Why are women superior to men? Women are superior to men because they have more genes, they perform better at school, they are less inclined to physical violence etc.
Each of these arguments is typical of the sort of argument that used to be made for why white people are superior to black people.
Such arguments are made with absolute conviction even though the evidence and the interpretation of the evidence is always shaky. Take the gene argument. We still do not know exactly how many protein coding genes reside in the genome by a factor of plus or minus about 1000 genes (we have around 21000 protein coding genes - see Nature).
It is only 20 years since people thought that humans had as many as 100,000 protein coding genes. Did we think we were cleverer and more robust 20 years ago?
When snap tests of intellectual ability such as IQ tests are used there is very little difference between males and females:
This suggests strongly that there are cultural, behavioural and other biases in A Level and GCSE examinations in the UK that result in unnecessarily large differences in attainment. Of course, everyone knows that modern schools have a strong gender bias with 70% of teachers being female. The argument for continuing such bias is that given men had it so good for so many years who cares if they suffer now? This argument is ultimate sexism and it would be a sick joke to stare into the eyes of an innocent five year old schoolboy and tell him that he will pay for all his sins.
So it is with all of the sexist reasoning of the Gender Debate.
What is Gender Bias? Gender bias is not an absolute phenomenon, it depends on context. If all women were happy bringing up children in the context of a nuclear family then gender bias would be framed in terms of the excess pressure to get women into the workplace compared with men. Gender bias is simply society having rules and procedures that are not currently liked by a particular gender. It might be recalled that getting women and children out of mines and mills and into the home was believed by both men and women to have been a huge achievement in 1900.
The changes in society over the past three hundred years have, in the long run, been due to industrialisation and commercialisation. Women are in the workplace because industry needs labour, getting women out of heavy industry can be viewed as a temporary setback that has been corrected. Our industrial society will amend the social rules to ensure the labour supply and by providing status and money to any group entering the workforce will provide that group with political clout.
A stable society will attempt to provide some happiness to all of the groups within it so we should welcome changes that increase happiness (so long as these do not decrease the happiness of other groups). However, we should be very wary of corporate power. Large organisations are very capable and they work together in areas such as HR to manipulate their workforce. Coverage and support for movements in the mainstream media is to some extent the gift of the corporate elite and journalists are ambitious and unprincipled. It should be remembered that before the entry of large numbers of women into the workforce the pointlessness of a life of corporate work had made the workers intractable so the modern characterisation of women as those who find fulfillment through work and ambition should be viewed with skepticism.
Is the slogan of the Women's movement really "work sets you free" - arbeit macht frei?
6/4/2020
Each of these arguments is typical of the sort of argument that used to be made for why white people are superior to black people.
Such arguments are made with absolute conviction even though the evidence and the interpretation of the evidence is always shaky. Take the gene argument. We still do not know exactly how many protein coding genes reside in the genome by a factor of plus or minus about 1000 genes (we have around 21000 protein coding genes - see Nature).
When snap tests of intellectual ability such as IQ tests are used there is very little difference between males and females:
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| IQcomparisonsite |
So it is with all of the sexist reasoning of the Gender Debate.
What is Gender Bias? Gender bias is not an absolute phenomenon, it depends on context. If all women were happy bringing up children in the context of a nuclear family then gender bias would be framed in terms of the excess pressure to get women into the workplace compared with men. Gender bias is simply society having rules and procedures that are not currently liked by a particular gender. It might be recalled that getting women and children out of mines and mills and into the home was believed by both men and women to have been a huge achievement in 1900.
The changes in society over the past three hundred years have, in the long run, been due to industrialisation and commercialisation. Women are in the workplace because industry needs labour, getting women out of heavy industry can be viewed as a temporary setback that has been corrected. Our industrial society will amend the social rules to ensure the labour supply and by providing status and money to any group entering the workforce will provide that group with political clout.
A stable society will attempt to provide some happiness to all of the groups within it so we should welcome changes that increase happiness (so long as these do not decrease the happiness of other groups). However, we should be very wary of corporate power. Large organisations are very capable and they work together in areas such as HR to manipulate their workforce. Coverage and support for movements in the mainstream media is to some extent the gift of the corporate elite and journalists are ambitious and unprincipled. It should be remembered that before the entry of large numbers of women into the workforce the pointlessness of a life of corporate work had made the workers intractable so the modern characterisation of women as those who find fulfillment through work and ambition should be viewed with skepticism.
Is the slogan of the Women's movement really "work sets you free" - arbeit macht frei?
6/4/2020
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