Who's Smarter: Men? Women?

Yet another entry into the Intermission topic by me. I really need to go to the movies more!

My question is this: Are women smarter than men?

Since my white collar has turned blue, I work at a retail store now instead of a newsroom, I have seen that the woman manager at my job can run her shift flawlessly. However the male managers are often confronted by problems and unforeseen mistakes. One manager is actually the store director!

I've even noticed some of that here at Mofo. Take any post by our wise and wonderful Caitlyn. Sometimes she will put her input into a thread that is well written intelligent and wise. If a male member responds to said post he will sometimes respond with a "nice post", or any number of smilies. But if a man posts something on the same subject, a verbal arm wrestle ensues for three pages.

In another thread about gays, The Bible, without any consideration that the Good Book might be a little out-dated, was brought up. In the Bible, women are looked upon as second to men. In many cultures (US included---female president anyone?) women are considered second-class or infurior to men. The point is, women, I think, are smarter than men. They are rational, percieving and concise. Anything they do usually turns out as they have planned.

Question: Are women smarter than men? I'd also like you to discuss the Bible here. As I said the Bible is always used to support or deny arguments without the consideration that certain beliefs contained within it might be obsolete in modern times.

Are women the smartest of the species?....anyone? Anyone?

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r66-The member who always asks WHY?

Ohhh r3...I think your asking for a whole load of trouble here, [and i'm probably about to drop myself in it too], but....

I've no doubt about this [EDIT: as a general/global rule/phenomenon]. If we accept the idea that women are better communicators [and hence viewers and predictors of human reactions and current states etc], and men's skills lie more in the physical arena as a rule (which i do believe), then our societies are favouring women more and more. I.e. lots of the physical/competitive aspects of society have been reduced in many spheres (doesn't mean that many others are still dominated by intimidation, but heigh ho - that's life/power) - therefore more and more interaction and success is based on asssessment and action. Women are superior in these areas it seems. Whether it's coz of the historical and biological imperatives of: keeping the family together and organising the related logistics; or influencing through word and deed but not violence; or being undervalued yet relied upon etc etc i've no idea.

Not quite sure what you're saying here, other than that men like to go head-to-head with other men (it's such a fascinatingly amusing phenomenon, especially when you find yourself doing it ) - or possibly that women judge the tone and suitability of what they say far better? In the first example, is this women's success or men's failing? In the second it's just coz our Caitlyn is wonderfully wise and informed

Oh, don't even start me on the bible. I'm still bouncing heads with Yods (and i think we'll be imitating an executive toy for some time to come - but this is all in the name of self-discovery o'course )

In Britain i think we have a slight smug feeling that we're a bit "ahead" of some other Europeans in terms of equality. Southern Spain for example has very very rigid sex roles (which lead to the women acting like spoilt princesses and a lot of homosexuality hidden behind macho posturing amongst the men. Very amusing, unless your trying to pull ). The British way seems to be getting progressively more "equal". [tho i was brought up with the idea of equality reinforced with such frequency that for a long time i even ignored our differences on some "logical" level, which is just daft. We are different. Discovering how, on a generic level, would be a very useful thing to investigate]

Um, I wouldn't accuse all women of being "rational" to be completely honest (tho the other two do bear up). I don't mean by this that men are more rational, just that i've met lots of highly "irrational" women in my time - in the sense of consistancy in un-emotional contexts. This is a very stereotypical bit of phraseology, but i apply it to men too. Where women have a clear advantage is that they don't go into fight-or-flight so readily and resolve problems far better in the practical sphere. I am doubting "abstract" and "logical" superiority amongst women. I think it might even be the case that between men and women we share various different skills in these areas [but again, these can cross sex-boundaries - no doubts]

Please note the absolute insanity of Margaret Thatcher (she wanted to re-start the british empire! Now THAT wasn't practical! - and she screwed up loads of aspects of our society - that wasn't very sensitive or wise in my view. You could blame male advisors, but most commentary on her thinking just suggests she was a very driven, prudent/penny-pinching, overly-patriotic nut-bar]

I'm a woman-worshipper - unashamedly so. But i'd still say there appear to be plenty of ebb-and-flow where men have a valid input into social acts and decisions, despite being theorhetically lesser in these spheres.
But is it possible that some of men's skills are more esoteric than we realise?



So, let me put a few teasers before you:

-Of your friends, who are more likely to be funny [in a witty sense possibly?]: the men or the women? Or does it pan out evenly?

-Do you agree with the neurological theories that suggest that male superiority at catching/throwing things etc has actually translated over the millenia into an increased mathmatical ability i.e. the internal ability to judge quickly changing distances/angles etc. Some claim it has. [others even push it as far as improved logical/abstract constructs i believe - tho i find this dubious, or at the very least unsubstantiated]

-Virginia Woolf's exposition "A room of one's own" puts forward the idea, that even as the first great female novels were emerging, they were doing so in the face of adversity (George Eliot - my favourite author of that period! So scientific yet so sensitive and holistic and open-minded. What a human!) Certain biological nescessities/responsibilities and old-fashioned views can make this true to this day. Is it far too soon to judge who has the better/worse [or the same] faculties in all the spheres of human endeavour? Are we seeing a fair comparison at the moment [bear in mind that many men can't get thru the system to arrive in top jobs either - a lot of that is down to old-boy masonic-networking etc etc - still quite a boy-orientated pass-time ]

-Do men have anything valid to teach women? [as we certainly benefit from learning from/observing their social skills]

-Does the fact that girls are doing better in school as a whole reflect:

(a) an increased desire to seize the opportunities of a more accepting world? [and hence they have more drive than the boys]

(b) a simple finding-of-confidence after centuries of belittlement and an expression of intellectual superiority?

(c) a mindset greater suited to educational practices now in use? (i.e. more "mind"/paper-work than play/physical-copying/physical-practice? [plus facilitated by the above mentioned increased confidence/freedom of expression etc]


Okay - bring on the slating for my stereotypes


but B4 i go - i'd like to recommend a book called "(EDIT: SKINNY legs and all". i'm fairly sure it didn't do well (it has a bake-bean tin as a main character - but if you can get passed that, and lots of related silliness, this is a wonderful exploration of pre-millenial fear and a most intriguing theory of what this millenium might bring. it's related, trust me.) Can't remember the author i'm afraid. The book was pink (but i think that was the publisher's choice )

EDIT: Oops: Summary and clarification:

-I don't think either sex is "smarter" as a whole (but we have varied skills that we should learn to apply better together - as Piddz says sex affects a lot about how we interact as it is - blood rather than brain )

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Of course they're not smarter than men. Men are perhaps afraid to lose discussions against a lady, but that has more to do with the how men and women view the opposite sex, not who's the smartest. If I don't remember it incorrectly I think I have armwrestled with Caitlyn once or twice.

Personally, I think intelligent women are very attractive, so if I am commending a woman for saying something intelligent more than I do if a man says something intelligent, it is probably because on some unconcious level I am attracted to that woman. Hell, I don't know.... I'M JUST A STUPID MAN!! Sometimes I must admit, and I am a little ashamed of this, that I have paid more attention to what a woman is saying because I think she is attractive. But I am absolutely certain that women are like that too. It's like one has to get over that hill of primitive sexual thinking before men and women can work professionally together with favorable results. Some people sure have a harder time getting over that hill than others. Some don't even see the other side of it....

Maybe it's like this, that there is male thinking and female thinking. And if a woman says something that is different from what men would have said (something female), then perhaps men automatically see that as being wrong or unintelligent. This is a man's world, so therefore is male thinking often considered "the right" way to think. So women who have understood that they have to think like men to make it in this world are considered more intelligent, and at the same time both useful as well as threatening, by men.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Are women smarter? I say, this question is OLD! It's old and obsolete.

Anybody can be intelligent, and a question like "Are women smarter?" is just lunacy. A man can certainly be smarter than a woman. That does not mean that ALL men are smarter. Grow up, people! Enough with the catty remarks and ignorant slams fueled by jealousy or pain. And I say this with the upmost intelligence in my brain.

I hope that now we can discuss something new. Let me give it a try:

ARE WOMEN SEXIER THAN MEN?

Ooooh! Fascinating. Meet me in the coffee room and let's talk about it.

You are nuts. You seem like the kind of man who would forgive Susan Smith and go make babies with her anyway. PLEASE! DON'T EMBARASS MY GENDER WITH STATEMENTS LIKE THAT!!!!!!!!!!

I think that in general, women are better at multi-tasking than men, which given the right environment makes them better at certain tasks. I have met many men that are not as smart as the women I know. I have also met many women that are not smart either.

To the second question, I think that in general, women ARE sexier than men. I haven't ever seen a man that I think "I want him" but I have seen many women that I think "I want her, now".

....... Django, is that you?

No, this is me.

Humans still have figured out what exactly intelligence is, how many different forms or variations there are, or a suitable way to test it. So, asking, "who is smarter...", is still premature.

There are generalities that one can make about women and men of course. Women tend to be better communicators; men tend to be better with mathematics. Blah, blah, blah. But, in the end these are just general tendencies, and there are many possible explanations. The reasons these tendencies pop up may not have anything to do with an inherent intelligence based on one's sex. It could be a product of social enviroment, etc.

So, the short answe would be... Who knows?

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yeah, i'm actually frightened about attempts to gain knowledge in this area as intersting as it might be (i.e. about how it'll be applied - potential types of euthanasia and removal of "unwanted" traits etc with all the possible fallout.)

Still, maybe women are demonstrating their intelligence by not even posting on this thread

i think its is absurd that anyone could entertain the idea that biology has anything to do with intelligence

education, life experience, understanding, knowledge... these things (amongst others) make one smart, not the placement of your pink bits

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to put it vulgarly brains isn’t determined by whether you have a dangly thing inbetween your legs or a hole, it’s a matter of the person, yes genetics can effect brains but sex can not. What an absolute pointless question, whose smarter? You use the example of Caitlyn, yes naturally she is extremely wise, but Caitlyn doesn’t represent the entire female species, nor does Chris or Silver represent all male species. May I say again this is pointless.

Stll not saying superiority/inferiority - but i'd say there COULD WELL BE biological differences in qualitative mental states (but there's so many "nurture"/cultural issues at the mo). We don't know what these are as such - but there's the possibility that they exist. Who you are is also determined by the biology of your brain. Men and women have performed distinct survivalist "functions" over our development and survival. Couldn't it be possible that we have developted a greater possiblity of developing/applying some distinct mental approaches if we are male or female. Again not really saying what these things are (female perceptiveness and efficiency, which again are far from universal, could indeed be the result entirely of social "conditioning"/set-ups etc.)

Just pondering. But bear in mind with the constant "growth" of control-freakery/single-cause-searching bad science any "knowledge" unearthed (however patchy/mis-interpreted it may be) on these touchy neurological/behavioural issues may lead to changes in social perception in the future. Will our kids be insisting that women are better multi-taskers and men more focused, coz their school told them so? Possibly!

I sort of disagree n7, (not entirely on the "intelligence" thing as such - more on the idea that biology plays no part in personality and perception etc) coz of a few things like this:

-Mmemonics (sp) (memory-experts) often have "eidactic" (sp) abilities i.e. the ability to totally visualize and manipulate a 3D world/representation in their head - hence they "place" objects from lists of meaningless information along a familiar route/scene etc and hence have no trouble recalling it all. This doesn't come about thru learning as far as we can tell. It's a biological varient. And it could be considered "smart" at any rate.

-Einstein was an outsider. His perspectives seem to remarkably combine the balanced faculties of our left and right hemispheres (which can be "reduced" to: "logical"/"abtract" for the left and "holistic"/down-right-weird and not-understood/socially-related for the right.) Most of us seem to prefer one or the other - despite their fundamentally inter-dependant natures. Einstein seems to have been able to think in both a "relative" and "prescriptive/absolute" way, and to combine them in practical output to good effect (from his equations to his wise quotes ). That was/is remarkable. And it's almost certainly biological. (he didn't speak til he was eight - possibly suggesting varience from the norm etc at a biological level). These rare abilities can definitely be considered intelligence-related

-Epileptics, like Dostoyefsky (sp??!), i believe, sometimes seem to gain a strange/altered apprection of the world that allows them to relay their knowledge to us if they are also skilled in some down-to-earth stuff. Surely that could be counted as intelligence of a sort too?


So yes, how we react to our individual make-ups is vital. There are probably many einsteins and dostoyefskies born who never realise their potential. Nobody wants to believe biology plays that much of a part in who they are - but it almost certainly does.

i'm not saying any of this is related to gender. Just that "intelligence" as we perceive it can be affected by biological make-up. However, there are some strong theories that suggest exceptions like these are, well, exceptional, and the rest of us come from such similar starting points that intelligence should-be/is indeed determined by experience and application etc etc etc etc

Just a thought

No contest GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS you only have to look at he end of school results, girls out number the boys in the top 20, in this state, well at least girls are better at exams.

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

So what? Boys rule the world! And we didn't even need to work hard in school for it!

Thats what women let them think.

Ah, the industries control us all with their tweenie-advertising and greed-agrandising, and they're run by angry GM asparagus. So what's it matter?

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"We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow-worm."
--Winston Churchill

Ok, avoiding some work, so i thought i'd get drawn into this speculating spectrum of sex-divides again. This is an interview with a scientist on a transexuals's site (Might cover all sides, you never know - The site does seem relatively loopy, but the interview checks out. Have a look. It backs up this idea that there are biological differences between men and women i.e. that our brains are slightly different etc. Can't draw many conclusions from it - it just seems that there are some distinct differences)

http://www.susans.org/reference/gorskiin.html

Enjoy