We watched a TED talk last night by Rana el Kaliouby, an Egyptian woman who studied computer science at Oxford in England and MIT in the US. She was lonely so far from her husband and worked on an app that can detect emotions to try to communicate how they both felt more completely when talking together. She presented several sets of data showing that human women are more expressive than men. Not a big surprise but interesting to see data on the fact.
I just heard that for the first time, women are graduating from Army Ranger school, an advanced combat designation that women have been barred from in the past. I am always hearing how this job or that job can be performed by women and that they should not be prevented from training and performing any job that a man can do. Since I am a man, I am interested in the other side: jobs that are typically open to women, jobs we expect to see women in - can men do them well?
Long ago, I read Jessie Bernard's statement that women can physically engage in sex more steadily than men can while at the same time, they can forego sex continuously longer and more comfortably than men. Since men are often said to be interested in sex at all times while women are often less interested, her statement seems like a tip-off that even in areas of male interest, women may naturally be able to out-do them.
I have no idea what the average number of children borne by a woman over, say, the last 70,000 years has been. I am confident that it is a number greater than the number borne by men, regardless of what one sees in the movie Junior. The picture of the tasks of nursing, educating, protecting, cooking, cleaning, and tending to a husband with some patience and good cheer is often used to show the need for natural and basic female abilities to multitask, to be both patient and assertive by appropriate turns. I wouldn't be surprised if Bernard's formulation can be applied in other areas, such as a woman can patiently do nothing longer than a man while being able to work steadily at tedious tasks longer than a man. I note that when the Iranians captured American diplomatic documents that had already been shredded, they got women to put the bits back together in readable form.
I believe men are likely to be better at living in a socially or militarily hostile environment than women, unless the women are convinced that doing so helps their loved ones. I think I have seen a male advantage in pushing the envelope of an organization, which is related to the male ability and need to be prideful, boastful, in a socially approved way, of course. I have been surprised lately when I hear a woman say she suspects a given man of being arrogant, when he seems quite everyday to me.
I have seen data that a woman is looked down on for behavior that is allowed men leaders. But the most startling thing I have seen from women is very rapid alternation between cooing and quieting a child while interspersing that with sharp-tongued comments in a fight with her husband. Both the cooing and the snarling seem quite genuine but take place in an alternating speed and yet with an authenticity that leaves men far behind.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
Twitter: @olderkirby
