Why should a woman be more like a man? Sexual differences uncovered

Men and women are different, Susan Pinker says

Barbara Moser

March 2009

“Yes, I’ve paid the price, but look how much I’ve gained. If I have to I can do anything. I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman!”

Women who came of age in the early 1970s will remember the bold mantra of Helen Reddy’s 1972 hit. After all, it was the sexual revolution and we had stepped into the Age of Aquarius, into the freedom that allowed us to do anything aman could do. But do women really want to be like men?

In The Sexual Paradox: extreme men, gifted women and the real gender gap, Susan Pinker turns this notion on its head, disputing the 40-year-old assumption that there are no behavioural or learning differences between the sexes.

Pinker says her book, an interesting mix of research and real-life profiles, “tells the story of sex differences and why we feel the way we do and why we make some of the choices that we make.”

Pinker’s first chapter describes her coming of age in the feminist movement of the early 1970s at a time when she was graduating from high school and “stepping into adult choices.” As she looked back to this time, she saw herself as part of a huge change in what was expected of young women and what they expected of themselves both in the workforce and in their educational choices. “The people of my generation were the foot soldiers of a massive change in what women were deciding to do with their lives. We were the ones who really shifted the entire landscape.”

At the time women felt they could be just like men, Pinker says. “It was expected of me and I expected of myself that I would act just like a man. I would make the same choices. I had all the freedom in the world. Nobody ever said I couldn’t do what I wanted to do and it was expected I would do what a man would do.”

Pinker says that it was “a huge shock” when she discovered she “didn’t have the same feelings” as her husband when their first child was born.

“The fact is, we are not men.”

Then how are the sexes different? Where we see the greatest differences, says Pinker, is at the extremes. Men are more variable, “more dumbbells, more Nobels.” She writes that men “demonstrate a wider range of strengths and disabilities. So there are more very stupid men and more very smart ones, more extremely lazy ones and more willing to kill themselves with work.” Women, she says, are “more clustered around the central scores, average and above average.”

Perhaps the greatest difference is what motivates career choices and the sacrifices men and women are willing to make to climb the career ladder. Women, she says, are more likely to choose people oriented professions and more willing to change or leave jobs when they threaten to destabilize their families or infringe on their relationships.

“Over 80 per cent of women will make adjustments to their careers because relationships are important to them,” she says, “some deciding to stay at home with children or find a job that allows them the flexibility and autonomy to look after aging parents. They want to have involved, engaging family lives and they are not willing to give up their relationships in order to have a career.”

But it’s not all about relationships. A woman, she writes, is more likely to change careers or adjust her career “opting for what (is) meaningful for her over status and money.” She is also more likely to have a variety of interests while a man tends to have one passion and pursue it doggedly.

In her book she describes women in high-powered business and academic careers who give up the fast track to spend more time with their children or pursue interests. As expected, married male academics publish more than their female counterparts, who tend to put their families before their published papers. “Research on women of our generation showed that women our age have an average of 10 to 12 career interruptions where men of the same education have two.”

For 40 years, women have paid the price for trying to be “clones” of men with “huge stresses,” Pinker says. “Many years ago when women were so far behind and so excluded, to get what men had we had to act like them. We had to dress like them, we had to have careers like them, we had to make the same choices, we had to work the same hours, and I think now 40 years later, this can have huge costs for women and, paradoxically, can be more discriminatory. If you expect women to achieve tenure or achieve promotions in their 30s when in Canada we know that that’s when women have their babies, that’s discriminatory.”

And their mental health suffers as well. Pinker says women are much more likely to suffer from depression, part of the cost of trying to be like men or worse, trying to “be everything. This is an example of where biology and socio-cultural issues interact.” But men don’t have it easy either. One misconception about biological sex differences is that they favour males, Pinker says. “On the contrary there are biological reasons why men have shorter and more fragile life spans and more developmental problems and some of this … is because women have more of the long view and are more moderate. This ability to invest in your environment and your relationships actually has a biological impact.”

This sexual difference in women is what Pinker calls “the empathy advantage,” giving women, as they age, more psychological and cognitive strength than men. “The social connections that women make and the biology that promotes those connections promotes a long life and psychological health,” she says.

Pinker’s career decisions have reflected her ideas about what motivates women to make certain choices and takemore risks thanmen. “I was a psychologist. I was teaching at a university. I was very successful in what I did, and I had started writing a column for the Gazette called Healthwise, on psychological problems in children and families. I discovered it was more fun than my real job.”

Now, Pinker writes a question and answer column on interpersonal and ethical issues on the workplace for The Globe and Mail. She gave up her private practice when she began writing her book in 2002. She says her book “has a lot to say to grandparents who want to be engaged with their grandchildren, to understand them in a more profound way.”

This is especially true of learning disorders.“ Many of them grew up in an era where attention deficit disorder didn’t exist, or was just on the verge of being identified. Certainly we know a lot more about the genetics and the biology of a lot of these disorders than we ever did before.”

Her research on boys with developmental problems is encouraging. “Each chapter on men focuses on a different kind of developmental disability and how these boys managed to succeed. I’ve had emails from men who have struggled in their past and they find it extremely hopeful because I tell the stories of men and how they manage to succeed despite these vulnerabilities.

Pinker always comes back to her point. Women must follow their own biological paths that give them more pleasure, more comfort and more meaning. The news for older women is that they have a definite advantage over their male counterparts. “Women are living very long lives and it’s possible that women of 60 have another 20 years of working life, and they’re not ready to retire. A lot of them have a lot of life and creativity and energy. There’s room for second careers.

“Provided women take care of their health, they have a lot of time and energy to pursue their interests. Women may want to pursue something that they didn’t get a chance to do earlier.”