We gotta ask ourselves, though, if culture in societies as disparate as Western Europe and Japan (and really any "advanced culture" I can think of) developed some similar (though by no means identical) "gender roles", shouldn't we at least seriously suspect biological differences played a role in their development?
You might reasonably think so, but advanced industrialized countries see some
serious cultural convergence.
Which is not to say they are "correct". I for one would never argue that we ought to revert to hunter-gatherer status and assume that we are forced to live "as evolution intended". Modern society allows people to take all sorts of roles they couldn't before, and of course this is specially true for women (women can be effective soldiers today, obviously they couldn't in the past).
OTOH, I don't see equality as a supreme good either. If men and women have some different capabilities and preferences, what's wrong with that? There's no point in trying to make the genders equal. In fact personally I would very much dislike a world where women behave as competitively and aggressively as men, among other stuff.
So you personally prefer women not act in ways that you might find antagonizing and personally unattractive, also ways in which women behave so as to credibly achieve economic equality with men... honestly man this basically reads like you like things when they better serve you. The unwritten implication is women should get back in the kitchen.
Hold on, hold on, I know you didn't say that and I know you don't mean that. But you did kinda say you'd prefer a world in which women just didn't want to try to outcompete men, which means their place is to be subservient so long as our status comes from competitive victories. And their role will clearly be support and auxiliary to male endeavors. That's the most straightforward implication of what you wrote.
Anywayz.
If women and men have some different capabilities and preferences, there is nothing morally wrong that at difference. But none of those differences seem to create a capability gap in being able to thrive in The Market (caps). The thing is, if there
are differences, like let's pretend women were in fact slightly biologically weaker in math reasoning. The amount of lost output (of human actualization, but also wealth) created by the
stereotype threat of culturally reinforcing this does far more damage to women's math skills than an outset math capacity gap. We know this, because we know that learning advanced math is a skill that requires diligence and practice, and the stereotype threat is an incredibly powerful social force that inhibits learning.
Sorry Hygro, but I just find your reasoning to be an extreme stretch. It just doesn't seem to balance equally the vast amount of information we have, and simply attempt to put all the weight in the one part where there is some doubt while glossing over the countless details that would pull the other way.
Exactly.
I guess I'll try again. Controlling for genetic variables between male and female behavior is incredibly hard. Controlling for cultural variables is much easier. In doing so, we have found that culture is so powerful it can alter personality traits we are totally biased into thinking are natural, like outright displays of competitiveness and hierarchical vs lateral socializing.
So when you try to study biological differences in circumstances where almost always very confounding cultural variables are in play, you are taking a leap of faith in choosing to default that modern social differences
P.S. your "exactly" is you asserting luiz's reasoning supports your claim (and also that it is true)--that it is evidence of your point. The problem is that that luiz's reasoning is empirically backward. The more advanced economies become, the more they converge on social norms as market forces and cultural exchange are a helluva drug. So the more that that happens, the more it makes a case that assuming modern gender norms are a self-replicating cultural construct.
