|
|
April 18, 2008
Measuring the gender gap
Think we're all the same? One author suggests we think again.
OLGA LIVSHIN
In our free, democratic society of the post-feminist era, law protects the equality of men's and women's rights. Women have the same career and educational options as men. Moreover, women are employed in all the professions previously dominated by men. There are women pilots and sea captains, firefighters and political leaders, math professors and bus drivers. But the perennial question remains: Are women and men really equal?
Susan Pinker's new book, The Sexual Paradox – Extreme Men, Gifted Women and the Real Gender Gap (Simon and Schuster), addresses this question from a scientific point of view. Her conclusion, based on the tremendous amount of medical, biological and psychological research available, is simple - no, they are not. There is a real gender gap between men and women.
Pinker writes in the introduction to her book that most of us "... think of male as the standard and of female as a version of this base model – with just a few optional features added on." According to Pinker, this isn't the case. Women and men have different strengths and weaknesses. They are neither symmetrical nor interchangeable. The neutral "vanilla gender" of feminists' dreams is a myth, she claims.
As a result, although women in our society have the same opportunities as men, women's wishes and subsequent life paths, originating from the millennia of evolution, frequently lead towards different outcomes, and half of Pinker's book is dedicated to exploring women's choices and their psychological, sociological and physical foundations. Using medical studies of female physiology, she shows that women's nurturing tendencies and their inclination to "people jobs" are not a cultural quirk. These qualities were installed by nature and aimed at the survival of homo sapiens as species, she writes.
The other half of the book explains men and their predilection for physical labor, danger, machines and numbers. According to Pinker, men's hormonally programmed appetite for risk, their propensity for bravura and competitions are as much the result of brutal natural selection as women's empathy and maternal instincts. Men's testosterone-infused features bear an unexpected flip side though, which works against them, she warns. Pinker considers men the weaker and more fragile of the two sexes and she supports her point using mortality statistics.
Controversial and humane, The Sexual Paradox delves deep inside the psyche of both sexes, offering multiple real-life stories that illustrate various scientific theories. Pinker conducted a host of interviews for her book, talking to representatives of both sexes and people of all walks of life, from high school teachers and social workers to such business giants as Kinko's founder Paul Orfalea and craigslist.org's Craig Newmark.
In an interview with the Jewish Independent, Pinker said about her sources, "Many were people I knew from my clinical practice, whom I followed up decades after I treated them as children. Others are ... people I met via features and personal essays I read in newspapers from around the world or discovered while I was doing research on this psychological phenomenon."
True to the book's revelations about the gender differences, the men and women Pinker interviewed had opposite reactions to her suggestion to include their names in her writing. "Most of the men asked that I use their real names. All the women asked me to use pseudonyms," she said.
As a developmental psychologist, Pinker saw the gender gap firsthand in her waiting room every day, long before the idea of a book appeared. She also encountered numerous gender-related issues in her capacity as a journalist, writing for the Montreal Gazette, the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the Globe and Mail.
"I had wanted to write a book for several years, but had no time. In 2004, I was approached by a literary agent, who offered me assistance in developing a book proposal. I decided to write a book that combined two areas of my expertise: child development and occupational choice," she recalled.
The Sexual Paradox is creating a stir among international publishers. It is available in three different English editions – in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. It is also in the process of being translated into Dutch, German, Portuguese, Italian, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese and Romanian.
The book's impact on readers has been profound. Many of them have expressed their gratitude to Pinker for addressing this sensitive and timely topic using the latest scientific findings.
"I knew the subject was rich in human detail, and that the emerging science from MRIs, genomics and neuro-endocrinology is astonishing and often awe-inspiring. I was excited about some of the discoveries I unearthed as I was doing the research and imagined that other people would be amazed too," said Pinker. "I didn't really know how the book would be received, as it is my first," she added modestly.
Answering the question about the controversial, "politically incorrect" aspect of her book, Pinker pointed out, "Most people who have read the book say that the stories and science resonate with their own experience and with the life trajectories of people in their families and social circles. Many women have thanked me for writing about their feelings and choices, as they felt their preferences have been scorned, or considered unworthy in recent decades.... Those choices reflect the research I present about the majority of women and how they make career decisions."
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer.
^TOP
|
|
