for upbringing is that is something adults have agency over. It's a bias that may not need to exist.

This is just restating the assumption. Why is that bad? Culture causes an innumerable number of "biases" to exist, not just between different sexes either. Would there be a problem if people living in one state liked country music and in another liked rap? Should such a learned bias be stamped out? How about pizza vs hot dogs?

> A great example of that is when women were highly represented in computer science as it was initially becoming a field of study, but later got pushed out by boys who'd had technical skills nurtured in them when they were young while the girls did not. Oversimplifying that a little bit, but most of us have experienced it or seen it in action.

I've never heard of it before and I'm skeptical it's true, so I don't know how great the example really is. But let's set that aside for a minute and think about it if it was true it's not a case of a learned cultural personal preference by the women, it was that they got "pushed out". That is the problem.

But that's really besides the point here I think. I don't see why you go to a different situation to claim this one is bad. Because we have the actual at hand, which is that women like working with people and men like working with things. I'm asking specifically why that would be bad, not whether there are any aspects of culture and learned behavior that could be bad (certainly there are many examples that can easily be argued are bad, and many others could be argued are good).

[realjhol]

> It would be a problem for upbringing as that is something adults have agency over. It's a bias that may not need to exist.

There's no evidence that adults are creating this bias. They are not.

On average women find tech work grindingly boring.

Why is it a problem? It isn't. Just let people do what they want with their lives.

[ehnto]

> On average women find tech work grindingly boring.

No evidence of that.

> There's no evidence that adults are creating this bias. They are not.

Are you absolutely certain? It's the subject of quite a bit of research.

> Why is it a problem? It isn't. Just let people do what they want with their lives.

Kids don't know what they want to do with their lives, they get lead down various paths by their upbringing. Plenty of people end up in careers they don't like because it's what their parents wanted them to do, regardless of gender.

[azaras]

The reason is genetically. There is not difference between more feminist countries and the less ones.

[meindnoch]

Genetic, epigenetic, memetic. Why does it matter?

[willhinsa]

No.

Why do female chimpanzees prefer to play with human dolls more than male chimpanzees if it's not a DEEP GENETIC DRIVE?

[unknownsky]

Female chimpanzees prefer to play with objects and use them as tools more than male chimpanzees overall. Most often, female chimps are observed using them as play weapons.[1]

On one single occasion, some female chimps were observed carrying some logs and "slapping" them. This was interpreted as playing with dolls and then it was all over the news that female chimps play with dolls.[2]

Humans aren't the only primates with culture. Chimp behaviour varies significantly according to the culture they are in, just like human behaviour does.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6387611.stm

[2]https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(10)...

[midoridensha]

Tangentially, I think I read somewhere once that there's more genetic variance between two random chimps from two chimp tribes in the same forest than between two random humans from opposite sides of the planet.

[ahmetnoid]

I don't understand what does this has to do with anything? how does that fit in things vs people? a doll is a thing after all? I'm not saying there's no deep genetic drive at all.