What Gender Is Your Brain?

[Shadow Wolf]

Your Brain is 67% Female, 33% Male

Female on the second one.

 

[idea]

I disagree with the questions on this - what does being vegetarian have to do with being a male or female? There are plenty of men in India who are vegetarian, and it does not make them any less manly....

 

[Draka]

ahem, if I may...
Your Brain is 53% Female, 47% Male
Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female
You are both sensitive and savvy
Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed
But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

And to the ongoing conversation...
The main reason you don't see as many women in certain fields isn't because they don't have the mental capabilities for such endeavors, it is because they aren't normally encouraged to delve into such arenas. I, luckily, was not one of those women held back by backwards thinking men in my life that believe that women have "certain places" and "certain work" they should do. No, quite the opposite, my father not only encouraged me in such work, but had me at his side training me from a young age to work on cars and electronics and so on. It was because of him that I was usually the only, or one of only 2 or 3 females, in my technical classes in high school and on into my time in the military. All of which I not only succeeded at, I excelled at. I won't even get into how I did physically, because that proves the stereotypes wrong as well.

The sexes are fit into little boxes because somewhere along the way certain cultures/societies/religions decided that men and women "should" act certain ways. Not based on what we really are, or what our real limitations or emotions are, but on perceived ideas of what was "needed" by those societies in order to achieve some kind of working order. "Hunters" and "gatherers", "breadwinners" and "hometenders/childrearers". Stick us into little boxes and make us stay there and expect us to behave a certain way and society will just keep trucking along all hunky-dory. Problem is, it never took into account real people.

 

[Penumbra]

I disagree with the questions on this - what does being vegetarian have to do with being a male or female? There are plenty of men in India who are vegetarian, and it does not make them any less manly....

In developed countries (the target audience of the quiz) something like 4% of men are vegetarian while 7% of women are (nearly twice as likely, source), or a slightly lower statistic is that 59% of vegetarians are women and 41% are men (source).

 

[ignition]

X

That’s actually false, you’ve made a series of non-sequiter arguments, non-relevant arguments and strawman arguments with no recourse to citations whatsoever in this thread already. It’s pretty obvious for any reader that this is the case.

As for Sunstone’s 5% remark , firstly they used that figure as part of an argument. Secondly, if it indeed an illustrative figure without intended for any factual basis, why haven’t they said precisely this on a number of opportunities I have given them and then recanted the argument which uses it? I’ll tell you why; because Sunstone is trying to have his cake and eat it too! On the one hand, they are arguing using the figure, on the other they downplay the figure by claiming it has no validity in the first place. Very typical of some internet debaters. It’s like me arguing that women are a higher suicide risk than men by citing that 35% more women commit suicide as an illustrative example, and then getting emotional when anybody challenges my 35% made-up figure and claiming that it wasn’t intended for reality in the first place. I suggest you google “to have your cake and eat it”.

Now to dissect your other arguments (brace yourself!). Three main criticisms of the arguments you presented are:

1. Appeal to unverifiable anecdotal evidence. Examples:

a. I can score a 90 on all three of the pushup test, the situp test, and the running test, which not only would allow me to breeze past the minimum 60-point male requirements, it would earn me a physical fitness badge for excellence. And I've never even been a varsity athlete of any sort; I'm just in shape and did martial arts.

b. Virtually any woman that I kickboxed against that's been there for a couple of months could pass the male army test (I mean, our warm-up in the beginning of a training session to get our blood flowing involved scoring a 77 on the male age 22-26 pushup test, among other things)

2. Unsubstantiated claims or claims with no evidence cited for them at all. Examples:

a. Countless well-trained women in the world can run marathons, whereas most guys (and girls) if they were to try to run a marathon wouldn't even come close to finishing.

b. I'm sure most women in my high school and college sports teams could pass as well. In other words, quite a significant chunk of reasonably athletic women could pass these tests that most men (and women) are failing.

c. Lifestyle and training clearly matter far more here than sex. The overlap of genders is enormous

d. A person who is in good shape, without major injuries, that practices on a regular basis can absolutely crush these tests regardless of gender that most people are apparently incapable of readily passing.

3. Arguments that you have created that have no relevancy to gender biological or psychological differences. Examples:

a. A person who is in good shape, without major injuries, that practices on a regular basis can absolutely crush these tests

b. Many people having this discussion a century or more ago wouldn't have thought that a change like this is possible and continues to grow, because culture changed so much and once-held beliefs about genders were shown be largely exaggerated.

Now, in all honesty, I don’t know whether or not you’ve studied science at all, or even like numbers, but the way you argue is heavily heavily flawed and would not be acceptable in any science class or any class that seeks to investigate anything really, it needs to be as objective as possible.

Now, let’s get started on the actual facts surrounding firstly marathons between men and women. Here is a list of the top 2195 runs by women in marathons Women's marathon, you will notice that the times range from 2:15:25 to 2:29:59. Now here is the list of the top 2292 runs by men in marathons Men's marathon, the times for men range from 2:03:02 to 2:10:29.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? Well, first of all, men’s potential marathon finishing time is vastly superior to women’s potential, this is not a surprise because science can explain this, and we will if you want to enter that realm of discussion. The average woman cannot finish quicker or same as a man in a marathon, provided both of them have the exact same training and conditions (which has to be a given, otherwise we could argue that snails are faster than the Asiatic Black bear for example, since such bears hibernate). This is a biologically proven point, you can look up the science on various websites or PM me of you want additional info. Secondly, there is no overlap whatsoever in the top 2000 or so times between the genders. Same data can be found here albeit for the top 400 results: MarathonGuide.com - Marathon Records MarathonGuide.com - Marathon Records

Now, let’s look at the women’s 400m results for the 2012, the gold medallist was Sanya Richards-Ross who ran 49.55
Athletics at the 2012 Summer Olympics

The Men’s results obviously incomparable, but the most interesting thing was the slowest time to even qualify from the heats for men was 46.12.
Athletics at the 2012 Summer Olympics

However, we have far more data for the 100m so let’s take a look at a very interesting observation.
The winning time in the 2012 women’s Olympic finals (which is a worldwide event) was 10.75 and it ranged from that figure to 11.01 Athletics at the 2012 Summer Olympics

Now, let’s completely discount the men from the picture. The question is, how many recorded high school boys just in the United States alone (not in the world) ran quicker than Fraser who won the 100m women’s London Olympic finals? The answer is a staggering 193. High School - Full Results

As for psychology, there isn’t too much data on this front, but as an example, in this day and age in the UK, Just 20% of those who take Physics at A-level are females Why don’t more girls study physics? - Telegraph There are still studies that are done to discern why this is the case. But my point stands, that societal expectations have little to do with it, not to say that other explanations are invalid, but there is no proven causal link between what is expected of infant girls in a progressive country like Great Britain and the number of girls who freely decide to look at other than the STEM subjects.

 

[crossfire]

ahem, if I may...
Your Brain is 53% Female, 47% Male
Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female
You are both sensitive and savvy
Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed
But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

And to the ongoing conversation...
The main reason you don't see as many women in certain fields isn't because they don't have the mental capabilities for such endeavors, it is because they aren't normally encouraged to delve into such arenas. I, luckily, was not one of those women held back by backwards thinking men in my life that believe that women have "certain places" and "certain work" they should do. No, quite the opposite, my father not only encouraged me in such work, but had me at his side training me from a young age to work on cars and electronics and so on. It was because of him that I was usually the only, or one of only 2 or 3 females, in my technical classes in high school and on into my time in the military. All of which I not only succeeded at, I excelled at. I won't even get into how I did physically, because that proves the stereotypes wrong as well.

The sexes are fit into little boxes because somewhere along the way certain cultures/societies/religions decided that men and women "should" act certain ways. Not based on what we really are, or what our real limitations or emotions are, but on perceived ideas of what was "needed" by those societies in order to achieve some kind of working order. "Hunters" and "gatherers", "breadwinners" and "hometenders/childrearers". Stick us into little boxes and make us stay there and expect us to behave a certain way and society will just keep trucking along all hunky-dory. Problem is, it never took into account real people.

I totally agree. I'm even heretical when it comes to gender roles. {might explain why I still have the most masculine brain on this thread, according to the first test.}
Oh, btw, I kicked all the guys' a**es in math and physics back in school. I didn't stay with it, though.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

For awhile, I forgot this was originally a light-hearted quiz thread.

 

[Draka]

Took the other test that was offered up from the BBC. Got pretty much the same results. Said I thought like a male and a female because I was equally good at both types of tests. Perhaps I'm just more balanced in my thinking?

 

[Kerr]

Yeah but that's the point! I'd rather be punched by an angry boy and then make up with him shortly afterwards then have a girl ******** and moaning at me for an entire year or more. It defies logic. And yes, I have actually had a girl moaning for more than a ******* year, just keeping on bringing up the subject. I'd take a blow in the face any day of the week. Makes far more sense.

Oh c'mon that's BS. Are gender roles also responsible for men being stronger than women? They're apples and oranges, whichever you look at it, we're not the same thing and we will never be. And that's a GOOD thing in my opinion.

Some of us doesnt punch people and doesnt stay angry for a year . Also I can confirm that we men can be very irrational, because thats what I am .

 

[Draka]

The idea that men don't bear grudges is ludicrous. Men have mortal enemies for crying out loud. You get some guys in the same room, even if they haven't seen each other for months or even years, and it's like the fight never ended. And then there's the jealous possessive crapola some men exude. Throw a wife or girlfriend into the mix and then add in any guy who's looked at her even possibly like he admires her or, goodness forbid, an ex of hers, and you have a recipe for two police cars and an ambulance.

Trying to paint women as irrational and emotional while men just have one time blows and get on with what...being rational?...doesn't really work. We are a patchwork. We all have emotions, they can get the better of each of us. Some are better at reigning them in than others, and that goes for both genders. There are many different types of tempers and they vary across both genders as well.

We all have the full range of emotions, unfortunately men are sadly taught to think that there is something wrong with expressing that full range. Somehow the only acceptable showable emotions seems to be anger and coldness because, for some perverse reason, those are assumed to go hand-in-hand with "strength". A quality men have driven into them that is "desired" for them to have. Any other emotion is "weakness". Total bullspit. And if a woman shows perceived "strength"... she's a *****.

We're frickin human beings. We have the same damn emotions, the same damn base abilities, the same qualities. So what if one person is bigger than another, or stronger physically? There are some women that are physically bigger and stronger than some men, it's not some sweeping rule that all men are stronger physically than all women, so what should it really matter anyway? Especially when talking about who we are as people on the inside? Why the hell do our bodies matter when we are speaking of thinking, reasoning, and feeling?

 

[Aquitaine]

The idea that men don't bear grudges is ludicrous. Men have mortal enemies for crying out loud. You get some guys in the same room, even if they haven't seen each other for months or even years, and it's like the fight never ended. And then there's the jealous possessive crapola some men exude. Throw a wife or girlfriend into the mix and then add in any guy who's looked at her even possibly like he admires her or, goodness forbid, an ex of hers, and you have a recipe for two police cars and an ambulance.

Trying to paint women as irrational and emotional while men just have one time blows and get on with what...being rational?...doesn't really work. We are a patchwork. We all have emotions, they can get the better of each of us. Some are better at reigning them in than others, and that goes for both genders. There are many different types of tempers and they vary across both genders as well.

We all have the full range of emotions, unfortunately men are sadly taught to think that there is something wrong with expressing that full range. Somehow the only acceptable showable emotions seems to be anger and coldness because, for some perverse reason, those are assumed to go hand-in-hand with "strength". A quality men have driven into them that is "desired" for them to have. Any other emotion is "weakness". Total bullspit. And if a woman shows perceived "strength"... she's a *****.

We're frickin human beings. We have the same damn emotions, the same damn base abilities, the same qualities. So what if one person is bigger than another, or stronger physically? There are some women that are physically bigger and stronger than some men, it's not some sweeping rule that all men are stronger physically than all women, so what should it really matter anyway? Especially when talking about who we are as people on the inside? Why the hell do our bodies matter when we are speaking of thinking, reasoning, and feeling?

I think economics can play an important factor in it too. In the past, women didn't have Economic Independence (or at least have the option of), and were subsequently dependent on Men: dependence can encourage submissive kind of behavior in my opinion.

Now that women have gained some sense of Economic Independence, and are continuing to develop, we're seeing less submissive attitudes and more assertive stances from women. At least in my experience.

So pair Economic Dependence up with societal Gender Roles and you have a recipe for disaster.

 

[Penumbra]

That’s actually false, you’ve made a series of non-sequiter arguments, non-relevant arguments and strawman arguments with no recourse to citations whatsoever in this thread already. It’s pretty obvious for any reader that this is the case.

Most responders seem to be disagreeing with you, so I'm not sure which readers you're talking about.

As for Sunstone’s 5% remark , firstly they used that figure as part of an argument. Secondly, if it indeed an illustrative figure without intended for any factual basis, why haven’t they said precisely this on a number of opportunities I have given them and then recanted the argument which uses it? I’ll tell you why; because Sunstone is trying to have his cake and eat it too! On the one hand, they are arguing using the figure, on the other they downplay the figure by claiming it has no validity in the first place. Very typical of some internet debaters. It’s like me arguing that women are a higher suicide risk than men by citing that 35% more women commit suicide as an illustrative example, and then getting emotional when anybody challenges my 35% made-up figure and claiming that it wasn’t intended for reality in the first place. I suggest you google “to have your cake and eat it”.

It means you didn't understand his argument, ignition, or are interested in nitpicking rather than following the chain of logic, because it doesn't lead where you want it to.

He said, "The fastest women are faster than all but, say, the fastest 5% of men, while the slowest men are slower than all but, say, 5% of women. So the curves overlap more than they don't. And this seems to me to be true of nearly all differences between men and women." So he clearly indicated it was an approximation. It's self-evident to anybody who knows anything about fitness and the average person that well-trained men and women can absolutely crush untrained (as in, most) men and women on most sorts of fitness tests, and I can't really see how arguing against that notion would be anything but disingenuous. Nonetheless, several sources have been provided anyway in case one could possibly doubt such a thing, like the percentage of people that fail basic army fitness tests, examples of female MMA fighters, times of top female 1-mile runs, etc.

If anything I think Sunstone was being a bit conservative with his quick estimate of 5%, because I find it doubtful that a full 5% of men in this world could run a sub 2:20:00 marathon or run a sub 4:30 mile like the fastest women can.

Now to dissect your other arguments (brace yourself!). Three main criticisms of the arguments you presented are:

1. Appeal to unverifiable anecdotal evidence.

2. Unsubstantiated claims or claims with no evidence cited for them at all.

3. Arguments that you have created that have no relevancy to gender biological or psychological differences.

Most of those points are self-evident to anyone that has experienced life, ignition. Please point out which of those statements you believe is untrue. And if you don't see how those points were relevant to the discussion then I don't know what to tell you.

You even provided a source in this post to back up what I said earlier about marathons; thousands of women can run marathons in the sub-2:30 time range, yet what percentage of people in this world, male or female, do you think can run even a 3 hour or 4 hour marathon if they were to try it this month? Running a marathon requires an athletic person to prepare for months.

If you need proof of a test, here's a woman doing 55 pushups in 1 minute, found on Youtube in a couple of seconds. That would score a 75+ on the male army pushup test (for which they have 2 minutes), which is well above what would be needed to pass. That would have been part of the warm-up in our kickboxing class.
[youtube]_ji-Liftbfo[/youtube]
Dagans' Fitness: Jen does 55 push ups for 1st 60sec test: - YouTube

Now, in all honesty, I don’t know whether or not you’ve studied science at all, or even like numbers, but the way you argue is heavily heavily flawed and would not be acceptable in any science class or any class that seeks to investigate anything really, it needs to be as objective as possible.

To answer your subtle attack on whether I've studied science at all or even like numbers, I studied math, physics, and chemistry in college, received a degree in electronics engineering towards the top of my class, and currently work as an engineer (project lead) while pursuing a master's degree and have also done work in a quantitative investment field on the side.

Regardless, in that post I showed the major quantitative growth in female education over the last several decades and showed stats on how many people fail even easy fitness tests that are a breeze for an athletic woman to pass if well-trained.

Now, let’s get started on the actual facts surrounding firstly marathons between men and women. Here is a list of the top 2195 runs by women in marathons Women's marathon, you will notice that the times range from 2:15:25 to 2:29:59. Now here is the list of the top 2292 runs by men in marathons Men's marathon, the times for men range from 2:03:02 to 2:10:29.

So what conclusions can we draw from this?

What conclusions can we draw? How about that the top male marathon runner can do it about 10% faster than the top female marathon runner, and that top male and female runners are leagues above the average man or women in running with these crazy sub-2:30:00 marathon times?

Well, first of all, men’s potential marathon finishing time is vastly superior to women’s potential, this is not a surprise because science can explain this, and we will if you want to enter that realm of discussion. The average woman cannot finish quicker or same as a man in a marathon, provided both of them have the exact same training and conditions (which has to be a given, otherwise we could argue that snails are faster than the Asiatic Black bear for example, since such bears hibernate). This is a biologically proven point, you can look up the science on various websites or PM me of you want additional info. Secondly, there is no overlap whatsoever in the top 2000 or so times between the genders. Same data can be found here albeit for the top 400 results: MarathonGuide.com - Marathon Records MarathonGuide.com - Marathon Records

<other olympic stats>

See now you're moving the goal posts around. It was already granted that top male athletes can outperform top female athletes in terms of speed and strength. The argument made by Sunstone and then referenced by others such as myself is that training is the primary factor, though. You'll find a much larger difference in running ability between a trained person and an untrained person (regardless of their sex), than you will find between a trained man and a trained woman. Those Olympic women (or even college sports women and other reasonably athletic women), despite not being of the same strength or speed as Olympic men, are vastly faster and often stronger than the typical, everyday man. Your sources show just how crazy-fast well-trained women can be.

(And as for the high school boys reference, you do realize that 193 out of the millions of high schoolers in the U.S. is a staggeringly small percentage, orders of magnitude below 5%, and that Olympic participants are often in their first Olympics and sometimes winning in their late teens? So if you were trying to use that as a point that seemingly regular men are as fast as the top women then it didn't work, and actually backfired.)

As for psychology, there isn&#8217;t too much data on this front, but as an example, in this day and age in the UK, Just 20% of those who take Physics at A-level are females Why don&rsquo;t more girls study physics? - Telegraph There are still studies that are done to discern why this is the case. But my point stands, that societal expectations have little to do with it, not to say that other explanations are invalid, but there is no proven causal link between what is expected of infant girls in a progressive country like Great Britain and the number of girls who freely decide to look at other than the STEM subjects.

You haven't even touched on the statistics at all, ignition. Your claim that societal expectations have little to do with it are consistently unsupported or even contradicted. The number and percentage of women in science has grown considerably over the decades as I showed, and the overall number and percentage of women in all post-secondary education has also grown and has surpassed men, yet you haven't really addressed that at all. You can point out a 20% figure if you want, but on these charts if you were arguing this at any earlier time in history you would be arguing about a minority of women that eventually grew into a much larger percentage.

For example, Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate medical school in the United States in 1849. Prior to that, it was all dudes. By the early 1980's, women were near a third of total medical school graduates. Now, it's at around 47-48%, almost exactly half. But no, culture doesn't mean much. :sarcastic

 

[Badran]

That’s actually false, you’ve made a series of non-sequiter arguments, non-relevant arguments and strawman arguments with no recourse to citations whatsoever in this thread already.

Now to dissect your other arguments (brace yourself!). Three main criticisms of the arguments you presented are:

1. Appeal to unverifiable anecdotal evidence. Examples:


2. Unsubstantiated claims or claims with no evidence cited for them at all.


3. Arguments that you have created that have no relevancy to gender biological or psychological differences.

I find it amazing that you make accusations like this when your posts in this thread contained stuff like:

But that's true though really isn't it? There's no question that girls have a problem with logic and reason, I know from first hand experience haha it's always about emotion with them.

I came from an all-boys school and there was one female teacher who taught both us and also the all-girls school 20 minutes walk away. She told us one day that because of her experience, she noticed various differences in how the the genders behave. One example she said was that when boys fight, they get over it relatively quickly. But when girls fight, they stay mortal enemies for the rest of the year, very hard for them to overcome the anger.

I ALWAYS see this in real life. If you get a woman mad, she will stay mad at you for MUCH longer than if you did it to a man, try it out if you don't believe me haha

When girls get angry, all faculties of reason become virtually non-existent

It's pretty clear statistically that girls do not like logical based subjects. I should know because I study physics at university and boys make up more than 2/3 of the class.

Yeah but that's the point! I'd rather be punched by an angry boy and then make up with him shortly afterwards then have a girl ******** and moaning at me for an entire year or more. It defies logic. And yes, I have actually had a girl moaning for more than a ******* year, just keeping on bringing up the subject. I'd take a blow in the face any day of the week. Makes far more sense..

In those, almost every thing you accused others of can be found in a ridiculous manner, accompanied by demonstrably false claims and dreadfully lousy logic.

It’s pretty obvious for any reader that this is the case.

It's pretty obvious to me that you're guilty of everything you're accusing others of and much more than that. You're outright spreading falsehoods, and according to your claims of scientific knowledge, you must be aware of that, which makes your statements much more disturbing.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I know; what is being said is that those differences can be drastically reduced, which is a completely baseless assumption. To what extent do you think gender differences in psychology and biology can be reduced? And what evidence is there that such a reduction can take place?

Yes, there are female bodybuilders, unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), the female blood circulation remains different to the male's, that's not going to change by handing dumbells to girls, at least it hasn't been demonstrated as such. You can't cause the average female to have the same muscle make up or fibre as the average male no less than one can start to cause periodic bleeding in males.

I'm not sure why you seem to be making the assumption that biological or psychological differences between both sexes necessarily imply that one of them is physically stronger than the other or that either of them is "superior" to the other in terms of logical thinking, studying math and physics, etc. What exactly makes you draw that conclusion?

As for the second part of your post, it seems to me that "handing dumbbells to girls" can change things:

Spoiler: large picture

I'd say that Serena Williams is probably more fit and better at tennis than many male players, and it's mainly because she's well-trained, not because she's a female (which obviously hasn't affected her career or made her a "weaker" player).

 

[Penumbra]

As for psychology, there isn&#8217;t too much data on this front, but as an example, in this day and age in the UK, Just 20% of those who take Physics at A-level are females Why don&rsquo;t more girls study physics? - Telegraph There are still studies that are done to discern why this is the case. But my point stands, that societal expectations have little to do with it, not to say that other explanations are invalid, but there is no proven causal link between what is expected of infant girls in a progressive country like Great Britain and the number of girls who freely decide to look at other than the STEM subjects.

Ok, this is too funny not to share, so I have to add it. You picked out Physics A-level and pointed out that only 20% of people that take it are female. You also stated that there "isn't too much data".

Here are the Full A-Level Results for 2012 as shown by the Guardian. Men and women may be more likely to take certain subjects than others, but let's look at the actual results of those that pursued each area. I encourage you to click through to the link and explore it.

Point 1:
The chart shows that there is little difference between boys and girls for what % of them achieve the top A* level. 8.0% of boys achieved the top A* level while 7.9% of girls did (and in the previous year, both figures were at 8.2%, so it fluctuates). In terms of the sciences, boys were slightly more likely than girls to get the top A* level in chemistry, but girls were slightly more likely than boys to get the top A* level in physics. So when you look around at the minority of women in your physics class at university, chances are, they may have collectively outscored the boys in that class to get there.

Taking into account both the A* and A levels for all subjects combined, girls that took those areas were more likely to get an A or higher on most subjects than boys, including most sciences. According to the data, on all subjects combined, 27.3% of girls were A* or A, while 25.8% of boys were A* or A.

Point 2:
Looking at the sciences and some business or other areas, basically anything technical, these are the areas where girls that took the tests statistically outperformed the boys that took the tests in 2012:
Biology
Business
Computing
Critical Thinking (lol)
Design and Technology
Economics
Information and Communication Technology
Law
Physics
Political Studies
Psychology
'Other Sciences'

And here are the technical areas where the boys that took the tests outperformed the girls that took the tests:
none

Here are areas where it's debatable:
Chemistry
Math
(On these two, boys were slightly more likely to get a top A* level but girls were slightly more likely to get an A or better.)

Point 3:
Boys were indeed statistically far more likely to strive for the scientific areas than girls, showing more general interest in those subjects and being more represented in terms of the numbers, while girls were more interested in other subjects. But as the data have shown, the girls that actually took those tests statistically slightly outperformed boys. If anything, this is evidence that culture is affecting things more than innate differences, because greater numbers of boys go into the technical fields but for boys and girls that do go into those fields, girls slightly statistically outperformed boys. Combined with the previous charts showing things like increasing female involvement in the sciences or medical schools over the decades, those are some pretty interesting numbers. In terms of those that pursue these areas and take these tests, gender has a statistically tiny effect on the outcome. How much a person studies clearly matters a lot more than what sex they were born as.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I know; what is being said is that those differences can be drastically reduced, which is a completely baseless assumption. To what extent do you think gender differences in psychology and biology can be reduced? And what evidence is there that such a reduction can take place?

Yes, there are female bodybuilders, unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), the female blood circulation remains different to the male's, that's not going to change by handing dumbells to girls, at least it hasn't been demonstrated as such. You can't cause the average female to have the same muscle make up or fibre as the average male no less than one can start to cause periodic bleeding in males.

By the way...

Women vs Men Part III: Women find their "niche" in longer distances

Yesterday, we looked at the performance differences between men and women across the entire range of distances from 100m to the Ultra-marathons, in an attempt to see whether the theory that women are better long distance runners than men is true. Yes, we acknowledge that there are flaws in this method, because far fewer women run the long distance events in particular (which reduces the depth of ability available), and also women have only been running for perhaps 40 years, compared to almost 100 for the men.

However, that analysis showed that rather than catching up to men as the distance gets longer and longer, women (the world’s best time, anyway) are in fact always about 10% slower than men. The reason for that at the shorter distances is the testosterone advantage enjoyed by men (called the ‘hormone gap’ by one scientist!), very interestingly demonstrated by the observation that in the last 10 years, as drug testing has become tighter, women are in fact falling even further behind the men than they were in the 1980’s, when women were arguably pumped full of steroids!

So we concluded yesterday that it is highly unlikely that women will ever catch up to and then pass men, at least when we look at the very best men vs. the best women.

Another way to approach the question

However, having said all this, what if we now suggested that this probably isn’t the only or the best way to go about answering the question “Are women better distance runners than men?” Because really, what we are doing by comparing world records is comparing apples to pears, to use a cliché. Does it answer the question to know that Haile Gebrselassie’s world marathon record is 8% faster than Paula Radcliffe’s? And does the fact that Kenenisa Bekele’s 5000m world record is 10% faster than Meseret Defar’s really mean men are better than women over distance events? Only partially.

Because the alternative, which might be a better way to answer the question, is to ask whether a woman is better than a man as the event gets longer. This is different from asking whether WOMEN are better than MEN as the distance increases, because now we are only interested in comparing one man to one woman. Hopefully this difference is clear…

The research – a simple study

About ten years ago, in an attempt to answer this question, scientists from UCT looked at a large group of runners from the Two Oceans and Comrades marathons. They found out what the runners’ best performances were at distances ranging from 5 km all the way up to Comrades. And what they found is shown in the Figure below.



What this graph shows is that when you look at the SAME person across a range of different distances, then you find that the running speed is higher in the men from 5 km up to 56 km, but that the gap between men and women decreased progressively, until eventually, we hit the Two Oceans at 56 km, and then the men and women run at the same speed! Go one step further, to Comrades, and the women are faster than the men! Remember, the difference between this method and the world records we looked at earlier is that here we are looking at the same person across a range of distances, not the fastest single person in each event. In other words, we’re asking whether a woman who runs as fast as a man at shorter distances is more or less likely to catch up over longer runs. And the answer is a resounding yes!

This and the rest of the article can be found here, where it is explained that biological differences between both sexes may actually favor women in long-distance running.

 

[ignition]

Wow! I don't have the time to read all that, let alone respond to it, I just came home from work. I might respond to Badran and Debater Slayer because their arguments are irritatingly primitive and refutable. As for you Penumbra, I seriously cannot read all that...might take a look at it another time. I'm starting to like you already though, I'm attracted to girls that can argue! You're only a few years older than me as well Are you single by any chance haha frubal to you!

 

[Kerr]

I remember this thing my psycology teacher once told me. Basically he was having this lesson with a few guys and he suggested that they where going to sit in a ring... the guys refused. Why? Because they thought it was gay. Prime example of male rationality right there .

 

[ignition]

I remember this thing my psycology teacher once told me. Basically he was having this lesson with a few guys and he suggested that they where going to sit in a ring... the guys refused. Why? Because they thought it was gay. Prime example of male rationality right there .

Sit in a ring? You mean like a circle?

 

[Kerr]

Sit in a ring? You mean like a circle?

Yep. Circle. Sorry for using the wrong word. The best part was that later, the teacher encountered them. They where all clumped up on this couch, or something. Like in a big pile of (non-gay) men.