"In their study, the researchers compared how 34 rhesus monkeys living in a single troop interacted with human toys categorized as either masculine or feminine. [...]
"The results closely paralleled those found in human children. As with human boys, male rhesus monkeys clearly preferred wheeled toys over plush toys, interacting significantly more frequently and for long durations with the wheeled toys. Also mirroring human behavior, female rhesus monkeys were less specialized, playing with both plush and wheeled toys and not exhibiting significant preferences for one type over the other. Here’s a chart illustrating the similar gender preferences of humans and rhesus monkeys (the information regarding human preferences comes from a 1992 study by Sheri Berenbaum and Melissa Hines)."
I wonder how our Norwegian nutters would cope with that!
"This study provides strong support for the claim that with
greater human development and with greater opportunities for
gender equality, the personalities of men and women do not
become more similar (see also Costa et al., 2001; McCrae, 2002;
McCrae et al., 2005). To the contrary, in more prosperous and
egalitarian societies the personality profiles of men and women
become decidedly less similar. Moreover, these changes appear to
result from men’s cross-cultural personality variation. In more
traditional and less developed cultures a man is, indeed, more like
a woman, at least in terms of self-reported personality traits."
That is, with greater prosperity comes greater freedom of choice, including life-style preferences , which then tends to lead to greater gender differentiation in job selection.
"Average sex differences in workplace outcomes are often assumed to be
products of a malfunctioning labor market that discourages women from
nontraditional occupations and a biased educational system that leaves
women inadequately prepared for scientific and technical work. Rather
than being a product purely of discriminatory demand, however, many
sex differences in occupational distribution are at least partially a
result of an imbalance in supply. Sex differences in both temperament
and cognitive ability, which are products of our evolutionary history,
predispose men and women toward different occupational behavior. The
tendency of men to predominate in fields imposing high quantitative
demands, high physical risk, and low social demands, and the tendency
of women to be drawn to less quantitatively demanding fields, safer
jobs, and jobs with a higher social content are, at least in part,
artifacts of an evolutionary history that has left the human species
with a sexually dimorphic mind. These differences are proximately
mediated by sex hormones."
"Some well-established assumptions that turn out to be myths rather
than fact. First, we now know that there is no direct link between
occupational segregation and the pay gap; the association is
coincidental rather than causal, and the two are independent
social developments or constructions. Second, there is no direct
causal link between economic and social development and occupational
segregation, or the pay gap; modern societies do not necessarily
have lower scores on these two indicators of gender equality in
the workforce. The country with the lowest level of occupational
segregation in the world is China, not Sweden, as so many
believe. Many countries in the Far East have lower levels of
occupational segregation than in western Europe. The lowest pay gap in
the world is not found in Sweden, as so many claim, but in Swaziland
where women earn more than men, on average, followed closely by Sri
Lanka. Third, higher levels of female employment produce higher
levels of occupational segregation and a larger pay gap; they do not
serve to improve gender equality in the workforce, as previously
assumed, but worsen it. Even within western Europe, countries with the
lowest female employment rates tend to have the smallest pay gaps,
as illustrated by Portugal and Spain compared to Finland and
Germany.
"Even more disconcerting is the evidence that family-friendly policies generally reduce gender equality in the workforce, rather than
raising it, as everyone has assumed until now...Women are more
likely to achieve senior management jobs in the USA than in Sweden: 11% versus 1.5%, respectively..."
recorded by Christina Hoff Sommers 5:08 mins
"Matronising" indeed!
4:28 mins
Christina Hoff Sommers' work is accurate and balanced. There are further of her videos linked at the side of this page.
