Korean Job Discussion Forums

[nateium]

Men and women have obvious innate physical differences, so it's not outside the realm of biological possibility that there may be some average cognitive differences between the sexes as well.

Math,science, and engineering are fields still dominated by men in every country. However, that's not to say what any individual CAN or CAN'T do.

[mateomiguel]

from very early on in male fetus development, the testes produces testosterone which fights against the mother's estrogen and gets into contact with the entire fetus, affecting development of the baby in a million billion different little ways. Female fetuses just let to the mother's estrogen go everywhere, and it also affects the development in a million billion different ways. This causes male and female fetuses to develop differently, which is most obviously illustrated in different genitalia for male and female. Also, it is less obviously illustrated in different brain structure.

Guys are better with spatial orientation, physics. Girls are better at communication. This is not a political statement its just observation supported by embryology. There's a good, solid biological reason for the 99% male pilot ratio in commercial airlines.

[kermo]

Yes, men and women are different. Sure, it's possible that these differences are innate. However, there are still constraints like culture, education and family obligations that make it impossible to evaluate what is holding women back-- nature or nurture.

Embryology is not destiny.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[Big_Bird]

[daskalos]

I think if the world were less focused on the innate tendencies of groups of people and more focused on the innate talents of individuals, we'd see much more parity in these areas. Apparently, though, one of the innate human tendencies is to find neat categories. Very helpful in some ways, very restrictive in others.

It's fine to recognize that boys are generally more interested in some things and girls more interested in others, as long as we don't then insist on making every boy and girl fit that mold.

[hugekebab]

[Cheonmunka]

Not sure why people keep linking chimpanzee with human behavior. Did you hear that a Korean hakwon director put four foreign teachers in the same 20 pyong apartment because he saw in the zoo that four apes lived together without much drama in a 20 pyong cage?

[ulsanchris]

Answering Kermo. I think they paid a bit more attention to the female chimps reactions. Clearly they were showing a maternal instinct. While the boy chimps were more interested in something that wasn't obviously feminine.
I think the reason they used chimps is that they are about as close to humans as you can get and should be free from human conceptions of gender roles.
I don't know the name of the show I saw this on. I don't know the names of the people who did the study.

[KOREAN_MAN]

Nobody is saying boys are smarter than girls overall. It's just that, in general, boys are better at math and science than girls. On the other hand, girls have better language and memory skills than boys. So how can anyone say one gender is more intelligent than the other? I don't know how many male math/science teachers would scold their female students for doing well in the classroom. On the same token, what kind of female language arts teachers would despise boys for getting As in their classes?

Genes matter more than people think. We are all raised in different environments but men develop distinct tendencies from women and vice versa. I think we know more than enough to make generalizations of men and women. We just have to be careful and not overgeneralize things like "no boy can be good at learning foreign languages." Studies have found that even our brains are wired differently. In other words, our bodies AND minds are different. That means we ARE different. The only thing that might be meaningless is trying to figure out which one is smarter. (I don't even think anyone can define intelligence meaningfully.) I tutor kids English and I wish all my students are female. But if I'm teaching science, it would be totally the opposite.

[kermo]

I can see that men and women are different. I can see that people aren't trying to put women down by suggesting that the sexes have their own areas of strengths. I can see that biology influences behaviour. I just think there are too many confounding factors to confidently attribute causality to testosterone in the fields men currently lead in.

[Unposter]

The answer is No. And, the lack of evidence in this thread belies that there are few who understand science at Dave's.

The OP had one class and he contributes his relative experience across all genders disregarding that there have been successful men and women in every academic field.

Mularky I say!

[Justin Hale]

[mises]

[Kuros]

I cannot say for certain about math, but in American science P.H.D. backgrounds, there is certain and explicit gender discrimination, particularly in the biochemistry field. This remains hidden in part because the undergraduate fields are so gender friendly.

You can check out Lucy Stark's piece on this (31 Harv. J. L. & Gender 101
Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, Winter 2008)