Male/female brain differences dictate the predominance of men and women in certain professions!

Ralphy1

Ralphy1

Well-known Member
No matter the efforts to get more women into engineering and more men into elementary education it just hasn't produced the desired results. Men go for more of the math and science and women go for the early development and nurturing. This is a given that some just will never accept...
 

I think women are naturally nurturers, and thus excel at any job that includes the care of children (with obvious exceptions, of course). Men are a bit more ham-fisted and, unfortunately in today's climate, are not trusted with children.

As for the "manly" professions - aren't there quite a few female scientists, mathematicians and so on?
 
According to the research you are right, especially in regard to women, but men are still wanted to work with young children as good men can model male behavior...
 

Ralphy1 said:
According to the research you are right, especially in regard to women, but men are still wanted to work with young children as good men can model male behavior...
Click to expand...

I would imagine any "good man" in his right mind would run screaming from such professions ... at least I would. :(
 
Once again there are exceptions to the rule. Judith Polgar is a chess grandmaster but female grandmasters are rare. Further, the law can be highly verbal and women are much more verbal than men. In fact, one study showed that men thought women talked too much and women thought men talked too little...
 
I'm not sure how much is "hard wired" and how much is simply cultural.. I excelled in math and science in grade school, consistently scoring #1 in my class in the Standardized tests.. But somehow, around puberty I and most girls were given the silent message that girls weren't supposed to be good in those things. We weren't supposed to be able to compete in math and sciences... and the boys ZOOMED way ahead. It was unspoken, but one would have had to be completely oblivious to NOT pick it up. By the time we were in High school... Girls seldom received guidance counseling and if they did, they were funneled into the more "female" professions of teaching, nursing, secretay, and first and foremost... wife and mother.. I should have gone to Med school, but blew my chance by getting married way to young. I did eventually go into nursing.. but again... a pale second to my real potential. It's better now for females... but still not on par with males.
 
Really, my son ran at nine months, talked at a year. Spoke complete language at two and a half, has not stopped talking since.
works in a supervisory position, where he communicates all day long. Kissed the blarney stone, he romanced it! He has

excellent orienteering skills, spacial concepts etc, degree in psychology in a university which taught it as a science, loves

technology, but wants to work with people. Currently, he is working on his first science fiction fantasy novel. He is a dungeon

master in D and D games. Plays airsoft. High energy like his mother. Very empathetic. Better people skills than I. Loves his cats as children.His wife has a scientific mind.
 
Very true about the "funneling" in school. Even as late as the mid-seventies, my high school - which until then was exclusively male - took in a few girls and created two "majors" for them - fashion design and home economics. None of the girls entered chemistry or electronics.

It's probably different now ... I hope ...
 
It is different now but the results are not much different. Once the cultural pressures had been removed the male/female differences are apparent, and once again anecdotal stories are nice but belie the reality...
 
It is difficult to overcome generations/centuries of stereotyping in one generation. In University, female engineering students

are often derided by their peers, many female scientists leave academia to pursue careers in the private sector because of the old boy era prejudices that still exist. Even female doctors do not have an equal path. Let us not totally concentrate on statistics

which can easily be manipulated, and instead offer an open playing field for women to excel in whatever field they show promise. Who cares if more men have better scientific minds, let us stop throwing road blocks against the women who have

mathematical and scientific genius. Remember the American housewife who solved a mathematical riddle that had stumped the pros? Wonder what her life may have been like under a less male dominated society? Grade school girls often excel in

math and science, this drops off sharply in adolescence. Interesting. If the stats are true and seventy percent of males score higher on the so called scientific mathematical scale, what about the remaining thirty percent of women who score well? Where


is the push to help them fulfill their potential? While discrimination exists in academia against equal opportunity for their own female scientific colleagues, and schools still promote boys over girls (did a paper on it once) in scientific mathematical

teaching, what do we expect? I cannot do geometry to save my life, but can do arithmetic in my head, aced philosophy, algebra, and behavioural psychology aka rat psychology. So what? Proves nothing. My son is a very good chess player, I prefer

mah Jong. Many different types of pattern recognition, many women ace at logic, and interior design, which is all about balance and harmony-- mathematical concepts, we need to change our thinking, remember the female codebreakers of WW2? I lack

direction sense, but have an excellent sense of time. It all balances out. A century ago women were still fighting to vote. Let us achieve parity, then count coup. For now the game is still run by white privileged older men. Pardon my skepticism if I think the deck is stacked.
 
The brain research that has been done is conclusive that our brains are different. For example, the corpus colosseum between the hemispheres, which is the connective tissue, is much more extensive in women, which might account for particular attributes, such as reading faces and body language, much better than men...
 
Honestly, are some educated men still unaware how unequal the playing field still is? I had to work twice as hard to get my

graduate degree as my male counterparts, and had a PHD friend (male) shred my 'scientific' thesis three times to make it misogyny proof He walked me through my defence until I could do it in my sleep.lol . Fortunately, one

of the judging panel was a woman of impeccable credentials, chair of the dept, otherwise, I may have been rejected. not only was I female, but heaven forfend, attractive? Gaaaaah. Cute little girls should go home and bake cookies!!!!!
 
I am with you QS. I was working with the available stats, questionable though they are, pointing out the lack of parity exists in opportunity even if these dubious wave curve crapology is correct. My friends tease me, and call me a mentat, must be

referring to my ability to make needlework men? Lolol Old boys network wants to keep it's power, and control the glass ceiling forever, good luck with that! Dinosaur thinking, doomed to extinction.
 
Now, now, that was prevalent in the past. But brain research was being done, and some women were conducting it, Marion Diamond, for example...
 
Not patronizing, just pointing out that our individual histories should not get in the way of the research. Our life experiences can cloud our our opinions. A good way to look at it is one I heard a long time ago when an administrator was making decisions on what curriculum male and female students should be encouraged to follow. He was asked if his decisions were based upon personal or professional opinions. The room fell silent as this truly exposed the truth of what was going on. The administrator never read a professional journal and was locked in the past of his own upbringing...
 
My sister and now her daughter both excelled in these areas. My sister stayed at the top of her class in the High School of Science, was swayed to a different field for a bit because of a volleyball scholarship but eventually transferred to an IT school. My niece has an engineering degree. Now me, that's another subject all together, my brain doesn't like math but still did pretty well when I could stay focused.
 

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