Obviously there are easily observed physiological differences in brain structure and in the endocrine system etc, however it is a massive leap to go from that to asserting that observed differences in behaviour are down to this rather than down to societal factors.

Separating nature from nurture is notoriously difficult, and in a community which endlessly holds P=NP to be an open question, it is absolutely laughable to assume that these biological differences map one to one onto the observed behavioural differences, when there is such a huge and obvious confounding factor looming over everything.

We cannot all sit around waiting for six sigmas out of CERN before we can say we've found the higgs, and then just jump merrily onto simplistic biological arguments which happen to conveniently favour our social/political/economic hegemony.

I don't believe gender differences are strictly biological, but I think the balance of evidence points to biology being a factor:

1) The differences in the prevalence of neurodevelopmental disorders. E.g. .1% of women are diagnoses with autism, vs .7% of men. Similarly, 5.4% of girls and 14.1% of boys age 11 - 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. And 12.3% of boys and 7.1% of girls have been diagnosed with a learning disability.

2) Different psychoactive drugs tend to effect the sexes in different ways, suggesting that there is something in the chemical makeup of men and women that effects consciousness that is different to begin with. We can see this both qualitatively and by looking at the differences in the statistics for usage patterns.

3) The fact that certain drugs can make a person more or less empathic, or can make flowers more or less pretty (brighter colors), or whatever, shows that it's definitely possible that many of the purported differences in gender are attributable to biology.

4) Cognitive development research that can find cognitive differences between the sexes as early as a few weeks in age.

5) The fact that women tend to become more like men in their late 40s when their sex hormones are fading away. And the other way around. And how this effects people's behavior, e.g. this tends to be the age that most women start businesses.

6) The fact that sexual orientation seems to be determined be prenatal hormone exposure, combined with the fact that SSRIs and other serotonergic drugs can temporarily make people attracted to the 'wrong' gender. (E.g. make straight people gay, make gay people straight, etc.) I think it's telling that these drugs that alter our consciousness also impact/determine our sexual orientation. It strikes me that sexual orientation is probably profoundly connected with sensory perception, emotional processing, and consciousness in general.

It would presumably only take a few tiny differences in consciousness at birth to produce fairly large differences in twenty or thirty years. We tend to work at things we're already good at, and neural nets can be strengthened like any other muscle, especially if there is social encouragement pushing in one direction or the other.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Just like everything else in the world of human beings, we are seeing mutual feedback between society and genetics, which flows in both directions and is impossible to separate.

Like I said in my other comment, I am not arguing that biology isn't a factor. On the contrary, I am arguing that biology and society both play mutually reinforcing roles, the problems begin when people start trying to paint behaviour as an immutable product of predefined genetic destiny, and then using this to support political stances that promote their own status in society.

At the same time, trying to change people's behavior is a lot like cutting down the rainforest or wiping out indigenous peoples. It sounds like a great idea, but the destruction of cognitive and behavioral diversity is probably going to lead to our extinction in the long run.

That's not meant as a justification of the status quo, but rather to point out that no one really knows what the fuck is going on.

What an interesting idea. It would make an excellent central concept for a work of speculative fiction, and probably already has.

Wait what?! How did we manage to have a disorder that affects nearly 10% teenagers? There must be something odd with either the school system or the term "disorder" itself, because otherwise, such a flaw would likely have been filtered out of the gene pool. I wonder which it is.

(Same remark for learning "disabilities" by the way, though I'm less confident.)

A combination of rising maternal age, increased body load of many environment contaminants, terrible diets, ubiquitous TV watching before age 2, parental drug use (everything from starbucks to antibiotics), etc. From a draft version of the latest EPA report:

"Between 1993 and 2007, the rate of preterm birth rose from 11.0% of births in 1993 to 12.7% of births in 2007. This increase was statistically significant. [...] Long-term motor, cognitive, visual, hearing, behavioral, social-emotional, health, and growth problems may not become apparent for years, and may persist throughout a child’s life. The birth of a preterm or low birth weight infant can have significant emotional and economic effects on the infant’s family."

"The role of environmental contaminants in contributing to ADHD, either alone or in conjunction with certain genetic susceptibilities, is becoming better understood, as a growing number of studies look explicitly at the relationship between ADHD and exposures to environmental contaminants. Recent epidemiological studies (most published since 2006) have linked increased levels of lead in hair and blood, mercury in blood, phthalate metabolites in urine, and the pesticide chlorpyrifos in cord blood (indicative of prenatal exposure) with increased likelihood of ADHD.

Additionally, many of the behaviors that are observed in children with ADHD have been associated with elevated exposures to certain environmental contaminants. Several studies have found a relationship between attention problems, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, which are common behaviors of ADHD, and exposures to lead, PCBs, mercury, and certain pesticides. Animal studies that examine the link between environmental exposures and animal models of ADHD, or common ADHD behaviors, provide supporting evidence that exposures to lead, PCBs, mercury, and pesticides may contribute to ADHD."

http://www.epa.gov/ace/ace3draft/draft_pdfs/ACE3Neurodevelop...

I'm sure it's probably overdiagnosed as well, but the enormous difference between sexes is still very telling.

Sure, so how do you explain my two brothers along with myself and mother all having different severities of ADHD? From everything I've read, especially newer studies, genetics play a much larger role in ADHD, specifically genetic relationships with dopamine levels.

The PDF you cited actually notes genetics as a frontrunner:

   Research indicates that individual genetic features
   influence the incidence of ADHD, but 
   often in combination with environmental factors

   Like ADHD, those with SCT symptoms have a condition 
   that appears to be genetic in nature.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluggish_cognitive_tempo

As the paragraph I quoted says, most of the studies the EPA report cites were published within the last five years. Even if ADHD is caused mostly by DNA variations, that still doesn't tell us what is causing the DNA variations. E.g. is it something that's relatively stable across all countries and time periods, or is it something specific to certain ethnic groups, or are there environmental factors that are altering DNA or even directly altering brain functioning.

So, we must consider other factors, such as distress, social norms, and maladaptivity. Obviously these bring their own attendant set of intractable ethical problems. Such is the lot of the medical practitioner.

See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Abnormality_(...

Disorders are of varying degrees. Just because medical science starts figuring out something exists in the gene pool doesn't mean it's serious enough to qualify for "filtering out". It also doesn't mean that every "disorder" has to be disabling in order to exist.

Even if it did, it's a long leap to claim that it would have already been "filtered" out. Humans are dealing with a flood of more incoming data/stimuli than even 40 years ago. We have no idea if humans are actually better at handling it today than in decades past.

Now imagine that the change is permanent (you don't stop taking those shots). Pretty sure you'd end up making small (and not so small decisions) in your life that will, in the end, amount to a very different situation than if you didn't start taking extra testosterone.

"In adulthood, it is clear that testosterone is not related to any consistent methods of measuring aggression on personality scales, but several studies of the concentration of blood testosterone of convicted male criminals who committed violent crimes compared to males without a criminal record or who committed non-aggressive crimes revealed in most cases that men who were judged aggressive/dominant had higher blood concentrations of testosterone than controls. However, a correlation between testosterone levels and aggression does not prove a causal role for testosterone. Studies of testosterone levels of male athletes before and after a competition revealed that testosterone levels rise shortly before their matches, as if in anticipation of the competition, and are dependent on the outcome of the event: testosterone levels of winners are high relative to those of losers."

People who think that testosterone causes aggression are putting the cart before the horse. Aggression (and status) causes testosterone.

Sure, testosterone is a factor, and it may have contributed to the trend of men to be more aggressive than women, however, women have demonstrated that they can be just as aggressive if not more aggressive with far less testosterone than men.

To say we should give up and let our biology dictate who we are despite having plenty of examples to the contrary is rather defeatist.

Sorry for misunderstanding. I wasn't saying that, just highlighting that biological makeup, specifically the endocrine system, can affect behavior quite bit. It should not be used as an excuse but it should be acknowledged as well. Small tendences when averaged over a lifetime can create quite different outcomes in the end. Think of a stream that slowly etches a rock and we end up with the Grand Canyon in the end.

So just to repeat again, I am not for sending all girls to home-ec classes and prep only boys for engineering and science, just showing that biological differences are there and they can affect behavior, perception & learning in significant way. Ignoring those factors, might end up being detrimental in the long run.

It's actually no leap at all. Evolution put those differences in brain structure for a reason. It certainly isn't random, but due to some evolutionary benefit, and given that these differences are in the brain, it actually necessitates that there will be differences in behavior resulting purely from these physiological differences. It doesn't say what those differences are, but that there will be some, and then good science would tell us to learn what specifically those are.

In addition, in terms of evolution, you would expect there to be reliable, biologically caused behavioral differences between men and women due to the importance of specialization. Evolutionary, you don't have hundreds of thousands of years of men and women specializing in certain tasks without there being some built-in, biologically caused preferences in terms of what interests guide each gender.

What I am attacking is the idea that we can be at all certain about which behaviours are biologically influenced and which are socially constructed, or about the extent to which each factor is influential.

Both factors self-evidently interact in highly complex ways to produce the behavior we observe. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to isolate either one of them, largely due to ethical problems with the experiments that would be necessary.

The only thing that we can be certain of IMO is the fact that all behaviour is inextricably influenced by both nature and nurture.

It's highly likely that there are measurable differences in the capabilities between male and female brains but neuroscience is very far from being able to explain anything high-level enough to start speculating about the complex skills relevant to these discussions: say, hypothetically, that we found evidence suggesting male brains tend to be 10% faster at detecting the path of a fast moving object or recognizing orientation of geometric shapes - does that tell you anything about someone's ability to write a research paper or debug a program?

The other major confound is that many people rely on MRI data to support claimed differences and even assuming that the technology is precise enough and the relevant brain structures well understood enough (neither of which is really true) all that will tell you is what the brain looks like now, not why: children who play the piano extensively will have different brain structure but it's from years of practice causing hypertrophy, not because there's a pianist gene pre-ordaining that they would be good performers.

Finally, "Evolution put those differences in brain structure for a reason" demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanism: there are many, many examples of things which exist by accident (e.g. the crazy design of our eyes) or because they're connected to something which is beneficial enough to compensate for the drawbacks.

Actually it's not evidence-free, it is a simple application of evolutionary theory. The "point" of the OP's post, as he stated directly, was that there was no "evidence" supporting the theory that observed gender difference are biologically caused. Pointing out that different brain structures between male and females means different behavior that would necessarily be observable directly refutes that point.

> complete with hand-wave theorization that there has been a gender-based task division matching the dominant Western religious-driven socialization for hundreds of thousands of years

Again, application of theory. Tens of thousands of years ago, our low level of technological development necessitated specialization. A family back then would have no other option than division of tasks based on gender because, for example, someone had to stay close to camp and care for children and someone had to go out on the physically more demanding food gathering tasks. Which genders do you think would do what? If you can visualize some way it would be more efficient for the males to constant shuttle back to camp from a hunting trip to tend the baby instead of just staying out as the job required, or for the females to do the hunting with their significantly less muscular bodies and the males to tend to the infants at camp without breasts, then by all means, do. Otherwise its a fairly obvious conclusion to be drawn from simple establish facts (women are statistically less muscular, men don't have breasts.)

>It's highly likely that there are measurable differences in the capabilities between male and female brains but neuroscience is very far from being able to explain anything high-level enough to start speculating about the complex skills relevant to these discussions

Who said anything about "high-level" being the criteria? You seemed to have pulled that qualification out of thin air.

>The other major confound is that many people rely on MRI data to support claimed differences and even assuming that the technology is precise enough and the relevant brain structures well understood enough

That misses the point, we don't have to understand the brain structure to know that a physiological difference in the brain will cause behavior differences, it's functionally necessary. You don't have different brain structures without an equivalent differences in behavior. It's also not important that we can't detect less significant differences in brain physiology because MRIs aren't more precise than they are; they have a specific scanning resolution and can therefore detect features reliably that are above the minimum resolving dimensions of the MRI. Those are the features being talked about here.

And as far as the assertion that some of these brain differences are caused by nurture, there are simply some gender based brain differences that are too consistent and develop too early to be explained by anything as variable as culture or upbringing.

>Finally, "Evolution put those differences in brain structure for a reason" demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanism: there are many, many examples of things which exist by accident

Actually, that is a fundamental misunderstand of evolutionary mechanisms, it is essentially impossible to have reliably observed features in a species that are not caused by evolutionary benefit. A side effect feature which you are proposing is a moot point, because side effect features are still connected to some other distinct feature that is beneficial evolutionary, and if the side effect feature is only observed in one gender then the primary-beneficial feature which causes it is still also in one gender only, and we are still in a situation where one gender is different from another via physiological brain differences.

Regarding my point on high-level differences: "high-level" simply means anything using more than a simple circuit - walking is a high-level activity and talking is an extraordinarily high one because you have everything from motor control to language and abstract thought driving it. Any high-level activity is based on low-level functions, yes, but there are always multiple strategies to solve problems and the brain is notoriously adaptable (this is how e.g. congenitally blind people end up using the visual cortex for other tasks)

You've reduced your timeframe by an order of magnitude but are still clinging to this hunter/gatherer gender divide which is unsupported by evidence. This Disney history, not anthropology. There is considerable evidence that gender divides were less pronounced prior to the rise of agriculture - and that almost nobody got the majority of their calories from hunting; certainly many women hunted and fished as well - it's almost never about pure brute force (a better tracker is going to trump a muscular lummox every time).

Finally, remember how MRI works: it tells you where millions of neurons were using oxygen in the recent past. It doesn't tell you why, distinguish between the highly specified types of neurons, or allow you to see patterns in behavior. It's still a useful tool but you should think of it like comparing programs by dividing a CPU in quadrants and measuring the average heat in each area after running the programs for awhile.

Finally: you still ascribe purpose to evolution. If something didn't kill you before you reproduce, there's little pressure to remove it. Arthritis is common but hardly selected for.

All you're doing is dismissing an argument by dismissing an entire field of science. There is no scientific consensus that evolutionary psychology is "very dubious", and EP is widely respected as field in the scientific community precisely because it can be a powerful tool in making deductions about humans where other types of experiments might not be possible. There is no good science in dismissing it, and any argument against it must be won it's merits, not against the very idea of EP.

> This is a lot harder than ret-conning sexism on the Internet

"ret-conning"? Do you mean retroactive continuity? In what way does that apply to anything I wrote? Is that an accusation of sexism on the part of an argument that advocates the possibility of innate gender differences?

> Regarding my point on high-level differences: "high-level" simply means anything using more than a simple circuit

Is that the consensus of "high-level"? How many layers of abstraction exactly is it that qualifies as high-level? In addition, if you are to assert that high level human behavior is based on low-level brain activity, but the brain is "notoriously adaptable" and therefore high level brain functionality is independent of low-level functionality to some degree, you contradict your earlier argument that that type of speculation is unscientific. Scientific knowledge of the relationship between high-level functionality as derived from low-level functionality is paltry.

> (a better tracker is going to trump a muscular lummox every time)

But that's not a controlled comparison. Why compare someone who is smarter and of ambiguous strength with someone who is strong and dumb? All else being equal, more muscular strength is of enormous use when you are either hunting game, building traps, or fishing. And since there is a high cost to maintaining muscle mass in terms of energy needs, there simply must be some advantage and some reason in terms of behavior why men are statistically more muscular than women.

> This Disney history, not anthropology.

I actually expected a response like this. I'm using "males go hunting" and "females tend to the family at home" imagery so it must be a cartoonish simplification, right?. And yet, that is a scientifically common and respected belief about how at least some pre-history humans lived (especially given that there simply aren't many other options.) There are of course other survival blueprints of pre-history humans, such as fishing or lucking out and having more than enough to forage for main sustenance, but the general concept still applies: women's bodies are more adapted to caring for infants or children, and men for physical labor (Assuming intelligence benefits both jobs equally). So whether its hunting, fishing, construction, or even farming, it is unavoidably more efficient for men to do one and women the other. The physical difference between men and women is also a huge clue that men and women have actually been doing these specialized tasks for almost our entire evolutionary history, and that that's why these differences exist in the first place. And of course, males and females can switch roles if it's beneficial, but there's still the general tendency.

> You've reduced your timeframe by an order of magnitude but are still clinging to this hunter/gatherer gender divide which is unsupported by evidence.

The time-frame was not changed. First, our actual timeline of when most humans became agricultural is a bit sketchy. Second, "tens of thousands of years ago" easily includes time periods far back enough that we are at a point where there was still no widespread agricultural activity. As does "hundreds of thousands of years ago". The two overlap. No change of time-frames.

> Finally, remember how MRI works: it tells you where millions of neurons were using oxygen in the recent past. It doesn't tell you why...

Actually, that's really not how it works, what you're describing sounds more like an fMRI. But in any case you are still missing the point. My argument is that brain physiology features common to women but not men necessarily means innate gender differences. Otherwise there would be no consistent selection for those features. If there was no benefit to those features, they either wouldn't exist or wouldn't be common to only one gender. If they are selected for, that ultimately means they have benefit to human survival, and can impact either high-level or low-level behavior (there's no reason why the evolutionary process could select for one but not the other, and after all, that would be ascribing purpose to evolution.)

> Finally: you still ascribe purpose to evolution. If something didn't kill you before you reproduce, there's little pressure to remove it. Arthritis is common but hardly selected for.

There is enormous pressure, it's not like parents don't provide benefits to their children after they are born, or even after their children are grown and have their own children. It's simply a support network. Not that that has anything to do with the accusation that I ascribe purpose to evolution, of which you provided no evidence.

Evolutionary psychology is a useful thought exercise but it fails to produce many falsifiable hypotheses, mostly due to the combination of limited historical evidence and the inability to conduct experiments. What this means in practice is that you should be skeptical of claims that existing social customs exist because of biology in the absence of strong evidence that such biological differences exist, have the stated effect and are not explained by other means.

Any neuroscientist will tell you that there are differences between male and female brains (really, it's more accurately caused hormone levels which that simple gender binary doesn't accurately express); they will also tell you that there's insufficient understanding how these low-level differences affect higher level abilities (reading, logic, etc.). This doesn't mean that there aren't effects but rather that anyone who's trying to use this in support of traditional Western gender roles is significantly in advance of what the evidence supports.

> > This Disney history, not anthropology. I actually expected a response like this. I'm using "males go hunting" and "females tend to the family at home" imagery so it must be a cartoonish simplification, right?

The fact that the remainder of your paragraph went on to accept that your original argument was, in fact, over-simplified suggests that it was. Again, nobody is arguing that men tend to be stronger but that doesn't tell you much about daily life, what the average person ate or how their children were raised. Since there are many examples of cultural differences in all of these areas, I submit that this cannot be so broadly described.

> As does "hundreds of thousands of years ago". The two overlap. No change of time-frames.

I stand by my earlier observation that 100,000 and 10,000 are an order of magnitude apart. This is actually of some significance as we have extremely little information for human life 100,000 years ago and even 10,000 years is still paltry; by the time you get into areas where we have much information about daily life (how would we be able to tell if it were common for men and women to hunt and gather together 100k years ago?), particularly at a level sufficient to shed any light at all on division of labor, socialization is already a major factor confounding any biological arguments.

> Not that that has anything to do with the accusation that I ascribe purpose to evolution, of which you provided no evidence.

See the previous paragraph, where you repeated it again. You cannot simply look at something's existence and conclude that it has been specifically selected for. It's highly likely that some minor differences might simply be due to things like different hormone levels at various points which trigger different, worthwhile changes; similarly since human brains take years to develop it's also hard to separate out the effects of practice. Adults who grew up without exposure to written text have significant differences in their brain structure which are entirely social but brain imaging can't tell you why. Going back to the topic, there are e.g. studies finding early gender preferences for colors but none of them can say how much is innate and how much is learned.

Since this has dragged on far too long, I'm going to leave a final summary of my position:

1. Our understanding of how the brain works is still quite limited, particularly when it comes to complex behaviour. 2. We have relatively little historical data beyond the last few thousand years, making general statements of any sort hard to support. We simply don't have the data. 3. Because humans are such social animals and we don't do experiments on our young, it's extremely difficult to avoid confounds due to socialization. In particular, many questions are going to have problems determining causation. 4. Scientific claims are held to a high standard: hard data, falsifiability, predictiveness, etc.

All of this means that attempts to explain complex behaviour in terms of innate biology are decades ahead of scientific support. It can be interesting to discuss and could possibly even motivate people to advance the science to answer some of these questions but it's premature to call any of it science.

When we look at achievements gaps between boys and girls in math we can see that it tracks the amount of sexism in a society very neatly - so much so that it seems unlikely that there is any biological difference in math abilities in general[1].

On the other hand there is some pretty good evidence that there are personality traits that systematically differ between men and women in aggregate. Men tend to have higher concientiousness and women higher agreeablness, for instance.

On the other hand

[1] There are some spatial abilities that make up a small fraction of "math" there is some evidence that women are worse at.

Behaviors are another matter, however, genders have different realities (like the 9 months pregnancy period mothers face for bearing children) which automatically leads to behavior differences. It would be weird if it would not lead to behavioral differences.

The more I travel, the more I see how fantastically different cultures can be, but I also see the common thread which tells me what people are really like. The fact is, men tend to think in certain ways, women in another, and then homosexual men too. Of course there's lots of variation within individuals, but I'm talking about the whole.

There isn't any culture in the world where men aren't respected more because they are better providers, or any culture where women aren't respected more because they are prettier. That's just the way it is.

I've seen so much cultural variation that is seems like the kinds of things which can change, do change across cultures. The ways in which men and women express their preferences are almost infinitely varied. But I see the same basic, yet different, male and female instincts in every country I've ever lived in.

Thor Lives!

You're saying Saudi Arabia is like USA now? Have you even watched the TV show Mad Men? 1960s USA was different from 2000s USA.

Clearly, there are cultural differences. However, name one country that’s military is made up of significantly more women than men. Far more women in the US go to college today than men do, go back 50 years and the ratios was very different. So clearly cultural norms change, yet there is less cultural diversity than you would expect if biology was not significant.

Edit: Another vary important thing to realize is that these biological traits are not universal. For example there is a huge amount of individual diversity in the amount of hormones produced at various stages of development. Some of these produce noticeable external changes and other impact the brain far more than the rest of the body. Multiply those differences with different developmental experences and the average says very little about the individual.

This is because of biology, but it is not because of any sort of hardwired instincts. It's just that 200 men and 200 women can on average have the same number of children as 100 men and 200 women, but the reverse is not true. 200 men and 100 women can have roughly the same number of children as 50 men and 100 women.

However you’re missing the basic concept that the country that used both women and men could simply create a larger army and crush the other country. The reason this did not work historically was more to do with men’s larger size and muscle mass than reproductive issues. If you can fire an arrow and extra 20 feet you can kill someone before they can attack back. If can lift a heaver weapon with a longer range you are far more likely to win in melee combat. Such minor advantages are far less important in gathering food so sending a largely male army off to combat is simply more efficient prior to the use of fire arms. (There is some evidence that women do better in modern firefights so you could see a reversal of this trend fairly soon.)

PS: Population sizes are far closer linked to the ability to gather food and avoid disease than the ability to reproduce. In theory more women = more baby’s but you could also see 4x population growth in 30 years which does not happen.

I think the modern world is much more complex, and the rational choice in general (possibly even in antiquity) is to avoid violence if at all possible and find mutually beneficial solutions to resource scarcity.

Yes, women are not the largest ratio of militaries, however the attitude to women in military has change. Today people would balk at the idea of putting 5 years in the military, we think they should be protected, and being in the military would harm them. This used to be the attitude to women in the military.

Attitudes have changed.

You could say 200 years ago in the US many women covered their legs because of taboo's, but dig a little deeper and that taboo ties into female legs are attractive. Now days women often dress to show off their legs and 'she has great legs' is not uncommon complement because female legs are attractive. So they might be opposite behaviors, but IMO it's the same idea that leads to Muslim women completely covering themselves.

You can even study things like cheating by looking at genetic information and find culture often has less impact on behavior than you might expect. Consider, people still cheat when they risk death to do so.

This feels like a cheap shot from old-school feminists. That assumption hasn't changed, it's just not the only option. A woman's life can be fulfilled by taking care of a family.

You seem pretty confident in your claim. But, yet it goes against most of what that my freshman and sophomore anthropology professors taught me.

I'm talking about the very basic level, where women generally have nurturing roles: raising children, caring for the sick and dying, preparing food/clothing.

Obviously there are examples of cultures where men cook or women hunt, but I can't find any culture around the world where women don't traditionally have nurturing roles.

How much of this, do you figure, is survivor bias? If there were just a few dominant cultures historically who happened to have a patriarchal bias and which went on to be profoundly influential over a large volume of the planet (like, say, the Romans, the Chinese, etc), it stands to reason that male-female relationships in the many, many cultures that were shaped by them would simply happen to exhibit these traits, not because of biological constraints, but because of simple historical happenstance. Cultures which failed to fit this mold would be "civilized" when they came into contact with the dominant cultural hegemony, and relatively few counter-examples would survive.

Thus we can find in small, isolated pockets surviving cultures like the Aka, who split "nuturing roles" equally and fail to fit your hypothesis, but outside of extremely isolated cases it is hard to find cultures that run counter to what you perceive as biological norms precisely because it is hard to find any culture that wasn't extensively re-shaped by contact with one of a handful of historically dominant civilizations

However, what I took away from those classes was that gender was a very mutable 'invention' that Humans created through culture to systematically specialize labor in response to environmental forces. Some cultures invented two-genders, aligned with biology, to succeeded in environments where two specialized gender roles were more advantageous. However, other cultures of Humans invented several types of genders, and genders that crossed biology, to succeeded in different environments.

So, if those memories are even accurate, gender and gender roles in Humans are more aligned with the overarching systematic cultural forces than biology. And, even if we consider biology, there is a lot of cross-over. Humans are a very adaptive and mutable species.

The folks who deal in this controversy have a vested interest to keep it controversial. Don't hold your breath for rational explanation.

I have not read this book, but the publishers description of the book is on Amazon.com's listing.

Here's a snippet: "In this provocative, entertaining, educational, and thoroughly researched book, Lisa outlines the ways that we as a society, and particularly women, have fallen off the intellectual path, and, very specifically, points to how damaging this has been to us on many levels. Lisa shows us the fallout--but she also provides the solutions for "Reclaiming the Brain God Gave You" and seizing back control of your mind and your life. Think is delivered in a no-nonsense manner that will make you laugh, make you question yourself, make you squirm, but, most important, make you start thinking again."

Ms. Bloom believes that women live in a world of "stark paradox" and wrote a provocative book to talk about it and encourages readers to think. That implicitly says to the world "This book is controversial", as controversy and paradox are generally what make us think.

That's not to say that controversy is bad. But you're not going to reach a rational conclusion until a consensus driven by generally-accepted fact is reached.

Hm, sorry, what hegemony are you talking about?

I always wonder why people who go all excited about gender issues can't accept that women are not men and do not have to be like men? Your 'hegemony' (I assume you speak the well known thesis about male-dominated society) may not actually exist, and the 5 year old's desire to look attractive may not be bad at at all.

Imagine, there are two dimentions to the world. One is manifesting itself in social power structures, money, status, smart jobs, Nobel awards etc.

The other is completely different and involves sense of belonging, security, plans about rising children and actual time to spend with children, emotional connection with friends, caring, feeling etc.

It just could be that most of women are not interested in the masculine dimension of this life. Heck, I dare say they may not even be particularly fit for the struggle/rat race due to their biology, exceptions notwithstanding. But they are powerful masters of another, parallel universe, which is always here with us, and where majority of men just not quite make it.

I think of many girls/women I've known in life who absolutely hate to spend their precious time on stupid things like going to work, making sure your last project is a success, competing, 'achieving' in the eyes of others etc. This distracts them from their sacred passion in life -- that is to rise a child, to shape the child's mind and soul and to protect him/her. And protection means having a secure, clean and comfortable house. And yes, that means having a strong competitive man next the them who would provide for all of that. Basically, that means a family.

(The idea of the family seems to have been discredited both by the idiotic religious right and no less idiotic crusading left, but a strong family has a clear evolutionary biological advantage. It ensures the partners reproduce and their children get competitive advantage while growing in a happy/secure place. On the other hand, a lone over-achiever may as well become the richest man in the cemetery).

A young girl is conditioned to think about her looks because this will help her later to chose her mate and to create her family. And yes, she will be chosen for the large part because of their biological traits (beauty). And that's not a bit shameful or reproachable.

Thankfully, beauty is not the only criteria, so chill, you gender activists and spare me the flaming. Of course not only looks matter in life, and child beauty contests are a horrible thing. But still, it is normal for the girls to try to look beautiful, just as it is normal for the boys to try to be strong.

The problem with gender issues reveals itself when the activities and traits you traditionally classified by gender are enforced on individuals of that gender. When a young woman's boss passes her over for promotion because she is around the age many women decide to bear children. When a young man is mocked and humiliated for doing ballet. When a woman is declared selfish because she chose her career over staying home with children.

There are women who don't like children, and have no desire to raise one. There are men who would rather stay home and cook, clean, and raise children than have a "smart job".

Treating traits as "feminine" and "masculine", which is what happens when young boys are encouraged to look at cars and young girls are told to be pretty, sends the societal message to young girls that she cannot have a smart job, academic achievements and so forth because women don't do those things.

Except that boys are also expected to be resourceful, independent, intelligent etc... The OP rightly notes that an excessive focus on external attributes (themselves highly historical and culturally specific) are unlikely to help girls develop in an adaptive manner, and she provides evidence that our current discourses actively harm women in various ways.

>But still, it is normal for the girls to try to look beautiful, just as it is normal for the boys to try to be strong.

Is it really "normal" when it's something you admit is conditioned of her to some extent by society. There's only so much that can be attributed to natural biological tendencies. Is it really that women are naturally not interested in the "masculine" dimensions of life or are there predetermined boxes that are masculine and predetermined boxes that are feminine in which society subtly puts people?

Women may not even realize they've been conditioned to fit into these boxes and so they're okay with it. That doesn't mean we should continue to perpetuate it. Some women may have been perfectly okay not being able to vote but that doesn't mean we continue to prevent them from voting. The point is the choice to do or do not. When you're perpetuating subtle societal gender expectations, you're preventing women the choice to venture out of the feminine box.

Even if we accept that the role of women is in the home and that the role of women is to find a suitable mate, (which I do not) I would say that is all the more reason that we need to ensure that women are highly educated and unconcerned with their looks. They're entrusted day in and day out with raising the next generation of great engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs. Why would we entrust that task to people primarily concerned with their own looks?

I really don't understand where you're coming from when you argue that looking pretty is essential to the "sacred passion" of home-making. If it is indeed a sacred passion, the primary responsibility is that of an educator and nurturer.

The Bateman Principle sort of sums it up, though reading the Wikipedia page shows it's more complicated than common sense might dictate (as you should expect):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateman%27s_principle

It's not as clear-cut as Bateman thought and there were a lot of methodological problems with his experiments apparently. Nevertheless, different strategies for different sexes.

I conclude that some amount (how much?) of what we identify as gender differences flow out of these different strategies that are rooted in sexual reproduction, which requires a fundamental dichotomy of types. Still, I'm all for individuals cutting against the grain.

Luckily, Humans have invented physical and cultural hacks to deal with the biological costs of child-rearing. Many types of family structures, economic structures, languages, social establishments, and physical creations have been invented to help us reproduce. In fact, Humans couldn't even exist as they do today, with their big heads, if it weren't for those original hackers.

As Humans go, where there's a will there's a way. And, that generally seems to be the implied rule on this forum. But, for some reason, when it comes to gender, we're willing to sacrifice 50% of our population by using language that demonstrably reduces probability of success.

The point is: we should be encouraging all children to never assume that hard limits exist, especially when based on incomplete information. And, even when hard limits are reached, there is always another way around.

"As if the millions and billions of years of Nature's invention and innovation should be discarded..."

Great. Now I sound like Edmund Burke.

Maybe strong would be a better modifier than hard, as it implies a little more flexibility. Nevertheless, I think some ideas are being conflated here:

Do strong biological tendencies exist?

Can they be hacked or circumvented? Should they be?

What's the cost/benefit? Are you willing to make the investment necessary to do so?

I favor exploring, and acknowledging where warranted, the hard limits so that we may more effectively and humanely answer these questions.

Our?

The fact that some men have status advantages does not imply that being male provides status advantages.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but worrying about whether Bill Gates' daughter has as as good a chance of being CEO as his son isn't all that noble a cause.

For some reason he is also constantly surrounded by very attractive women. I've seen him out and about before and thought "I'd like to have some of that!". But my first impression when we were hanging out was that all these girls shared two things in common - good looks and zero intelligence. Most of the fart jokes came from them.

Which was a bit of a shock!

It took me a while to figure out that most of them weren't actually thick. I managed to have a conversation with one of them later on; and found she was a psychology graduate (one of my favourite pet interests :)), had even published a research paper on her work. Which was just confusing... there was this smart good looking girl, and she was hanging around acting thick.

Then I worked it out... they were acting as they were expected to (either by our perception or theirs) on a night out; shove on the lipstick, revert to street talk, laugh at fart jokes and play dumb around the men. The psychologist actually even said this about her career (paraphrasing): "oh.. well I never really tell people that, it puts them off".

Which is just a fucking sad reflection on society.

I'm think, like me, you're British :-) So you probably know that British men generally go out and do exactly the same thing (minus the lipstick). The average British bloke on a night out is, unless he's on the pull, as dumb as a rock, generally rat-arsed and talking total bollocks with his mates ;-)

Dumbing down on a night out isn't a gender-based pursuit.

Yes, when you're with good friends you know well, you can seamlessly go back and forth between serious conversation and fun, goofing around conversation. But when you're around new people, and you want to have a good time, I think we (as a species) tend towards goofing around conversation. If I've been working a lot, a night out where I don't think Deep Thoughts is exactly what I want.

And for the record, I tend not to go into too much detail about my work unless I'm seriously prodded because, really, what I do is boring to most people.

So, my point: there are alternate explanations.

"Some reason" is that he projects confidence and high social status. IQ scores don't really enter into it.

Which was just confusing... there was this smart good looking girl, and she was hanging around acting thick.

Note that she was hanging out with him, not you, even though you would appreciate her intelligence. She's not acting dumb to attract men in general, she's acting dumb to attract men that she finds attractive.

  Pay more attention to girls. Men will behave they way women let them to.

In my experience women are more prone to claiming intelligence despite actual intelligence. Please be aware that I do not claim to be intelligent myself. In fact, I'm pretty darn stupid. It just makes it that much more apparent when I'm faced with such claims.

The article is a troll, here to elicit an emotional response that will sell a book.

Enter the strawman: "In my book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, I reveal that 15 to 18 per cent of under-12 girls in the United States now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick regularly; eating disorders are up, and self-esteem is down; and 25 per cent of young American women would rather win America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Even bright, successful, university-educated women say they'd rather be hot than smart. A Miami mother recently died from cosmetic surgery, leaving behind two teenagers."

Would the hysterical premise of the article hold true if you substituted common male gripes or practices? What percentage of boys aspire to be basketball or baseball players instead of whatever profession is deemed acceptable? How many young men would rather be football heroes than academics? How many would rather win a NASCAR race than win the Nobel Prize? Did a Miami father die of a heart attack because he was playing basketball at 45 in 100 degree heat?

It's easy and convenient to beat up strawmen and find a sexist boogeyman behind every perceived problem. Just don't lose sight of the fact that when you do that, you are dumbing things down.

Well, to put it drastically: biologically men are almost worthless. They can not produce babies. Hence women can make higher demands. Men have to bid for women (to carry their children) offering as much "worth" as they can. Nobody has to bid for men, because men are easily replaceable. Especially now that physical strength is not so important for survival anymore (we have guns).

In many species the female actually eats the male after sex for a nice protein boost. That is how useful men are.

(This is very tangential to the overall discussion, but) I'd say that practicing a team sport a lot around ages 8-15 is an excellent thing for a kid to do. It's good for fitness, for thinking on your feet, for working towards a team goal, and (if you really grok the game) for learning how to outsmart an opponent in a zero-sum situation.

So, when little Billy gets cut from the school team and his NBA dreams are shattered, it still will have been worthwhile. I'd vastly prefer that my kids aspire to be pro athletes than models.

If a woman makes a conscious decision to choose a career path or take time out of her career to raise children, for example, that is often perceived by some feminists as an example of the influence of a patriarchal society on women.

She always sat and watched the boys play baseball. One boy in particular caught her eye. He asked if she wanted to play and she jumped at the chance. She wanted to impress him, so she pitched the ball hard and fast. With each player she struck out, he seemed less and less happy. Finally, it came her turn to bat. By this point, he was hardly paying attention to her at all. She swung out. "Oops", she said, "I guess I'm not doing it right". His eyes perked up and he came over to talk to her. "You should hold the bat like this", he said, "and don't swing so hard". She smiled at him. She could bat just fine, of course, but it's important to have priorities.

I wish I had a copy because I'd love to read it again. I suspect that the consequences of treating girls like pretty dolls, rather than the explorers, creators and leaders that they can be, will be felt for a while still; but I hope a few decades from now I get to read this article again and laugh at how things have changed.

I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.

No, but a lot of things with regards to our current expected behaviour of genders is in fact social, not biological. A lot of 18th century male behaviour would today be regarded as effeminate. Red was once the color of choice for baby boys, and blue for girls.

>Artificially boosting the career success of women just causes misery on the long run for men

Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues. (Edit: Oops, that was needlessly confrontational and personal. Apologies for last sentence.)

>I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.

Perhaps, but as mentioned in the article, some girls as young as 5 think they are "too fat" and try to go on a diet. It is clearly an issue for some.

Sorry the blog talked silently about a lot of things, which squarely put the blame on people for a lot of mistakes which girls make personally.

I appreciate my nephew all the time when he wins a running race or plays cricket well. But that is never taken as something that can be used to be bad at academics nor does not speaking about he being good at studies permanently deter him from being good at studies.

If girls aren't good looking, how does that stop them from picking up a book and studying hard for an entrance exam. Or burning the midnight oil meeting a tough deadline? None of that has anything to do with beauty. That's something which has to come from within. Willingness to work hard and go to tough times is what brings success and that is irrespective of gender.

Somehow I find it difficult to accept that argument that saying somebody that they look good suddenly becomes the reason to be never good at anything else ever after.

It's the same conundrum facing parents of gifted kids, praising innate ability vs. hard work backfires in a spectacular way sooner or later and the child stops taking risks because they are afraid of being dumb.

As the pool of eligible husbands diminishes, the pool of men who simply can't get a wife grows and the disparity between the lucky and unlucky men increases. I'm sure you can see how this can generate social friction inside a nation?

I'm not making a moral statement either way here, just observing some forces that I believe do affect our lives.

I'm very open to the idea that I misunderstood your statement, but if I have characterized it correctly, then the flaw in it is that careers are not zero sum, and having additional capable, productive people in a society creates more wealth for the society as a whole than would otherwise have existed. This creates more opportunities for men as well as women.

Which I guess is my way of saying that any particular marriage happens between two individuals with their own strengths, weakenesses, and interests, not between two archtypes or statistical distributions. A successful marriage is only possible between two happy partners, and if a person will be unhappy without pursuing their other life goals along with their marriage, giving those life goals up for the sake of the marriage is still a losing strategy.

Personally, I think overgeneralization from the statistical majority is one of the signal problems of trying to talk about gender rules and guidelines -- though, admittedly, the opposite problem is nearly as common, which is refusing to acknowledge that there are such things as common tendencies and statistical majorities.

Intelligence withers if it isn't stimulated. The other traits are completely acquired.

Education is not only about career, but about preventing stupidity at large. See [1], for example, keeping Poe's law[2] in mind.

.

[1] http://imgur.com/MVZ2h

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law

This implies that biology is why in most cultures men have higher status potential than women. Not only does this ignore lots of horribly obvious things, but in turn implies an understanding of how physiology affects behavior. Besides current science barely having a rough idea of some hormones' areas of effect (eg low testosterone levels having some positive or negative effect on aggression), we can't begin to aggregate how the average minute physical differences between men and women would affect something as high level as behavior. We're still learning the physical effects. Trying to reason beyond that is irrelevant at best. Meanwhile, centuries of oppression and concrete, prescribed gender roles seem alot more insightful.

When related to dating, I like to call this "The Mystery Method Theory of Sexual Evolution", because most of the pervasive explanations about why the sexual market works the way it does is copied straight from Neil Strauss' book "The Game". A lot of these ideas are taken to be truth even though there is absolutely no scientific research behind them.

That we don't know how Hormones affect us is pretty irrelevant in that context. There are other forces at play, hormones are just mechanisms for changing behaviors, not the force that shapes behaviors.

It is also true, to some extent, what Steven Pinker says: "if I don't like what my genes want from me, they can go jump in the lake". But individuals acting against evolution does not change the big, global trend. In the long run those people die out - they might still have good lives, but not every lifestyle is sustainable at (web) scale.

Sorry, but I think in some cases we can infer how physiology affects behavior. For example if you are big and strong, you can act differently than if you are weak and small. You don't need to get down to hormone level to see such things.

So what? It's this same hubris which bucks against the biological directive to impregnate every fertile female that enters your field of vision. Since when do humans settle for the biological imperative?

Men only earn 43% of bachelor's degrees. Isn't the real issue that men are not valuing education as much as women? Smart women have a huge advantage at this point, especially in the tech industry. If they start a company, the press can't stop talking about it. Women are more comfortable dealing with women, and men are more interested in talking to women. If four people with equal intelligence and experience apply for a job, an attractive man, and attractive woman, an average man, and an average woman, the attractive woman is hired first and the average man last. Women are far more socially mobile than men, women are being better educated than men, and many people are still crusading against some perceived injustice.

Shouldn't you take this as evidence that there is something different in the way girls and boys are treated? In case you're not aware, eating disorders are horrifyingly prevalent among college-age women. [this statistic](http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/e...) reports 25% engage in purging, and in my anecdotal experience, that number could be an underestimate. It would stretch my imagination to think of purging as being a biologically rooted phenomenon, so I'd say it has to have societal roots. Saying that women are statistically more likely to go to college, and therefore can't complain about a society that profoundly fucks with their psychology is analogous to saying that blacks are statistically over-represented in sports, so they can't complain about a society that holds them back in so many other ways.

In order to look how fashion advertisers tell them they should look, women have to have extraordinarily low body fat.

In order to look how fashion advertisers tell them they should look, men have to have extraordinarily low body fat... and high muscle mass.

If you know anything about body building you'll know that the second is extremely hard to do. Building muscle mass while at the same time keeping body fat to extremely low levels is a rather unnatural thing to do, far more unnatural than just being skinny. Not only that, but it's not strictly dietary, it takes time and money to build that muscle mass.

So why do women have more eating disorders than men, who actually have a harder time achieving their "greek god" form?

My guess is women take what they see in advertising too seriously. The majority of guys in this world don't actually expect their women to look like that, and the standard reaction to women who demand that from their men is "fuck it".

Super models aren't the role model. Raymond is.

Look at action movies. Those are the roll models of men. Look at advertisements targeted towards men. Those are the roll models of men.

Of course as memory serves, the female lead of Everyone Loves Raymond is actually more out of shape than Raymond himself... But hell, how about the most popular woman on television? Oprah isn't exactly trim.

This is an awful, awful system. Men are valued on something that is in many respects healthy - physical fitness, ambition, mental progress. Whereas girls are valued on something superficial and damaging - thinness, "beauty". This is what the "beauty" industry does - capitalise on this desire like a shark and not only provide ways for girls to improve their looks, but actively perpetrate the myth that women need to look younger or slimmer or have 100% perfect skin. The beauty industry is a fucking disease.

I am thin, I can't call myself super good looking either. I am not very extrovert and not too much into sports.

But I can't use this as a reason to be bad at other things. Present ability, hygiene , looking good, neat and clean matter to both the genders. But if a person is not very attractive by natural look, that is no reason to not perform well in life by personal choice. That is not a reason, not to work hard, not to try, not to give your full.

Blaming things apart from oneself only goes so far. And doesn't help anybody.

Just because I sucked at sports, I can't use the same reason to be bad at programming.

Society's sense of your worth, and as a result your sense of self-worth is not tied into those physical characteristics.

This isn't a matter of how hard someone tries at life, this is a question on what basis society judges individuals by (and i should note, this is an emergent equilibrium. It's nudged this way and that, but now that it's driven by financial interests, it's hard to shift the equilibrium).

I have a friend who's 6'7". Invariably the first question he was asked when he met new people was "wow you're tall, do you play basketball?" He hates basketball. But society's perception of what he'd be good at was tied into his height. He can't change it, he didn't ask for it, and he certainly showed no interest or indication that he'd like to discuss basketball.

That's an outside force impinging on his sense of identity. Same goes for women and what they think society values. Some women play the game, double down and use it as a zero-sum weapon against other women to get ahead. Some don't have a choice, or the will, and just get trampled (by the first group of women).

But again, the difference is that you don't have to play this game. There are other games you can play, and society will accept you for it. Women don't get that choice. This is the game that has to be played, if they're to participate in society.

The world is a tough place. Its difficult out there for the mild hearted. But that's the case with all the genders. When I was not allowed cricket for my school team, I didn't take that as male oppression or something that should dumb me down for ever. Although the common perception at that time was, if you played well you are more likely to get a girlfriend at that directly cor related to being smart. Its just that I was meant to do something else. Which I did eventually and did pretty well.

Today I have trouble getting a bride for marriage(here in India these things matter a lot). But I know deep down within me, I may not be a alpha male among the pack, not very muscular, smart good looking and physically active. But for the kind of hard work I put in I will be a lot more richer than the alpha males.

In fact this happens all the time, The society is sure responsible for these sort of perceptions. But they become the reality only if we want to.

Now to all girls who reject me to settle with a alpha male, when you discover a decade later I'm more financially rich. Please don't call that women's oppression. That just making wrong decisions and paying for it later.

I can't show sympathy to any person who can actually work hard and do something, but just doesn't and keeps blaming every outside reason for why they can't.

Looks, poverty, opportunities etc etc all buzz words matter. But none of them matter more than personal will to rise beyond, get moving and do some work.

Sitting on time and opportunities and letting them go by as time flies over the years. And then at the end of an era blaming 'looks' and other stuff for failure doesn't deserve any sympathy.

I would rather show sympathy towards people who are disabled physically or other wise. But perfectly healthy people giving reasons as to why they couldn't do what they wanted, while they could actually have by work don't deserve any mercy.

So, the fact that you found a game you can play and win at, justifies the mistreatment of people losing at other games? ;)

I appreciate your point, and i agree that people who are strong-willed enough can break the game, but that still doesn't change the fact that they're expected to play. The fact that society values different things at different stages of life doesn't mean that the game that you're good at is any fairer than the games you were bad at when society valued youth, vitality and ability to hit and/or catch a ball. All that's different is that you're winning :P

I dig that the internet is all about flying your freak-flag, but there are still common standards that society expects you to adhere to. When you go grocery shopping, or when you pass your neighbors on your way to work, or when you're out with your friends and you've got to deal with the bouncers at a club, or a bar tender at a pub. All of these places have expected APIs, and if you behave out of their bounds you have to do on the fly content negotiation, and some people will be tolerant and accept such negotiations, and other people are just going to fire back "request denied".

I agree to an extent that we control how much we let that get to us. But there are a lot of things that go into our mental health and stability. If your family is also constantly haranguing you about the same shit you get from everyone else, you have no safe quarter to be yourself (again except maybe the internets). That's not really a healthy/sane way to live.

I'm not Indian, but the Chinese side of my family totally thinks that my worth (both as an individual and as a representative of my family) is attached to my financial stability and whether i've got a "real job" or not. Let me tell you, i have gotten a lot less flack now that i'm not freelancing. They were also weirded out that i got married prior to reaching that point of financial stability. But that in a way is the benefit of being the son of immigrants. The things that society judges me by are different from the metrics that my family judges me by. That's something that people like me can play to my advantage, or for some people, it means that they get the worst of both worlds, they can't win either in society's perception (and stay true to their family) or visa versa.

The fundamental question is how optional each of these games are. I don't take it for granted that they are optional. I think that taking the position that women have a choice to play the game is a difficult one for me to accept.

This is something that even I agree, Here in India a lot of women are helpless and clearly driven by social pressures. Often under poverty and caste obligations.

But we are not talking about that section of women here. We are talking of girls(in the article) who in very clear conscious have the choice to spent their time, money and resources in a particular way. But don't take the best way out, and take the wrong choice.

This is utmost bad decision making, not a social problem. Otherwise every other social persuasion or thought can become your life problem.

By the way, there are beauty products targeted at men, too.

Also, telling somebody they are pretty does NOT imply that you consider anorexic looks to be pretty. In fact, it might give that person a good feeling about herself which just might counter the urge to become anorexic.

The question is not whether you can appreciate someone's physical characteristics. The question is whether you should appreciate someone's physical characteristics first, foremost, and most importantly above all of their other characteristics.

The fact that there is a general rise in anorexia nervosa amongst all genders, is not to say that men in American society suffer equally with women (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorexia_nervosa#Epidemiology ).

More over, the notion that complimenting someone on their appearance will some how coax them out of a psychiatric disorder is naïve at the very least, and destructively ignorant at worst.

Anorexia nervosa is about appearance. If you give an anorexic any indication about their physical appearance you are reinforcing their condition. Complements are taken as an indication that starving themselves (or purging in the case of bulimics) works, and that they must continue the behavior to continue to receive complements. Attempts to inform them that they look unattractive (even if it's due to the fact that they're starving themselves) will be taken as an indication that they have not sufficiently starved themselves into attractiveness. You can not logic a person out of an eating disorder. Psychiatric disorders can not be reasoned with, and attempting to do so really does just court disaster (would you attempt to reason with an alcoholic?).

I sincerely urge you to read up on psychiatric disorders and the way that they are managed, it's a really challenging subject, and common wisdom about them is usually incorrect.

By telling somebody they are pretty I am also not telling them that it's the "first, foremost, and most important above all of their other characteristics". You are creating a straw man here.

Of course I don't think telling somebody they are pretty will cure their disorders. But it can make somebody's day nevertheless.

You don't get off that lightly. I am not straw-manning your argument, and i was not the one to raise the issue of eating disorders.

My point is that you are ignoring context. Telling someone that they are pretty is not just a one off event that you are offering to another person, to be held in a pristine platonic form. It is an event that takes place in the gestalt of their daily interactions, and more specifically within the context of their interactions with you (and/or people like you).

Is a complement about their attractiveness the first thing that they are greeted with? Does their attractiveness have bearing on the social context at hand? (in a work context? in a bar? at a conference discussing technical issues?)

> Of course I don't think telling somebody they are pretty will cure their disorders.

Really? Cause this sure makes it sounds like you do. At the very least it makes you sound really insensitive to the causes of anorexia nervosa and the factors that go into reenforcing them:

> Also, telling somebody they are pretty does NOT imply that you consider anorexic looks to be pretty. In fact, it might give that person a good feeling about herself which just might counter the urge to become anorexic.

So no matter what I do, I am an insensitive prick. See why I don't like your logic?

As I said in my other posts, I think there might be deeper issues behind anorexia than what you make them out to be. I really don't think it is about looks, that is just a vehicle.

Also, the girl from the article was not anorexic or at least the blogger doesn't mention it.

I know it can hurt to feel ugly, though, so I don't think it is a bad thing to be reminded now and then that you are not ugly (at least not to everyone).

About pretty little girls: I was taught in biology class that babies are actually born to look cute (it is called "Kindchenschema" in German, other mammals also have it). It is a natural reaction to want to care for cute little humans, and it makes sense for little humans to look cute.

Sorry I did not understand how you are not creating a strawman. I think you are thinking way too much about all this. It seems important to me to act naturally with children to some extent, and not having to go through a endless mental checklist before reacting to them.

"Believe it or not, anorexia isn’t really about food and weight—at least not at its core. Eating disorders are much more complicated than that. The food and weight-related issues are symptoms of something deeper: things like depression, loneliness, insecurity, pressure to be perfect, or feeling out of control. Things that no amount of dieting or weight loss can cure."

Of course blaming it on beauty ideals conveyed in the media is an easy way out for relations of anorexic persons, who then don't have to confront the real issues.

Also, this quote shows a big misunderstanding:

"Things that no amount of dieting or weight loss can cure."

Nobody claims that weight loss can cure anoreixa. Anorexia is basically the irrational desire for weight loss. Being cured of anorexia essentially involves stopping ones extreme irrational weight loss behaviour, and it is self evident that no amount of weight loss can cure this.

I think you misread that last quote. What they say is that the anorexic persons are not actually striving for some ideal weight that would make them satisfied if they would reach it. So they say precisely that it is not some specific beauty ideal they strive for.

They only wrote it like that because that is what it might look like from the perspective of the anorexic person (if only I could use so much weight, I would be OK).

Anyway, I think we have settled this as far as amateur knowledge permits.

That means that when offered a choice between problems that allow them to get a lot of right answers vs a challenging problem, kids that were praised on their intelligence chose the easy problems (so they wouldn't look dumb) and kids praised on their hard work picked a problem where they would actually learn something and have to work hard. Also the ones praised for their intelligence interpreted failure to mean they weren't smart. The ones that were praised for hard work thought they didn't work hard enough and tried harder.

So maybe we wouldn't be doing them such a favor by teaching them to care about good looks instead of hard work, because when they fail they will think that they are too ugly and have bad self esteem. Praising them for something they have control over and can actually change (such as their education, interests or hard work) would be much better.

(you can read the article I skimmed for this answer "Intelligence praise can undermine motivation and performance" https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/sys... )

Girls might hear positive messages about being smart, creative, independent, etc. from all sorts of well intentioned sources, but there isn't the same sort of powerful, all pervasive weight attached to them as the message that being attractive is important.

Appearance is the 'common standard' of value for a female in many societies. I think that is the real problem.

Anyway I will think about how norms can influence the situation and maybe adapt my opinion accordingly.

Both men and women should care, in detail, about their aesthetics when at work. They should be healthy and fit, and, unless they are very sure they have the fashion sense to get away with interesting clothes, be conservatively and neatly dressed. Anything less smacks of imcompetence, poor organisation skills, lack of respect for others (who do have to suffer looking at you), and laziness.

But I think we're talking more about attitude and mindset than actual looks.

If I suffer when I speak with people that don't agree with my beliefs - is it good enough reason for them to convert to my beliefs? How is it different than requiring people to respect you esthetical sense by complying with it?

If you carefully design your aesthetic, even if it does not fit with my personal style preferences, then that will be fine. Just show that you thought about it ;)

I'll just leave that there. (Not saying I agree with it completely -- but she partly has a point)

Or, rather, whenever I see these self-help/express yourself better/empower yourself authors they all look very attractive and poised. Female and Male.

Which annoys me. The advice in this case is good, and it doesn't feel entirely hypocritical because she admits an initial instinct to praise good looks that she has to suppress. But some of her other stuff seems less so (i.e. she is selling herself as "look, I am attractive, smiling, happy! Read my books to find out why" - and then the books are [apparently] about getting over things like beauty..)

This is simply a small exposure of society's big secret: ANYONE can look attractive, even stunning, given a professional hair stylist, wardrobe person, makeup artist, and photographed properly under proper lighting, and then photoshopped.

All those "beautiful" people on TV? Almost without exception, at home they look just like you or me.

BUT DON'T TELL ANYONE! Western capitalism might come crashing down around us ;)

You can't change their bone structure, or the shape of their nose.

You can improve them, and make them look as best as they can be by photoshopping or makeupping flawless skin but that's the most of it. You can make them look evocative with lighting, and setting but that doesn't change their genuine nature.

All things being equal, pretty people will only look prettier in photography and still much prettier than normal people given the same treatment.

  25 per cent of young American women would rather win 
  America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize.

Hate to say it, but what if they are? Lots of studies show that pretty people get further in life.

Not that I mind girls being interested in other things, but perhaps the ideology should be kept in check.

Even if a girl doesn't care about her looks, other people will, and she has to learn to deal with it.

Are we to defy natural selection?

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio

Hell yes. Have you ever been to a hospital?

Defying natural selection is what makes us human beings.

In a sense, all use of technology raises us above our biology. In another sense of course, all our technological innovations are only a product of our naturally selected abilities, higher cognition, opposable thumbs etc. However, when you take this view, it renders the whole point moot, because it merges our higher social behaviours with our innate ones and erases the whole distinction.

If a comment piques your interest, or simply your curiosity, Google Scholar can provide support (or disproof) readily and to a much greater, and especially more broad ranging, extent than is possible in a comment. And you will find a citation quicker than waiting for the original commenter to provide one, even if the person actually replies with a citation rather than just ignoring you.

If you can't find support, then that is a good point to bring up in a reply.

ADDED: Please note that I am not against people providing links to supporting information. The best way to get an upvote from me is to provide a link to an interesting paper or site.

You know, by saying "citation needed" what you actually say is "I don't really care for your opinion". If I wasn't so desperate to procrastinate, I should just ignore you. Why waste energy to educate you if you are obviously not interested in learning?

> by saying "citation needed" what you actually say is "I don't really care for your opinion".

You're saying "I don't care for your random opinion you could have pulled out of your ass with no correspondence to the real world, please demonstrate that you didn't just make that up."

When you make a claim that you want to be taken seriously, cite your source. It's not hard, and it's sure as hell not anyone else's job. If you don't cite a source, people will reasonably assume that you have none, and disregard what you're saying. That's fine if you don't care, but I repeat, if you want to be taken seriously, cite your source.

That job is yours and yours alone, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, only you can cite your source because only you actually know what source you used.

Secondly, from a utilitarian efficiency perspective, if it takes X minutes to look up and post the source, then the total time spent when you cite your source is X, but if you don't, and everyone has to look it up themselves, the total time spent is X*n, where n is the number of people who read your post. For values of n greater than one, this is dumb. Do the sourcing once, to avoid duplication of effort.

If your first reaction to whatever I say is "you pulled that out of your ass" then yes, I think you don't have much respect towards me and not much interest in what I have to say, and I don't feel inclined to waste energy to educate you. I am not asking you to believe me, merely to consider ("ponder") what I say. If you are not willing to do that, maybe you should talk to somebody else instead.

The point about efficiency is moot. A lot of people might already know the fact, and otherwise the first who expends the energy to do the research could just post it. On the other hand posting lots of sources could be irrelevant and a waste of time for the people who are already informed.

Well, in a 1-on-1 conversation, the value of n is 1, so, consistent with what I said, that would be dumb. In fact in a real-time face to face conversation, the time taken to cite the source is more like X(n+1), because while you're looking up the source, the listeners are likely to be just watching you look up the source, so you're using their time as well. Internet comment thread != real life conversation.

> If your first reaction to whatever I say is "you pulled that out of your ass" then yes, I think you don't have much respect towards me

My first reaction to an unsupported claim is "You could have pulled that out of your ass", because you could have. And no, I don't have that much respect for random strangers on the internet, because I don't know you, I don't have any reason to believe you have any relevant expertise, I don't know your motives, I can't observe your body language, tone and facial expressions, which would normally help me tell if a person knows what they're talking about. I have nothing to go on, other than what you write, and if what you write has no support, I can't assume there is support for what you write.

> The point about efficiency is moot. A lot of people might already know the fact

If people already know something, there's no point in posting it. The only people for whom reading your post is worthwhile are people who don't already know it. They are your audience, and they are the people you are neglecting.

> On the other hand posting lots of sources could be irrelevant and a waste of time for the people who are already informed.

You just stick in a link to the source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink), it doesn't really get in anyone's way. If they're curious about the source, they click the link.

I think you expect something else from HN or this discussion than I do. I think it can be helpful to remind other people of facts in a discussion, lest they get carried away. Not every human exchange has to consist of novelties.

If I do maths, I might remind myself that 2+2=4. I have known it before, but chose to recall that knowledge at opportune moments. In discussions, other people can help with the recalling, it does not imply that the other parties were ignorant before. It is just about adding another perspective.

"I have nothing to go on, other than what you write"

In such situation I tend to resort to common sense. Does it seem plausible ("have merit") what the other person is saying? If yes, I might remember it as an interesting thought (not as established fact), or if it seems useful if true, might take further steps (Google) to verify it.

It's not that hard, and you don't have to insult the discussion partner.

Here is another idea: "That sounds interesting, do you by chance remember the source for that?" See the difference? But hey, it is the internet, there is no human on the other end.

However, what I have been arguing against are your arguments against providing citations, and your arguments against asking for citations, with both of which I take issue. Asking for citations rudely is wrong, but asking for citations in general is reasonable, and providing citations generally is a good idea.

But even in that case, he's already a real person I know of, a person who is known to be pretty intelligent, a person whose motivations I can have a reasonable guess at, a person who I know needs to be careful about what they say in public fora. Each of these things put Steve Jobs a little ahead of 'random stranger on the internet' for reliability.

That is just the thing. Your default assumption about an unknown person seems to be that he or she is not intelligent and doesn't have anything worthwhile to say. That might be rational, but I don't think it is very conductive for human exchange.

Another thing: why should I be interested in convincing you that I have something worthwhile to say? What is in it for me?

My default assumption is that the person is of average intelligence. Jobs is of substantially above average intelligence, as demonstrated by having founded and run an extremely successful technology company. That puts him ahead.

> why should I be interested in convincing you that I have something worthwhile to say? What is in it for me?

I've addressed this before as well, when I said "if you want to be taken seriously". If you don't care about the opinions of people who read your posts, that's fine. If you do care, cite your sources so people can tell that what you're saying corresponds to reality. Still, if you really aren't concerned about what people think when they read your comments, why not just write them in a text file? Why publish things on the net if you don't want people to think you're saying something worthwhile?

It is also not as easy: how does pointing to another random person on the internet (my citation) make me a more credible random person? Even studies by actual scientists can be bogus. How am I to know which sources you trust?

Also, I made a claim that was very easy to verify ("there are lots of studies on topic x"). Should I also provide sources if I claim "the sky is blue"?

"Hello, I'm Phil" "Hi, I'm Maya"

Then just stare at one another until another adult speaks.

But when you see someone for the first time appearances are the first thing you notice... unless you can read minds.

Looks are important. Both men and women keep up appearances. Furthermore, you know how smart you are, and no amount of telling you your appearance is a great asset is going to make you dumber.

Yet when talking to boys, people generally don't say - "Oh, what a handsome boy you are, and how nicely you dress!" as an opening phrase. We don't sell these kind of tshirts to boys: http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/jc-penny-t-shirt-now-pulled...

>Looks are important. [...] no amount of telling you your appearance is a great asset is going to make you dumber.

No, but it tells you what you should spend your time and energy on improving. Again, something we only do for girls.

I agree it's not symmetrical, but I do hear this kind of thing directed at male children pretty frequently, especially in the relatives/family-friends type setting. "Oh what a handsome young man you have!" isn't uncommon at all. Though I do tend to associate it with older women, for some reason; at least as a young lad myself, I think it's a comment I heard mostly from older aunts.

Young girls hear how pretty their dress or hair or smile is from just about anyone upon introduction. They are put into ballet classes where they learn to act pretty, into girl scouts where they do traditional arts and crafts rather than the camping and leadership that boy scouts focuses on, and are given play makeup until around ten or so when they are encouraged to learn how to put real makeup on. Many young girls know what dieting is, and start doing so in intermediate school- before they have even stopped growing. Young girls are supposed to behave appropriately as such, while loud, rude, and overly rambunctious behavior from boys are tolerated as "boys will be boys". All of this is anecdotal from my own experiences, but I believe to be true in many areas of the US.

The extent to which young girls are raised to be pretty is on a completely different level of young boys.

You'd have to make everyone ignore beauty to disincentivize being pretty for girls and that is going to be pretty impossible.

As more girls start to realize their independence from men (because of education now opened up fully for women) the emphasis on beauty will naturally start eroding away as they realize they can do other things to support themselves and get what they want in life.

The whole 'ooh what beautiful daughters you have' thing continues well on into the teens, if not beyond.

To be honest, I think this whole debate is a generalization based on a post-victorian western culture where all the frivolities concerning male appearance have died. Previously, men--at least the aristocratic sort--used to wear make up, tights, wigs and high heels all at once but now only women do.

> Again, something we only do for girls.

It's not as if all men let themselves go. It takes work, even for a man, to not become fat, smelly, and overly hairy.

I think the underlying cause for women to focus too much on appearances is because it is much easier for women, in current society, to marry into wealth and/or depend on a man. I think this has a much larger influence on women focusing more on their appearances than behavioral conditioning through constant complimenting.

The compliment is a signal. If the person is pretty and you say that, then it's a proper signal. If you tell a child they are smart because they did some random thing, it's not necessarily a proper signal. Sending a wrong signal is bad. In the case of telling a child s/he's smart when s/he's not, the child may not try as hard anymore because s/he may wrongfully think s/he's smart enough already... In the case of telling someone s/he's pretty, as long as it's true, there's nothing wrong with it because being pretty can actually have practical advantages. It is then up to the person to choose whether to leverage his/her physical assets or his/her mental assets to get what s/he wants in life.

Also the point on women seeking beauty to ensure the get the alpha male from the pack is very true.

Most men I know do little more than bathe regularly, comb their hair for a few seconds, and brush their teeth. Their wardrobes consist of a three or four pairs of shoes, some jeans, t-shirts, and a few dress pants, dress shirts, and ties for more formal events. They could probably replace their entire closet for a couple hundred dollars.

Most women I know spend time each morning on a shower, blow drying and styling their hair, and makeup. All in all somewhere between forty minutes and an hour. Reasonable quality makeup is expensive. Foundation? $30-40 Eye pencil? $10-20 Mascara, eye shadow, concealer, lip pencil, lipstick, blush. A women's makeup collection alone may cost almost as much to replace as most of my guy friend's entire wardrobe. Their closet? Many more shoes, skirts, dresses, jeans, bras, shirts. Women's clothes are in general more expensive than men's clothes.

The point? Women do much much more to keep up appearances than men. Saying "both men and women keep up appearances" is almost laughable.

Its like the TV channels competing for TRP's. The demand for a something good exists, but the fact is that the demand is fueled by the content providers and not viewers.

Now on a larger scale, the society doesn't dumb down girls. Its just the mere biological reasons prevent them from doing so many jobs that are common for men. Women have higher social pressures, physically and biologically they have more limitations when compared to men. They have bigger social pressures to deal with. All in all, this counts for most of the reasons why women don't get the incremental learning at the same rate as men.

Now come to look at the other part of it, there is huge difference between looking good/presentable and wild chase for beauty. Cosmetic products exist both for men and women, but their nature differ. Apart from your usual set of deodorants and usual kit et al, you don't mascara or lipstick for men. Not that such a thing is not desirable for men, but its just that men won't chase it at all.

Ultimately you truly get what you want.

    Not that such a thing is not desirable for men, but its just that men won't chase it at all.

Absolutely. They are working overtime on this one. Recently, India has seen a sudden surge in cosmetics for men. http://www.google.co.in/search?q=male+cosmetics+india+filety...

"Don't tell girls how intelligent they are".

Because then the very analogical argument will be used to say - telling girls they are intelligent is making them under perform in other areas.

In short, if you are not ready work hard and do something on yourself by your work alone. There are plenty of reasons you can use to justify what you are.

See e.g. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-...

The key here is to take what is good and beneficial out of a talk and just move on.

Else each social persuasion and thought can ruin your life everytime one hears some one speaking.

The mindset stuff is a scientific result, it's not "after" anything.

Maybe you think you are so strong-willed and independent that you are immune to this effect, but however dumb you feel it is, the majority of people (and kids especially) apparently are not.

Beautiful faces are those that wear–

It matters little if dark or fair–

Whole-souled honesty printed there.

Beautiful eyes are those that show,

Like crystal panes where hearth-fires glow,

Beautiful thoughts that burn below.

Beautiful lips are those whose words

Leap from the heart like songs of birds,

Yet whose utterance prudence girds.

Beautiful hands are those that do

Work that is earnest and brave and true,

Moment by moment the long day through.

Beautiful feet are those that go

On kindly ministries to and fro,

Down lowliest ways if God wills it so.

Beautiful shoulders are those that bear

Ceaseless burdens of homely care,

With patient grace and daily prayer.

Beautiful twilight at set of sun,

Beautiful goal with race well won,

Beautiful rest with work well done.

Beautiful graves where grasses creep,

Where brown leaves fall, where drifts lie deep,

Over worn-out hands! Ah, beautiful sleep.

–Ellen P. Allerton

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/how-to-talk-to-litt...

Trying to change a process that has evolved us into what we are is going to take time. Of course not all aspects of evolution are perfect, but this - favouring beauty over ugliness/fatness is pretty darn effective.

Without competition, we would all be slobs - no scratch that - unicellular organisms.

So, in conslusion - we are who we are - whether you want to fight and change that is your wish, but don't go preaching to others about what we should or should not do. I'm going to go tell all the little girls around me how cute they are. Maybe not at the same time though, lest I get mistaken for a paedophile. :P

Moreover, if you want to make Darwinian arguments, one could equally well say that without competition we'd all be as stupid as amoebas. I don't see where you get support for appearance being more favored than intelligence.

Furthermore, why do you focus on either of these attributes being genetic at all? If we assume that they are, then it shouldn't matter whether we encourage people to care about either their intelligence or appearance. But clearly there is a huge amount of nurture in both aspects, so the genetic aspect is just a red herring.

The real question is whether encouraging girls to focus on appearance over anything else is helpful or healthy.

Appearance is almost always the first thing you notice about someone. I'm not sure pretending otherwise is especially practical or will really help much in the long run.

Sort of trollish? Maybe, but it also is true that 'good looks' show, and have immediate 'consequences', whereas the intelligence that's innate to us doesn't show, and the real challenge of intelligence maybe is to find a way to do something with it. Something that makes life meaningful. Which takes constant work, self-confidence, and daring.

High intelligence is not necessary to survive and reproduce successfully even in today's world which explains why most women (and probably most - but less men) would rather be "hot" than "smart". In general, during the reproductive phase of their lives (and long after that as well), women focus advertising their reproductive health, and men - their status.

High intelligence however is key to acquiring status - which is much more important for men than for women which in my mind explains why more men than women are interested in being smart.

Look for example at Neolithic figurines... women with large bellies, ample bosoms, wide hips. That's not what's plastered all over magazines and TV.

Side note: there's an interesting theory in Ann Sinnott's Breastfeeding Older Children about fertility / female symbols and their relation to patriarchy and our 'progress' from nomadic hunter gatherers. The theory goes that as we settled down into working the land / raising animals, where women were obviously needed more, they became less valued for child birth / child rearing and consequently these fertility symbols not only got slimmer, but started to be replaced by a greater quantity of male / phallic symbology.

Only vaguely related to the topic at hand but hugely interesting (to me, anyway!)

Contrast that to today, where having wealth means having the disposal to hire personal trainers, time to exercise, and not having to eat processed foods. Women of wealth will typically go to lengths to look a certain way (tan, skinny, etc.). I know that wealth is different from being in good reproductive health, but being wealthy definitely plays an important role in determining mates. As the definition of wealth changed, so did men's interest in women.

Sorry about the lack of citations, but it was a while ago and from a secondhand source, so I would take it with a grain of salt. It does sound reasonable though.

Anecdotal evidence: I've been told that a lot of females get more attention from males when they use gadgets.

Well, that certainly fails to explain the Woodabe.

I think the reason why femininity is looked down is the economic models of the last 150 years which have favored science over art, rationality over irrationality and utility over authenticity. I think the world needs a second romantic era to truly appreciate the feminine aspects of beauty/creativity/genuineness.

I would also like to stress that it is not really about looks, only, but about being always "in character" for the woman, which is pretty and dumb, true, but would be much better described as "good marrying material".

Finally, please, anyone who cared about this, check out "Ada Lovelace Day", to happen this year a month from today. http://findingada.com/about/

The author is fighting an uphill battle on this one, but I appreciate her ideal. Never underestimate the power your words have on shaping a child's life.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2111651

> "Way before age 5, the little girls realize that they are small versions of Mommy and NOT Daddy. They know in absolute terms that they are a GIRL and NOT a BOY.

Since their mommy was happy being a mommy, the little girls want to be like Mommy and on the 'mommy track'.

By about age 18 months, little girls are already masters at eliciting positive emotions from adults, MUCH better than boys. The girls are also MUCH better at reading emotions than boys. Facial expressions and eye contact are part of how the girls read and elicit emotions; other ways are to 'act' (they are MUCH better at acting than the boys) cute, meek, and sweet and to be pretty. Since being pretty lets them do better eliciting positive emotions, they love pretty dresses with ruffles and ribbons. So, they are in a 'virtuous circle': They act sweet, elicit positive emotions in an adult, e.g., father, grandfather, uncle, get a gift of a pretty dress, wear the dress, elicit even more positive emotions, get even more pretty dresses, white bedroom furniture, patent leather shoes, cute stuffed animals, etc.

Having to act like a boy or be treated like a boy, instead of like a girl, would be terrifying to them.

So, in their first years, such little girls, to be on the 'mommy track' want to play with dolls and not Erector sets, want to work at being pretty and not how to hot rod a car, want to learn how to bake a cake and not how to plug together a SATA RAID array.

Give such a girl a toy truck and she will know instantly that the toy is 'for boys' and will avoid it as a big threat.

Generally, from a little after birth and for nearly all their lives, human females are MUCH more emotional than human males. So, they pay a LOT of attention to emotions, both theirs and others'.

One of a human female's strongest emotions is to get security from membership in, and praise, acceptance, and approval from, groups, especially groups of females about their own age. That is, they are 'herd animals'. Gossip? It's how they make connections with others in the herd. Why do they like cell phones so much? For more gossip. Why pay so much attention to fashion? To 'fit in' with the herd.

In such a herd, in most respects the females try hard to be like the 'average' of the herd and not to stand out or look different. [An exception is when a female wants to lead her herd, e.g., go to Clicker, follow the biographies, get the one for the Astors, and look at Ms. Astor and her herd of 400.] Well, as long as human females with good parenting are on the 'mommy track', and the human race will be nearly dead otherwise, the 'average' of the herd will emphasize the 'mommy track', dolls, looking pretty, cakes, and clothes and not Erector sets, hot rodding cars, or building RAID arrays.

When it comes to a college major, any human female 18 months or older will recognize in a milli, micro, nano second that her herd believes that mathematics, physical science, engineering, and computer science are subjects for boys and NOT girls. Instead the girl subjects are English literature, French, music, acting, 'communications', sociology, psychology, nursing, maybe accounting, and K-12 education. By college the girls have been working 24 x 7 for about 16 years to fit in with the herd of girls, and their chances of leaving the herd in college to major in computer science are slim to none.

Don't expect this situation to change easily or soon: Mother Nature was there LONG before computer science, and, as we know, "It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.". Or, to get girls to major in computer science, "You are dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand.". Having women pursuing computer careers give girls in middle school lectures on computer careers will stick like water on a duck's back -- not a chance. Nearly all the girls will just conclude that at most such careers are for girls who are not doing well fitting into the herd of girls, are not very good socially, don't get invited to the more desirable parties, don't get the good dates, are not very pretty, and are not in line to be good as wives and mommies. By middle school, the girls have already received oceans of influences about 'female roles', and changing the directions these girls have selected and pursued so strongly for so long is hopeless..."

I do know when we talk of women in the military, or ones burning midnight oil in some software company chasing a tough deadline we talking of exceptions and outliers. Not all women want to be that, not all want physically stressful jobs which demand a lot of endurance. Not all want emotionally demanding jobs. Not all want to be in a place where working midnights and weekends is inevitable. Vast majority of them are just happy with current roles.

If so why should the whole majority of womenfolk change just for a few outliers?

I think there are big changes coming up everywhere.

There are so many games one can play, which at least give a thrill, but that doesn't mean it's satisfying for life. It's like junk food. I suppose that's what much marketing does.

Society is not an intentional result - it's the unintentional result of sometimes (mostly not) intentional actions. Most of the time our bodies are on auto-pilot.