It is known that women tend to be more emotional than men for instance. As such, they do well in nurturing roles like you described. I'm not saying that men can't do them, it's just that more women feel "at home" doing that kind of work.
Define 'emotional'. The sum of emotions (can you measure that)? The lack of rationality? The presentation of emotion?
I'd love to see these studies, as I'm pretty sure it is not 'known'. A common HN refrain is the lack of validity in most social science research - to what degree that is true remains to be seen, but on this point of emotionality it seems apt to point this out. Perhaps it is only college students in the US that exhibit some crude measure of this. Even if it is demonstrated we would then have to prove this is biological, not just a cultural adaptation.
Btw some counter evidence for your point are that:
* women run businesses tend to have better success rates, which is quite a rational context.
* Micro lenders in the third world prefer to (or exclusively) lend to women, because they handle finances better and are more likely to repay.
* boys tend to have less emotional control than girls growing up, and many of girls interests such as STEM participation change only after puberty hits (a time in child development when personal interests give way to the desire to fit into the dominant culture)
This stereotype of women being more emotional only fits if you do not count anger as an emotion. Interestingly, anger is the emotion most associated with dominance.
I disagree with your assessment and have nothing to say about the gender comparison. However, I would posit that it's aggression, and not anger, that is associated with dominance.
Aggression is often subtle and cunning and is often considered a characteristic instead of a transient emotion. Anger, however, when it is felt is typically directly on display.
I can see how, in a societal setting, the ease with which someone who is quick to anger being easily manipulated by someone who is consistently aggressive, in their various emotional states, towards that person. In that sense, one need not be angry or easily angered to dominate a social hierarchy.
No, actually, it is the direct expression of anger (raised voices, threatening gestures, intrusion into personal space, increased vascularization of face and extremities) that is associated with dominance. See for example L. Z. Tiedens, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, among many others. People also attribute greater competence to persons willing to express anger. Passive-aggressiveness and manipulation are generally female-coded and not as high-status.
I would hypothesize that once anger and its expressions (including extreme cases like 'crimes of passion') are included, the emotion gap between men and women shrinks significantly (but does not entirely disappear).
I agree. But i don't see how you can go from that to assuming women are necessarily more emotional. You kind of need some data to back that up. Note that men murder and kill and rape at a high rate due to their emotions.
We could perhaps say that men and women both experience strong emotions but that both the emotions and the way they've been socialized to express them are quite different.
Unless you ask who is a better boss. Then the feminists will happily tell you that women are the better bosses because they have more empathy and so on...
(For what it's worth, I don't subscribe to the 'women should take care of children because they are more emotional' theory, but I find it funny how people pick their stereotypes on a whim).
That's very interesting, because (anecdotally) the women I know prefer male bosses. The reason being that in their experience male bosses prefer to manage by objectives ("I want you to do X") whereas female bosses try to manage their subordinates emotions ("I want you to feel Y"). The latter seems to lead to greater workplace tension.
If this is indeed a broader phenomenon, I makes me wonder if the same forces (genetic or environmental) that lead women to be more empathetic (which we might judge to be a good thing) do not also lead to the aforementioned emotions management. Of course, this is all highly speculative.
You are in the woods. Before you are two black bear cubs. Due to the circumstances of the hypothetical, you have only two choices for where to stand. Choice A is between the cubs and their mother, who is feasting on armyworms. Choice B is between the cubs and their father, who is raiding a beehive.
Which do you pick?
Choice B, right?
It is illogical to walk away from easy food and then choose to attack the strong food rather than the weak food. It is somewhat less illogical to run away from easy food and attack an imminent mortal threat to the most important things on the entire planet. What makes an adult bear decide that bear cubs are not food, and also the most important things ever? Emotions, probably.
Most mammals employ liberal doses of hormones to ensure that a mother forms a powerful emotional bond with her child. Humans are not an exception. Remember that the placenta allows chemicals to pass directly from mother to child and vice versa. The emotional bond between father and child has to form in the same way as it would form with anyone else. I'm not saying that a male can't be as emotional as a female, but males never experience a 280 day interval where something is constantly giving them intravenous injections of chemicals evolved specifically to create an emotional response.
My point was that the emotionality of females and males is strongly biological, has likely existed since the common ancestor of all mammals, and the notion that it is significantly impacted by human social constructs is not tremendously plausible in my opinion.
A developing fetus literally injects behavior-changing chemicals directly into its mother's bloodstream for months before it is born. In species without strong pair-bonding, a juvenile may never get the chance to push any evolution-programmed buttons on the father to initiate a parental bond.
So my opinion is that the median human male probably does not experience emotion as strongly as the median human female, because male emotions do not affect reproductive success as strongly or as reliably as female emotions. There's no particular reason to attach any cultural importance to it. Being more or less emotional than someone else is neither good nor bad. But it does affect behavior, and therefore relative suitability for specific work roles.
Evolution does not care if you literally cry over spilled milk, or if you can continue running up the beach even after the hundred men in front of you, to whom you had grown attached in the weeks prior, get torn to shreds before your eyes. It only cares about whether you will have living descendants in the future. But your fellow humans care about that when they are deciding whether or not to hire you into a vacant position. Your emotional programming will make you more suitable for some jobs, and less suitable for others.
But that is definitely not the sole reason why some professions have something other than a 50-50 split between the sexes. It accounts for some of the difference, but nowhere near all of it.
Exact! I'm a male and I'm highly emotional, like many other males. I have had many problems with macho corporations with alpha males who look down at me because I don't smoke and I don't want a big car and "I don't have the shoulders". Too bad for them, I've created my company now, so they've been prejudiced about my skills.
Worse: People tend to support only women about this. I wish we could stop being sexist in treating gender issues, and help "Everyone who's weak" rather than "Everyone who's a woman". Because there are strong women too. My government has 6.000€ donations for women who create a company and 30.000€ interest-free loan with no collateral. We need to help based on the criteria which makes it more difficult for people, like "Help everyone who's taking care of his children", or "Help people who live an ecologist lifestyle which doesn't look macho" rather than "Help women". What's the gap between people who have an alpha character and the people who intuitively position themselves as victims? What's the gap between macho men and strong, dominant women?
It's a generalization to say "women" instead of pointing out the trait that makes it a weakness.
Indeed. Though, it's not just about women and men.
The malignant, controversial issues of domestic violence against women, black oppression, the discouragement of male emotional expression, and gender-based wage gaps -- to name only a few -- were never the disease, they were an awful symptom. Instead we must focus on the actual disease -- spousal abuse, racial discrimination, emotional abuse or manipulation, and incomplete or inaccurate wage information, respectively.
I understand that it's impossible to attend to all concerns of all people simultaneously. Governments and organisations need some way to focus what limited resources they have. Though perhaps, just perhaps, instead of taking the easy way out they might determine eligibility for assistance programmes or subjects of public awareness campaigns by the circumstances by which that target is disadvantaged or victimised and not just what's between the target's legs or how dark or not the target's skin is. This is really quite difficult and, in the case of assistance programmes, requires a knowledge and understanding of an individual's situation. As we know, this is remarkably difficult for any government or organisation to do. However, it is absolutely necessary if we are to justify providing these very powerful tools only to victims and not their attackers as well.
Any group which continues to advocate for targets based on criteria over which the target has no control and which does not advocate for others normalises the victimisation of those targets for which they do not advocate. That advocacy is vile and we must address it.
Is being emotional an advantage in nurturing kids ?
Looking around, the parents that appear to be more sensible and emotional seem to get more easily depressed and feel a heavier burden dealing with their kids constantly
It is known that women tend to be more emotional than men for instance. As such, they do well in nurturing roles like you described. I'm not saying that men can't do them, it's just that more women feel "at home" doing that kind of work.