"Divided Labours"

(an evolutionary view of women at work)
-by kingsley browne
1998
Know any unyielding feminists who insist that gender roles are social constructs, and won't brook any protest to the contrary? Perhaps you even ARE one such?
This is the book you need to give them...or this is the book we need to read.
Yes, i said "we". If i'm not a classic example of the aforementioned type, i'm close enough. I think militancy can be forgiven - the history of gender relations took a turn for the apocalyptic around 20,000 years ago, and any attempt to disavow or rationalize that is shameful. But...as mr. browne explains, women be women and men be men. They have different biological personalities, and imposed workplace equality won't change that. The anthropological literature displays remarkable cross-cultural consistency in personality differences, and the burgeoning biological literature is finding no contradiction. In general, men are more competitive, driven by status and resources, and willing to take risks. Women are more nurturing, risk-averse, and less greedy and single-minded. Can it be any wonder that women's careers overwhelmingly tend to stall around middle management? Our entire commerce paradigm (indeed, our entire "success" paradigm) is based upon the male personality! Evolutionary theory traces these differences to asymmetrical parental investment - women carry the babies, then feed them. Males? Much less. Add to that the fact that male reproductive success has long been linked to status and resources. Hmm...with male personalities inherently more stressful, the lifespan gap may finally make sense too.
Does browne go too far? Oh yes, with phrases like "our patriarchal social structure - to the extent we have one" (italics mine). No, mr. kingsley, patriarchy is so deeply embedded that, in all our languages and institutions, the very notion of humanness is male. "Male" is default. Normative. Females? Systematically brutalized and dehumanized since the agricultural revolution (and the FANTASY ISLAND episode in which florence henderson turns down a high-powered job in order to be with her kids, is still abhorrent sexism of the worst kind). Browne also holds up the model of "natural" human behavior as that of a hunter/gatherer - but social hunting is a profoundly recent activity, in terms of the millions of years of human development. And he doesn't make the point (though perhaps he ought) that humanity's current barbarism is easily understood through the light of evolutionary theory - if you systematically remove women from the decision-making process for thousands of years, the result will be avaricious, unbalanced aggressiveness - in a word, brutality. Sound familiar? He does, however, agree that changes should be made to reduce economic disparity (and holds up Australia as a successful example). He also makes the curious (but suspect) observation that women actually have MORE socially-acceptable life choices - wealth and status-seeking being essentially the only path open to men (thankfully, growing numbers of stay-at-home dads are challenging this paradigm). Here again, he neglects the fact that every facet of our current social structure has been shaped by males - he seems to want us to accept our differences at face value, but i rather think that the true personality of our species will never be reclaimed until all our institutions reflect a merging of the female and male.
Browne also reminds us that you can't measure individuals by statistical generalities - there are plenty of aggressive women and non-competitive men walking around. He speculates about the reports that our military readiness has been in decline, and lays it at the feet of women's inclusion in all aspects of service. Speaking for myself, anything that diminishes our military capacity is okay by me.
DIVIDED LABOURS is part of a series called "Darwinism Today", each one readable in a single sitting, and designed to make advanced science accessible to all. Especially brilliant is "The Truth About Cinderella" by martin daly and margo wilson.