This is a spin off the “is it just me” thread. Well, my pet peeve is women in science

Bean: So you see, about 25% of new physics graduates are women, with these rough statistics. The "old guard" was closer to 10%. So in 20-30 years, when these women have had a chance to make groundbreaking discoveries, whose full impact on their fields will be well-known, then you will see about 25% of Nobel Prize winners will be women!

I doubt your projection of the number of graduates to Nobel Prise Winners. Unfortunately, I can not cite the original paper in Nature - it would take me a lot of time to find it, sorry, but I hope I am not imagining things that research in population genetics shows that there are just naturally more men with talent to math and physics than women.

I do not want offend anybody personally but if both of ones parents are 5 ft tall one has lower chances to play basketball in NBA. Likewise, *there are women talented in physics and math… but the number of them is lower in comparison with men.

The number of women in math and science can be misleading. I have seen many reports
of girls being actively discouraged from entering those fields. The only difference that may
be valid is that there are a few very bright males with immense motivation and drive.
I do not remember reading about any female with the ability that Newton described as
" being at the height of his powers" when he was able to put all his energy into thinking
about a problem until he achieved a solution, such a solving a problem proposed by Leibnitz
in such a short time that Leibnitz said "Ex talionis leonem...."

exactly. it seems that to be a genius is more a trait of males -and female's abilities have less deviation from the norm - whatever the norm is.

its not just talent (intelligence) women (in the past, both distant, and not too distant) have been denied educations, or when educated denied opportunity, or when educated and given opportunity, have be socially ostrosized for persueing certain careers.

about 3-4 years ago, Stanford medical school appointed a woman as the of the medical department(or was it the whole hospital? medical school?) (a specialist in neuro-surgery i think) and once her appointment was offical, she went public and took action against many of the doctors and hospital administrators.. who's behavior was discrimitory..

She said, for years, she had bit her tongue, held back with complaints, dealt with sexist treatment, so she could advance.. and all the while watched other women become demoralize and discouraged by the same treatment, and drop out of medicine and neurosurgery, because they couldn't take the added stress impossed by sexism. All the men involved were shocked, and surprized not to many women were.

Most women realize they can't rock the boat and suceed, and have learned that when you complain, you commit career suiside.
often, while individual men are nice, the system and rules that are in place are not...collectively, they become bullies.

and a recent study of really successful women (the NY times published a story on it) pointed out that sucessfull women tend either to 1) not marry and have families, 2) have a spouse who has basically put their career on the back burner, (ie become "house husbands") or 3) had family money (trust fund or other extra assets) that allowed them to be able to "buy" service over and above what their salary would normally afford.

Successful men? they had wifes! many of whom didn't work in outside jobs, and so were able to do all the "family tasks". women with out "house husbands" or money are less likely to succeed.. it has little or nothing to do with intelligence.. it has to do with there only being 24 hour in a day, and families take time...

Men have wife's, and they take care of the family stuff...

as for genetics, many a polymath has come out of blue.. with no family history of great genius. yes, you are right, my parents just over 5 feet tall (circa 1.6 meters tall)don't have any children or grandchildren taller than 6 feet (what 1.9 meters or so?) but intelligence seems to be different...

it does help to have parents who value educations (no matter how much or how little of it they have)

cultures that do, (judism comes to mind) tend to have higher levels of women with education, (and that education is broad-- more scientists, more doctors, more engineers..)

when i was a teen, and reading the almost 10 year old best seller, the microbe hunters, my mother disapproved.

she almost never censored books, but she disliked the idea of me being interested in science and medicine...

my life has been interesting, and many things interfered with it following a normal course.. but even if things had gone well, i know i would not have had any parental support for pursuing medicine.. i know i would have been advised to become a nurse... my parents openly stated "medicine is no career for a woman"...

how many other woman heard the same message, over and over again? life is hard.. when those arround you, rather than encouraging you, and supporting you, go around discouraging you, and undermining your confidence (and in many cases sabatoging your efforts..) its not hard to understand why so few woman have succeeded!

i am a few years older, and i realize, things are much better today.. but there are still many more obsticals for women than there are for men.. i hope, as your career progress, that is less and less true, and you never encounter them...

of troy,

You make excellent points.

Vika,

Don't buy into any theory that pushes women into a lower mental status than men. There are simply too many exceptions to the so-called rules.

I'll give you one just for the sake of writing. Categorically the most brilliant student I ever had the pleasure and honor of teaching was a girl, whose father is an award-winning physicist. She was (and is) incredibly gifted in music. She was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music when only 13. She began working on her bachelor's degree in music at the highly prestigious Curtis school while also attending the Masterman School in Philadelphia for her high school diploma. Both Curtis and the Masterman schools are for highly gifted students. You would be hard pressed to find many boys who could have pulled off earning high school diplomas and masters degrees at the same time at two such schools.

Now how would you go about explaining the fact that this girl achieved what she achieved? Is she a freak? No. Her parents highly valued education, encouraged her to achieve her highest in all fields, even moved to Philadelphia so their daughter could achieve as much as possible. I read several news articles about her, and even her sterling character blazed forth. She never turned in assignments late when extreme pressure was upon her. When she had to pull long days of intense study off, her dad would say to her (as her mom told me he'd said to her many a time), "It won't kill you." Edit: I want to add that she took science awards at the Masterman School.

And today, at the age of eighteen, she's earning her masters at Julliard.

I agree completely with of troy here. Much of what happens to girls has to do with the environment parents provide. Girls who may be geniuses may be encouraged to go into areas in which their genius simply cannot flourish. Tradition. Lack of understanding. The easy way out. Denial. Stereotypical thinking. Parents fall into the cultural trap. And genius does not guarantee the fighting spirit.

We place so much stress upon improving education, but the area we should really improve is parent education. Particularly parent education regarding the raising of girls.

Have you ever read "The Women's Room" by Virginia Woolf? [Edit Correction--thanks, of troy! "A Room of My Own"]Second Edit: "A Room of One's Own"--sheesh. Read it! If not, that's a good starting point though written so long ago. Woolf doesn't address the sciences--if my memory serves me correctly, though I could be wrong--but she does address the problems the female sex encounters in trying to distinguish itself in a male-dominated world with male-dominated histories, achievement, and even so-called scientific sociology studies.

If I bought into your way of thinking, what very sad repercussions would my female students suffer. Instead, I am by far more alert to possibility that sitting in my classrooms could be the beginnings of brilliance in both my male and female students. I don't buy into your comments that puberty is going to wipe out the female brain--cross-thread ref. Genius is rare, but recognized genius is a thrilling moment for educators--and it should be for parents, too. And not just genius, but executions of superior human intelligence, whether displayed by obviously bright humans or average people who have brilliant moments of perception and insight.

I would entreat you to open your own mind up to finding those exceptions to the rule--as many as you can find--and eventually you'll realize the rule is antiquated and to be held in high suspicion.

Best regards,
WW

Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.

I'll be a post feminist in the post-patriarchy.

In reply to:

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Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.

---

Ha! We know, we know. We're goddesses.

We're goddesses

Which functionally amounts to the same thing as saying you're inferior.

We place so much stress upon improving education, but the area we should really improve is parent education. Particularly parent education regarding the raising of girls.
yes! but not just girls. parenting. period.

Which functionally amounts to the same thing as saying you're inferior.

oh boy. this should be fun....

WW-- re:Have you ever read "The Women's Room" by Virginia Woolf?
Virgina Woolf wrote and essay "a room of my own", lamenting that women were not accorded the same time and access to persue careeres as men. she, too wanted a study, a room for herself to work in, by herself. and she pointed out, women didn't have such room.. men might comment "there is the nursry" (and so decide the woman real work and worth was in bearing children) or point out the "sewing room" (again, womem seen only as slave to fashion, and who primary work was providing directly for the needs of a family) Men could have a study, and write, earn money, and with this money provide... women were expected to provide directly.

(and this is still all to true, since the work women do in the house; laundry, cleaning, childcare, mending, cooking, what ever they do for their family, is never counted in a country GDP-- their labor is not recorded at all.. it continues to be considered "valueless" by the thing we use to value most things ins this word, the dollar value of the contribution.

(mind you, volunteer work, soup kitchen work, this is considered, and econmist can tell you the value of volunteer oganizations, so its not that there is no direct payment, it is rather a continuation of a thought process, that accords women little value)

Marilyn French wrote "a woman room" about a modern women, who is bright, and hard working, who finds, that no matter her accademic acheivements, she is passed over, again and again.. it is about how women's value and contributions are passed over. (Marilyn French also wrote a wonder full book on power.. Beyond Power, detailing what was needed for things to change.. a great book

Dr Bill has been reading (and providing words from) a radio show that has all the transcripts on line, The Egines of Innovation". Dr Lienhart, bless his heart, has done many episodes on womens contributions.. and has commented again and again.. this women made a great contribution to the sciences.. and her name has is never recorded in any text books... there have been 5 nobel prizes awarded to women in physics. which is pretty remarkable since for half of the time nobel prizes have been given out, women have been actually barred from attending schools (like MIT) that taught science. just as they were for years barred from medical school or from law school. and even when they where allowed to attend, they were refused degrees, or refused credential to practice. and Fran Connally, of Stanford, was the woman who resigned in the face of continuing sexual harrasment at that school.. something that still go on, there, and many other places.

What is remarkable is how many women, inspite of all the obsticales they had to overcome, still manage to acheive any recognition!

of troy,

Thanks for the correction. I edited my comments above.

WW

Edit:

AnnaS:

Thanks for the edit of Helen's edit. I just googled the dadburned title to make sure I wouldn't have to edit again.

It's A Room of One's Own.

Well, dadburn it. Room of One's Own. I'll go back and edit again.

However, the dadburn essay, title aside, is topnotch.

At least it's getting a lot of press here through the screw-up of its title.

Oh, what a day, what a day...

well, i confess, i haven't read it... but it is interesting until this thread, i had never thought about French's title refering to Woolf's essay... but now.. i'll have to go back and reread french, and read woolf!

Would that have been the book with the title The Ladies' Room in regular type face with Ladies' graffiti-scratched out and Women's written in?

If so, I saw, in a bldg. at Cornell, upon an occasion that brought in many non-Cornellians, a hand written sign directing folks to the ladies' room. Someone had graffiti-scratched out ladies' and written in women's. Someone else had graffiti-scratched out women's and, skipping a step, written in woperdaughters'.

Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings (Faldage)

Humanum humani est sorry if there are mistakes in Latin

My experience of academic life is somewhat contradictory to reports about sexism in science. I don’t know why situation should be worse in States than in Russia or in Britain. During my undergraduate years I did encounter a lecturer who though that a woman can not have 5 in Physics but that was his personal problem – he was forced to be objective and his private opinion didn’t matter. People in Russia are judged by their academic merit (sometimes by connections as well) but the sex doesn’t matter. 2 out of 7 heads of Departments of the Faculty of Biology of the Belorussian State University are women and most of the lecturers are women as well.

In UK my supervisor was a woman. She is a brilliant scientist: Prof., MRS etc Most of her PhD students were women and at least tree of them have become professors and group leaders. None of the men did. My supervisor is married. All her female former PhD students that are professors and group leaders are married and have children

I think talks that women are not getting education they deserve are outdated. In Russia it is considered that to be a doctor is a good profession for a female. I have always been encouraged by my parents to study whatever I wish. They had been helping me though the years of my undergraduate studies sending me money and would have done so during my postgraduate studies if I didn’t do my degree in UK. I am immensely grateful to them for all they did for me. (btw, I know microbe hunters . it has been translated into Russian) So there are parents and parents. Yes, there are not many women- politicians in Russia but the number of women-politicians does not reflect a situation with the right of women in the country. Think about Benasir Bhutto and Pakistan, for example.

Cleaning – washing - cooking –mending is not taking a lot of time anymore, thanks to vacuum-cleaner, washing machine, microwave etc. It is a question of choice that every woman should make alone: do I want to be a house wife? Do I want to be a professional and earn the money? What is my choice – a brilliant career and no family or a less successful career but I want to have children as well?

I think it is time to move from feminism, which fights with man’s world to post-feminism, which understands: women are equal with men but we have to improve ourselves rather then cry about oppression and underestimation.

women are equal with men

yes, vika, i agree with statement immediately above..from your most recent post, but in the beginning of this thread, you said something entirely different.
exactly. it seems that to be a genius is more a trait of males -and female's abilities have less deviation from the norm - whatever the norm is.


you can't have it both ways! if woman are equal, they have an equal chance at genius... there is not one norm for males of species, and other for females.

Vika,

Your error is in thinking that feminism is an intellectual issue. It is not. It is a social issue with no bounds in logic.

In this deterministic world there are two sexes of the species homo sapien sapien. If we look at each other we can easily see that evolution has effected dimorphism as a prime aspect of group continuance, with the smaller female in charge of directing the larger male to behavior conducive towards procreation.

But with smaller female bodies came smaller brains, but these female brains were fine lean brains well focused and the system worked well for a long, long, time.

Then social evolution gradually replaced biological evolution and we are where we are today.

As when lifting heavy boxes you can make the boxes lighter by legislating lighter boxes, we are attempting to re-make our society by ignoring the reality of the world and pretending that basic sexual differences just don't exist.

Fat chance.

milum, you're not just playing devils advocate, but the devil himself!-- and i notice you are making two different arguements at one time!

first, there is some, but not a great deal of sexual dimorphism in human. while on average, woman are smaller than men, the is a large overlap. small men are sometimes shorter than the average woman, and tall women taller than the average man. the dimorphism is slight (unlike say our cousins the great apes, where males are generally 2 to 2.5 times bigger than females, this difference not just in weight, but in stature, jaw and tooth size and many other physical featues, and at maturity, no female is bigger than even a small mature male)

secondly, there is a great deal of evidence that brain size has little to do with the ability to think.. (einstiens brain is well below the 50th percentile in size, but he was one of the great thinkers of our age... and there is no evidence that brain size effects the ability to think with in normal bounds..)

but you are absolutely right, error is in thinking that feminism is an intellectual issue. It is not. It is a social issue with no bounds in logic.

the greatest dimorphism that exist, is in cultural values.

for the past 40 years or so, a majority of medical doctors in Russia (former USSR) were female. these women practiced all specialites, includeing surgery. Medicine was considered a "femine field of endevor" -- in western europe, and US, woman have made progress, but have not yet acheived parity overall, and in some fields remain minorites. Medicine (and surgery in particual) is considered masculine.

These social constructs, that equate a what should be a neutral, (medicine) with sexual traits, (feminine in USSR, masculine in Western europe/US) has resulted in different out comes.
it is not logicial... it is social!

curiously, a second social factor comes into play.

in this country, medical doctors incomes, and engineers incomes (engineering being another "masculine field") are close in range.

In the USSR, engineering is also considered a masculine field, and engineer earn signifigantly more than doctors..

since both professions require many years of schooling, and interships, and licencing... the difference in compensation are strange... -- and when contrasted with western europe almost equal valuation, it becomes more marked..

it is an other example of "womens work" being undervalued!

but is suspect, if i pushed you, you could come up with any number of references verifying these comments, and provide even greater detail. if you continue to try to provoke, me, i will be force to get tough with you... i'll give you kiss after kiss, until melt, red as alabama clay!

Sorry, only just found this thread. I was supposed to be reading some background material for a Masters Degree that I am doing but I had too much ironing/clothes-sorting-out to do so that the kids have school uniforms tomorrow and we don't have to play "hunt the socks" again (I just dropped by while I was waiting for the spin cycle to finish on the washing machine) but it's OK, my daughter (who was trying to avoid doing her homework) did some ironing while I went out to get the food shopping, so it wasn't really all that bad this week. It's now 1am and I might have got round to my reading today if I hadn't had to help my other daughter with her homework earlier (just before cooking the meal). I'd have asked my husband to help with all this but he really does work too hard and had a lecture to prepare before another exhausting day tomorrow. I'm off to read for the next hour - who needs sleep?

By the way, anyone know where I can find a wife? I can't imagine that Einstein had to put his books on one side while he did the ironing.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/961122/ein.html

Dear jmh,

Your post was pure gold.

Nodding my head here in agreement,
WW

Wow, that Mileva (in Jo's link) was certainly maritorious [cross-threading e], but not, apparently, meritoriously.

It is a question of choice that every woman should make alone: do I want to be a house wife? Do I want to be a professional and earn the money? What is my choice – a brilliant career and no family or a less successful career but I want to have children as well?

That's the part I see as unfair. The men don't have to choose. They can have a family AND a career because (a) they are paid more, and can hire help, and (b) they aren't expected to put the same amount of time in at home [as a woman would], especially if they play their cards right and get a non-demanding wife. Whereas the women are forced to make that choice.

Through school I have noticed that the women who are in science are quite bright, brighter than the average of the men in their class. In other words, the "more average" women (who may still be very smart but not brilliant) are somehow steered away from science, while no one steers the "more average" men away.

re: (viki post above)Cleaning – washing - cooking –mending is not taking a lot of time anymore, thanks to vacuum-cleaner, washing machine, microwave etc.

Time saving devices don't save time!
women spend about the same amount of time cleaning now as they did 100 year ago.. 35 or so hours a week.
(they spend less time sewing, knitting, darning-- and now purchace ready made clothes, blankets and other textiles.)

Yes, washing machines make washing clothes easier.. and as a result, every one wears fresh cloths daily! we don't were the same dress for a week and the same slip, and the same underwear. (changing to a fress one on the sabbath or sunday as religion dictacts)

yes, washing machine make washing clohtes easier and we now change our bed sheet weekly, not just take the top sheet and move it to the bottom, and wash only the bottem sheet.

Yes, vacuums get our rugs cleaner.. but it takes about the same time sweep a carpet as to vacuum it, (but the vacuum will keep it cleaner) yes, we don't have take the carpets out once a year, and beat the dirt out that sweeping missed, but we also have more carpeting!
Middle class home had very little carpeting, certainly not wall to wall. floor coverings were canvas, or linoium, if not plain wood, with a small woven rag rug at the bedside.

last time i checked, it took just as long to peal a potato today as it did 100 years ago.. and that potato doesn't cook any faster. sure i use frozen foods to have a greater selection of foods out of season (and i am very glad of it) but frozen foods aren't faster to cook.. a pot roast takes just as long to cook as it did 100 years ago.
and setting the table? clearing it? washing dishes. maybe that is a bit faster but you still have load, unload. the dishes don't dance there way from cupboard to table to dishwasher to cupboard.
and we have more dishes to wash. we don't have a one pot boiled dinner of cabbabe, carrots, potatoes and a bit of beef or sausage. we have vegetable cooked seperately, and a salad, and salad plates.
we eat more food (well, that not really an improvement), fresher, cleaner food and a much greater variety.

yes, stoves are easier, i don't have haul wood, or coal, or clean out ashes or clinkers..

In my 35 hours, i can have the lifestyle of a rich person with a housefull of servants, from 100 years ago.
time saving is a misnomer..
modern day appliances do not give us more time, but more luxury. the middle class (and the poor!) have the ability now to live a life style that was limited to the very rich.

and this improvement in cleanliness, has improved our health--cleaner clothes, means most of us don't know about bed bugs, or fleas or lice. We no longer live in house that are infested with mice or rats or other vermine. but please, don't say we spend less time cleaning!

first, there is some, but not a great deal of sexual dimorphism in humans. ~ O'troy

By the way, anyone know where I can find a wife? I can't imagine that Einstein had to put his books on one side while he did the ironing. ~ jmh

Time saving devices don't save time!
women spend about the same amount of time cleaning now as they did 100 years ago.. 35 or so hours a week. ~ O'troy

That's the part I see as unfair. They can have a family AND a career because (a) they are paid more, and can hire help, and (b) they aren't expected to put the same amount of time in at home [as a woman would], especially if they play their cards right and get a non-demanding wife. ~ Bean


The error is in thinking that feminism is an intellectual issue. It is not. It is a social issue with no bounds in logic.(see above) ~ Milum

sweetum's, i caught it first time round..
see above
but you are absolutely right, the error is in thinking that feminism is an intellectual issue. It is not. It is a social issue with no bounds in logic.

dab nabbit!if you are going to be so agreeable, i will have no excuse what so ever for making you melt away with a barrage of kisses..
i came across an idea in "engines of Innovation"- a NPR show that has all its transcripts on-line (thanks, Dr bill for the link!)
it pointed out that science (and to some degee related fields like engineering and medicine were effected) was closely allied with theology in the past.(the 14 to 16th centuries especially) and in that past theology, was exclusively a masculine domain. to be a scientist, was something akin to being a priest. there was not the clear seperation then, as there is now between science (knowledge) and theology (belief in god). (galileo first studied for the priesthood, but abandon it.)
think about it, galelio had to present his text on planitary motion to religious censors for approval. learning about the natural world was a way to learn about god... (and the continues today, creationism vs darwinism, as if science must still act in partnership with theology. it happened, too with the idea of anesteasia for childbirth too.. Medical breakthoughs were considered "immoral" since the bible said woman would "suffer through childbirth"...to ease a woman pain, was anti-theological. )

it has become less so, with the erosion of the influence of the catholic church, but the lingering remnants of the idea of scienctist being members of priesthood -- an all male priesthood at that, continue. it is not a simple social issue, but one that is bound up, in delicate ways with ones faith in god.
feminism isn't just changing social stucture, it is also about changing faith! Luther and his 97 thesies, are childs play compared to this! (many anti-feminist will still quote scripture about a woman place!)

The error is in thinking that feminism is an intellectual issue. It is not. It is a social issue...

The error is in thinking that, if it is a social issue it can have no aspects that are intellectual. Feminism is, among other things, a reaction agains the fallacy that what may be said in general about females relative to males must apply in specific to every individual female with respect to every individual male. While this may be a social issue it also has intellectual aspects, since it addresses a failure in the logical process.

Of troy,
if woman are equal, they have an equal chance at genius... there is not one norm for males of species, and other for females .
They are – should be, must be – equal in social sense, e.g. there is no reason why women can not have education, right to vote, right to be elected to the government etc. but there is not no point in denying biological difference between the genders. And one of the differences is that male sex is “innovative” and female is “stabilising”. Why most of the serial killers (I know only one exception) are men? Because men were selected by nature to be warriors so they are less sensitive to blood and terror of killing. There is nothing wrong with fewer bow to of troy women-geniuses if
women who are in science are quite bright, brighter than the average of the men in their class

When I saw the post by milum I though that I have an ally at last. But then I read

female bodies came smaller brains

oh, come on. The biological significance has the ratio of the weigh of the brain relative to the weight of the body. Is elephant smarter than chimpanzee? I believe the ratio Brain/Body W is the same for men and women.

In the USSR, engineering is also considered a masculine field, and engineer earn signifigantly more than doctors.
I don’t know the sourse of the data but AFAR the salary used to be approximately the same (~120 rubles) and to be a doctor has always been considered more prestigious than to be an engineer

That's the part I see as unfair. The men don't have to choose Bean
the life is never fair. I am just over 5 ft tall and Claudia Schiffer is 6 ft. is it fair?
i bet that our great grandmothers would say that their lives were unfair but we can change nothing about it. Men have their own choices. To marry – and be responsible for the life of the family or to stay bachelor (reminds me of Spinster & Bachelor thread) and enjoy thelife of a playboy.

The error is in thinking that feminism is an intellectual issue. It is not. It is a social issue...

It is not so much a social issue as a cultrual issue. Different cultures see different roles for females and though in the Western world (at least) people may be more aware to feminist issues and the equality of men and women, the basic cultrual ideals of a woman's role still exsists and is the root cause of many prejudices.

It doesn't strike me as an either-or situation. True, it's remarkable women were able to directly contribute anything to science or mathematics prior to the 20th century. The treatment was not just shabby, but rude in ways that most moderns would find incomprehensible. From Hypatia to Emma Noether, it wasn't that long ago that we in the west held values not too dissimilar from the Taliban.

That said, I think that a lot of what is driving the equity movements of today isn't science, but socio-political doctrine. Men and women are on average mathematically equal, because the universe is not otherwise just.

k

sorry, Vika, but this is crock!
Re:biological difference between the genders. And one of the differences is that male sex is “innovative” and female is “stabilising”.

yes, men have penises and woman vaginas.. but to say men are innovative and women stabilizing.. i want facts and figures.. because those 'qualities' are part of the social defination of men and women... not part of the biological differences.

its like the idea that in hunter gather society, woman sat around the camp fire and did the equivent of coffee clatching and baby sitting .. and men did the providing.

when real hunter gather societies were studied, low, it was noted that 80% of the calories in the diet came from womens 'gatherings' and a scant 20% from mens hunting. in other words, it was the woman who for the most part put the food on the table!-- the woman could survive (poorly admittedly) with out the men, but the men could not survive with out the women.

and then there is the myth of woman being 'stay at homes' and men going out an exploring the world.. only when you look at the DNA evidence as has been done in recent years, its clear woman tend to go off.. maybe because they marry out of there village, but what ever the reason, its woman who move, and men who stay at home..

a good deal of 'Science' about the sexes isn't science at all..

an other fallicy is about 'breeding habits' of things like mice and rabbits.. in a lab, a female mouse is dropped into a male mouses cage.. and the result is almost immediate attempt by the male to sexually mount her..

but in real live, many females (and more work has been done on large animals) don't just have breed with any male.. sometimes animals are in harem arrangements (ie horses) and some times matriarchies (ie elephants) but in most cases, females exhibbit some control over which males they breed with...
the lab experiments did not mimic nature, and the "knowledge" gained from them was non existant.

as for women being nurturing and kind, and men being blood thirsty, tell that to Medea's children.. Women warrior are known in many societies.. the irish are famous for them, (as were the Peoples of eastern asia, part of what is now souther siberia.)

and finally when men 'choose' marriage, they are expected to work harder at their careers, not to give them up.. and the opposite is true for womem..

lets not compare height or our grandmothers experiences.. no apples to oranges..

today, woman are expected to "provide the home life", by doing meals, cleaning, and childcare (free!) and if they don't, they risk social censure. after they have done these tasks, they are 'free' to do any career work they want.

Men are expected to put their careers first...and they risk public censure for taking on childcare.

this is not biology.
but its seem you'd have us think that is biological? that somehow, having sex, or getting pregnant 'ruins' a woman mind?
i know, it their hormones.. makes them unstable.. hysterical! yes, that it hysterical a woman's uterius makes her mind unfit!
you're the biologist.. show me how estrogin has this effect on the brain... and how testosterone is somehow improves the brains perfomance.. Can't can you? because it just isn't true!

I like human females. They are my favourite animals.

Delving deeper into biology, apparently, all human foetuses start off as female with an XX cromosome pattern, then those 'destined' to become male sort of mutate to a XY cromosome pattern. So in this case, it could be argued that, apart from a few anatomical differences, men and women are essentially the same and therefore equal.

(I hope I got my facts right...)

Delving deeper into biology, apparently... men and women are essentially the same and therefore equal.

Nuh-uh... women are much prettier than men.

beg to differ, Musick, i think the Male of species to be much more attractive..
i recognize females traits as wonderful, (and would trade not mine away for nothing!) but when it comes to finding humans attactive, i find i am attacted to the male!

and i bet slightly more than 50% of humans would agree with me!