Dr. Ashley Montagu beat me to it. He published "The Natural Superiority of Women" in 1953. But the birds beat us both. They dressed the males in catchy plumage while disguising the precious females in duller dress. It stands to reason: if the females can reproduce but the males can't, the females are more valuable. It is an old insight that one male can impregnate many females so many of the males are redundant.
But there is more to the story. In the wild, the equally numerous males fight for a place. So, fighting is a big deal. See "Fighting for Life" by the Jesuit scholar Walter Ong. Ok, males are built to fight, to compete. That means they have a natural tendency to keep an eye out for the extra big, extra strong, likely competitors. That natural tendency, and in many cases a positive pleasure in physical combat, leads to awareness of weapons, strategy, ways to win over others.
But women carry the babies for months before they are born and care for them and feed them for years afterwards. In humans, the childhood period of immaturity covers 20 years or more. Just a couple hundred years ago, it was not unusual to lose a child, even several, to death before the child reached maturity. So care, solicitude, training, nursing, feeding are fundamental activities in the mother's life. Add to that, sensitivity to development, language, emotion, training and you get expertise in tools that are important in groups and group management.
Many academic departments are mostly or entirely men but not in education, my home discipline. There have been many times when a position in the department attracted job applicants, often 6 women and 2 men. The least qualified woman was more qualified than the most qualified man. It seems to me that women naturally map out what is expected of them and follow or even exceed those expectations. Men are more likely to circumvent, out-flank, deviate and perform in ways that stand out from the crowd by breaking the norm. That tendency is a valuable one that leads to new ideas, innovations.
It seems that much of the current world is populated with men who actually believe that men are superior to women. Many of the outward signs - size, noise, boldness - seem to support that notion. However, as women understand the game, they will play it very seriously. They can calmly dedicate themselves to steadily and quietly dot every i and cross every t to reach whatever goal they aim for. I admit that biological and social goals of motherhood are a giant additional task for women but as the nuclear age, the disadvantages of war and the ever-deepening complexity of our lives and the need to protect our planet bear down on us, we will all find a way to make better use of female tendencies and insights and impulses.
