Quote:
Originally posted by Thoran:
Women Develop Faster : Some recent research seems to indicate that women intellectually develop a lot faster (which results in better grades in primary and secondary education), and men catch up later in life. By the prime wage earning years the report claims men have IQ ratings on average 6 points higher.
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Yes, I was going to mention this myself. Girls brains actually develop faster than guys so during school, if girls aren't performing better than boys on average then it means boys are being advantaged, or girls disadvatanged in some way. The research really implies that the recent kerfuffle about girls doing better now than boys at school so feminism has 'gone too far' and boys need help is not really accurate because this is where biologically, they should be. However boys catch up so adults' cognitive capacity is equal across genders.
Great posts by Mel, Willow and Harley! And some others
. I would also add that so-called 'breakthroughs' take time to come by - time that women have simply not had in the academic world. It is only in the last few decades that women have really been able to embrace careers that were primarily men's domains, which includes to a large extent science and other academic areas - really the last two generations. Before that they were at a significant disadvantage. I would also question what exactly you're classing a 'breakthrough'. Research teams that you see on the news with their latest cancer/solar power/aids vaccine/etc discoverary usually contain both males and females so they don't count. I also read a lot of scientific papers for uni and, while I haven't taken a terrible lot of notice of the gender breakdown, there is still a significant number of women contributing to my field. I also think that about half of the academics in my department are women.
Someone also mentioned that boys are traditionally 'better' at science and girls better at english. I would question whether that is biological or social. The only real difference between the cognitive abilities of boys and girls is that boys are on average a little better visuo-spatially, and girls a little better verbally. However that really has nothing to do with science. I would argue that it is more that science is seen as a 'boys' field and english and the humanities as a suitably 'girls' field. Of course that is changing now but traditionally, I think that's been the case.
As for your jaw-dropping post about women primping too much to get to the lab - wow. I think Mel summed up my feelings about that sufficiently
. I also love the way you've used one example, your mother, and from that based opinions on one entire gender. I can see at least one guy who won't be making any scientific breakthroughs