Tim Worstall

While chatting to my daughter’s teacher she came up with the phrase “parental programming”. She believes that boys and girls are born the same and it is parents which “program” boys and girls to be different.

dsquared

Of course it is the neverending embarrassment of economics that alone among the social sciences, it attracts far fewer women than most “systematising” disciplines – mainly because it has so many ferociously unpleasant personalities in it.

Alex Gregory

“Of course, this would be anathema to those who insist that we are all born entirely equivalent”
Who says this?

Marcin Tustin

I rather suspect that this is the fallacy of assuming that the current social situation is a product of the laws of nature. If “empathy” were a female quality, while “systematising” a male quality, in the past, when only men were allowed to go to university, we would expect the “female” professions to be filled with duffers, or to have a very small contingent of men with average performance, while the “male” professions to be hugely over-subscribed. I don’t think that this is the case.
Another method would be to look for countries where there is little disparity in participation in certain such fields between the genders, and see if the members of the “wrong” gender are disproportionately incompetent.
I suspect that it is much more likely that girls at the present time prefer to aspire to the fields that they predominate in, because of current models of femininity, and similarly for boys.

Marcin Tustin

I rather suspect that this is the fallacy of assuming that the current social situation is a product of the laws of nature. If “empathy” were a female quality, while “systematising” a male quality, in the past, when only men were allowed to go to university, we would expect the “female” professions to be filled with duffers, or to have a very small contingent of men with average performance, while the “male” professions to be hugely over-subscribed. I don’t think that this is the case.
Another method would be to look for countries where there is little disparity in participation in certain such fields between the genders, and see if the members of the “wrong” gender are disproportionately incompetent.
I suspect that it is much more likely that girls at the present time prefer to aspire to the fields that they predominate in, because of current models of femininity, and similarly for boys.

Marcin Tustin

I rather suspect that this is the fallacy of assuming that the current social situation is a product of the laws of nature. If “empathy” were a female quality, while “systematising” a male quality, in the past, when only men were allowed to go to university, we would expect the “female” professions to be filled with duffers, or to have a very small contingent of men with average performance, while the “male” professions to be hugely over-subscribed. I don’t think that this is the case.
Another method would be to look for countries where there is little disparity in participation in certain such fields between the genders, and see if the members of the “wrong” gender are disproportionately incompetent.
I suspect that it is much more likely that girls at the present time prefer to aspire to the fields that they predominate in, because of current models of femininity, and similarly for boys.

Saltation

Alex Gregory:
>>”Of course, this would be anathema to those who insist that we are all born entirely equivalent”
>Who says this?
It’s a common meme in some subcultures, such as America’s Ivy League universities.
For example, recentlyish, Harvard’s President, Lawrence Summers, had his career destroyed by complying with a request to think up and present some revolutionary ideas for discussion, re future strategies of academic teaching. One of them was the question: are there differences between what male and female brains are better suited for, on average?
Major memelash, and he lost his job. Despite only presenting the topic for discussion (justifying it with similar statistics to those Tim cites here), and despite being explicitly asked to present controversial topics.
Tim adds: Well, Summers suggested that there was greater variation in male talents (self-evidently true as far as I’m concerned) but yes, that’s the sort of thing.

sanbikinoriaon

Sounds like he needed a more empathetic brain type.
(incidentally and anecdotally I know a couple of people who believe that “a brain is a brain” and that it’s how its raised that counts.)

David Jones

“Of course, this would be anathema to those who insist that we are all born entirely equivalent”
>Who says this?
It’s a common meme in some subcultures, such as America’s Ivy League universities.

Oh come off it. Stephen Pinker (McGill, Hvard, MIT, Havard again – pretty legit mainstream I think) wrote The Blank Slate expressly to refute the ‘meme’. Yes it was a commonly put-about notion but not seriously at serious instutions, not for a long time.
Tim, question for you: given the enormous overlap of the normal curves in any measures grouped by sex, would you suggest any social policy implication?
Tim adds: I would insist that each persopn should we treated as an individual so that they can get the maximum out of whatever those innate talents are. The only policy implication is that we shouldn’t be surprised, given the differential distribution of said talents, if we have an imbalance of the sexes in certain occupations.

BNP man

He calls aspergers syndrome “extreme male brain syndrome”. I have one of his books called the essential difference. I used to advise a local council on aspergers, and concured with his findings before I had heard of them.

Hilary Wade

It’s exactly these statistics that caused my brother to take a psychology degree.

a

Kit – change schools !

david jones

Tim said:-
I would insist that each person should we treated as an individual … The only policy implication is that we shouldn’t be surprised, given the differential distribution of said talents, if we have an imbalance of the sexes in certain occupations.
Agreed. So any particluar imbalance wouldn’t be prima facie evidence of some ism or other.
Tim ads: Quite.

Robert Scarth

I have a PhD in Maths and when I was studying I noticed that whereas most British and northern European students were male, the majority of Mediterranean (mostly Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) Maths PhD students were female. It would be interesting to see if the statistics backed up what I observed.

Jim Winfield

I believe the pre-Norman Anglo-Saxons recognised two kinds of women; most were empathetic, feminine, “peace-weavers”, but about one in five were more aggressive “shield-maidens”. Perhaps there was a similar view of different kinds of man. Either way, lesson is, if you don’t know how children will develop, you shouldn’t force a stereotype on them.

Flying Rodent

Given that the vast majority of blogs are written by men, this surely explains the appalling spelling and grammar.
Now, if sentences could be constructed with bricks and mortar, it would be a different story…

Alex Gregory

On my understanding no-one took the line you suggest on the Summers issue. Take, for example, the response at the Leiter reports.
“Let us be clear: everyone knows–who disputes it?–that there are biological differences between men and women, and that some of these are causally connected to cognitive and other differences.”
Let’s not get into whether or not he’s correct regarding the rest of his views on the issue, but he very plainly states that the issue was not about Summer’s questioning that “everyone is equivalent”.

The Remittance Man

Straying into a realm of science about which I know little; at a really simplistic level the brain is a collection of cells swimming in a bath of chemicals.
It is accepted fact that the chemical soup that female bodies contain is diffrent from that in male bodies (different hormones etc).
Might this difference not have anything to do with these character differences between men and women? Always assuming such differences do exist

The Remittance Man

Damn! You mean I actually thought up a plausible theory that matches one someonelse came up with after a lot more thinking and research?
Just goes to show that the old story about monkeys, typewriters and the complete works of Shakespeare may contain a grain of truth.

F0ul

I am surprised that this has caused such a stir as I thought the idea of male brain and female brain was common knowledge.
There used to be a test on the BBC website where you were able to work out if you were left brain’ed or Right brain’ed – and my score helped me understand a lot more about my thinking style.
I have been able to increase the empathic side of my personality to compensate for the near Asperger level of the male side!
The point is that men and women are different. Its obvious from the sticky out and the dangly bits – it stands to reason that they think differently as well.
For the education system to try and force a false idea that we are all equal is criminal – but then, who ever said being politically correct was the same as being morally and biologically correct?!