A hardcover, 322-page book called From Eve to Dawn, A History of Women, by an author I had only heard of vaguely, Marilyn French. The hardcover book was normally priced at $34.95 in Canada, but I bought it on impulse for only $10 at a local book store. (I love education at rock-bottom prices. It turned out to be far more extensive an education than expected.)
That book led to other research in other books and on the Internet as I tried to both confirm and disprove what I had read, and write about it here. This has led to a great number of aborted attempts at writing about the subject in my blog, because each time I thought I had something coherent to say, another finding or theory would stop me in my tracks.
The conventional thinking is humans are beyond the dictates of nature. Apart from our drives to feed ourselves, reproduce ourselves and, generally, look after our own self-interest, everything is determined by our environment, from our violent tendencies to our nurturing sides. Despite this, fields such as psychobiology, socio-biology and evolutionary biology continue to gain interest from students of the human condition.
It is believed by some that while environment is still the major influence on people’s behaviours, we can’t discount the possibility – and certainty, in some people’s opinions – that the brains of men and women are different enough to explain some of the differences between the sexes and why we still don’t see equal representation in some fields of business and professions. One leading spokesperson in this field, Helena Cronin, even calls herself a feminist!
The usual feminists aren’t happy about this. After they thought they had critiqued socio-biology into scientific oblivion, the field continues to exist as evolutionary psychology. If any proof came up to show there is more to a person’s behaviour and attitudes than just socialisation, education and upbringing, it could doom many of their theories which are predicated on exactly that. But proponents of evolutionary psychology say instead that we can work toward progressive social outcomes by taking into account the tendencies of each sex as driven by evolution.
For example, if it turns out that most of the violence caused by men is done by men aged 18-45 (I’m inventing this part; don’t write in to tell me I’m flat out wrong; I know I probably am), after which violence decreases with age, it may be worth knowing that in order to see what could be done to stem violence in that age group.
Conversely, if after 50 years of concerted efforts, women engineers still don’t make up 50 percent of all engineers, and maybe not even quite 20 percent, perhaps we’ll have to review our expectations in that respect. Truly concerted efforts to change this didn’t really start until the 1990s because it was first assumed that an equal opportunity atmosphere would see the problem solve itself. Therefore, let’s see if by 2040 the awareness raising and promotion of the field to women leads to equal representation in engineering. If it does, that will be proof positive that socialisation has much more to do with our choices and behaviours than our genes.
In the medical field at least, women used to only be nurses, but a great many today are becoming doctors. Doctors are more highly trained than nurses, and have corresponding medical privileges, responsibilities, and pay scales which reflect that. But they are basically still in the people sector, rather than the “things” sector. Should that tell us something? If so, what, exactly?
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