Granted it's nearly impossible to prove any trend between men and 
women, or anything about people in general, since you have only natural 
experiments to rely upon, and not enough studies. I think the study 
Erica attached is an excellent example of what we should be doing a lot 
more of.

But since this is the realm of speculation and the offering of our 
opinions based on our personal experience, research, etc... Since we 
agree that there are intrinsic genetic differences between men and 
women, I'll solicit your opinion, un-proveable though it may be, in a 
more structured form. (one which reveals my science fiction background. 
;-))

If we had the opportunity to start from absolute scratch with society- 
say you have a generation of human children raised by (sexless) robot 
parents on a new colony, where there are absolutely no societal trends 
to start with and people can jump into whatever roles they want- how 
would they self distribute? For sake of argument, despite having a 
robot labor supply, let's assume 2 parent families where you need the 
equivalent of one income and one parent watching the kids (I think 
village models are better, actually, but that's a whole other can of 
worms). Also assume that since the society is technologically advanced, 
sickness, fending off lion attacks, etc. are not a factor, and careers 
are flexible enough that you can work part time easily, you don't have 
to take a lot of time off to give birth, etc.. What's your guess as to 
how things would distribute?

I've already made my guess, the 60/40 women/men split I mentioned 
before, with the tendency for more women than men to chose more of the 
child rearing role (i.e. every case other than the two parents 
splitting it exactly 50/50) What's yours? 50/50? More men child rearers 
than women? I'm curious to see how this sampling of the population sees 
how the entire population would balance out given true freedom to do 
so. Despite my 60/40, or perhaps even slightly higher female 
predominance, estimate for mankind as a whole, my personal preference 
would be about 40/60 in my life, as far as how I and my spouse split 
child rearing. I'll take the kids 3 days a week, she can have the other 
two. If she wants more we'll have to fight. :-)


Alternately, if you could program the robots to start with pre-assigned 
gender roles (i.e. have male and female parent robots that split the 
child rearing accordingly, to provide the necessary example), how would 
that effect things, and how long would it take to adapt to some other 
equilibrium if after the first generation they let people re-organize 
as they chose?

I think if you programmed the robots to start with all women staying 
home and men working, or all men staying home and women working, it 
would exponentially relax over the course of at around 10 generations, 
to the optimal split, with the rate of approach proportional to how far 
away society was from that optimal split. I think it's just that hard 
to get beyond what you saw as a child. So it would be best to start the 
robots with a program that had a 50/50 split to most quickly reach the 
optimal direction, allowing for it to go either way?

I'd argue we're at that point now, slowly approaching the optimal 
split, as we've only recently (a few generations) reached the level of 
technology that allows gender differences such as strength to be 
irrelevant for the vast majority of careers/income levels/etc. Studies 
such as the ones you present help us shed our preconceived notions more 
quickly.

I say the sooner the better, because I certainly agree that women are 
just as qualified as men to bring home the synthetically fabricated 
meat substitutes, and in fact I feel that our society is unnecessarily 
crippled because so many careers are done with an effectively 
mono-gendered workforce, thus lacking in the diversity that could 
provide a wider range of solutions. The space electric propulsion 
conference I'm on the way home is an excellent example. I think every 
area of study should have as even as possible a split of men/women, and 
also a mix of personality types, and even maybe languages- as in recent 
discussions I've been talking and thinking about how much your language 
effects how you think, but that's probably another discussion for 
another time. :-)

Dave

ps- I love the thing Danny forwarded about the feminine Utopia. But the 
argument above, if it were ever supported by studies, might inform us 
as to what ratio we should be looking for in the long run, in aggregate 
averages across the population without enforcing anything on any one 
individual. i.e. maybe if the CEO ratio got to 40/60, maybe then we 
could call it good. 50/50 is a pretty random number that I doubt nature 
has any reason to have designed us for.

pps- I also applaud Lisa and hope she does continue to provide a 
societally improving anti-stereotype if it's not too much of a cost to 
do so. From a control systems point of view, it's often a useful 
technique to push too hard in the corrective direction to get to the 
optimal solution faster- especially if the natural correction really 
follows the exponential drop off as it approaches optimal that I 
suggested above. Like vegetarians and especially vegans are having to 
bust their butts in an unfriendly environment to push our food 
provision system in the right direction. One interesting aspect of the 
robot society example is that you could also set it up, as it was in 
the sci-fi book where I got the idea, such that people didn't have to 
work if they didn't want to, all the basic and many advanced needs were 
met for free. It's another interesting discussion of what portion of 
the population would work what portion of the time, and what that 
distribution would be like, if "working" were totally voluntary.

ppps- another thought- I don't think that under any conditions it would 
ever really stabilize at any one set point. Humans are too complicated, 
and we'll probably always be oscillating around various setpoints that 
interact in a very complicated fashion.

On Nov 2, 2005, at 1:52 PM, Erica O'Connor wrote:

>      Thank you to everyone who has responded to my
> comments and participated in this debate thus far.  I
> feel as though it is far from resolved, however.  I've
> taken a bit of time to collect my thoughts (and
> supporting evidence!); so I hope that the topic hasn't
> grown too stale to stand revisiting.
>      Comments such as the following really stuck hard
> in my throat.
> "I agree that there will probably always be more women
> who are better parents than their husbands than vice
> versa."--Dave
>      Dr. Reeves also expressed the belief that more
> stay-at-home mothers than stay-at-home fathers would
> be "in perfect conformity with mammalian instincts,
> social structure, and the interest of the next
> generation."
>      Since when did we decide that men are *inferior*
> at child rearing?  It should be obvious that the
> simple fact that there are currently more stay-at-home
> mothers and mothers as primary child care givers in
> our society does absolutely *nothing* to inform us
> about the superiority or desirability of this
> arrangement in terms of the well-being of children--or
> the well-being of society for that matter.  Female
> mammals nurse their young.  Yeah, so what's the point?
>   Does that mean that it is best for a human female to
> be there to personally wipe her child's nose every
> single time they sniffle?  And that she must choose
> between this and a significant career?  Doubtful.  And
> again, alone, the mere existence of breasts gets us
> nowhere (except maybe backwards) in moral argument.
> Remember that rape can also be considered a "standard
> mammalian instinct".	Please, please don't make me go
> on about the naturalistic fallacy; I will bore
> everyone for sure.
>      My original hypothesis was that individuals may
> be more or less suited for child rearing but this
> quality is not necessarily linked with the sex of the
> parent.  And I stick by it unless I'm proved
> otherwise.  I dug up a relevant family study for
> everyone's enjoyment.  The PDF is attached.  The paper
> compares the well-being of children in single-father
> versus single-mother family structures.  The
> researchers first give an informative overview of some
> of the other work done on this topic.  If nothing else
> this should convince us that the issue is anything but
> settled in favor of female parents' "superiority".
> This particular study does give good support for the
> idea that men and women make equally good parents.
> Interestingly, plenty of gender stereotypes related to
> child-rearing gain no support.  For instance, male
> single-parents aren't better disciplinarians as some
> expected.  Just because some trait is traditionally or
> historically associated with a particular gender
> doesn't mean that it is immutably so.
>      Analogously, I would need to see some empirical
> evidence in support of the claim that women are not as
> "biologically suited" as men to earn a living and
> support a family.  Do note that this assertion is
> simply the logical inverse of "men are better suited
> biologically bring home the bacon"--something stated
> outright or at least tacitly accepted by many thus
> far.	(I wince at that for other reasons as well.  I'd
> much rather bring home the tofu.)  Granted, in this
> country it *is* more difficult for a woman to ascend
> in the workforce than it is for a man.  But the reason
> for this is hardly "biological" in the narrow sense of
> the word.  Glass ceilings still exist.  In Michigan
> women only make 67 cents on the dollar compared to men
> in the same exact positions doing the same amount of
> work.  Women only make up %15 of the US Congress.  I'm
> sorry to pick on you, Dr. Reeves, but Dave is clearly
> not pounding on open doors.  Pointing to a small
> handful of women in prominent, powerful positions
> doesn't mean we should be satisfied with such a
> deficient status quo.  For the same reason it would be
> silly to pronounce that racial discrimination is
> entirely a thing of the past just because Barack Obama
> is who he is.  These two highly relevant programs were
> dropped in my lap recently.  (The NPR genie rarely
> fails me.) They each feature a different study on
> discrimination against women in the workplace and in
> general.  There's plenty of fodder for discussion
> here.
> http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2005/Aug/hour2_082605.html
> http://jackshow.blogs.com/jack/recent_shows/index.html
>      Men have always and everywhere held the reins of
> power.  We cannot easily rule out, then, that
> patriarchal societies do a stellar job of "convincing"
> a vast majority of women that they "want" to be
> dependant baby-machines and need not aspire to much
> else.  And possibly this is why we still have an
> innocuous-seeming lopsided distribution of gender
> roles.   This should at least be an open
> question--especially considering all the obstacles
> flung in the path of women trying to gain power.  But
> regardless of the answer we are still free to decide
> objectively what we want society to be like.
>      Now for the perscriptive part of my argument.
> But first I must lay a bit of groundwork.  Human
> beings are indisputably ruled by their biological
> compositions.  In as sense this is practically a
> truism; however, it is also well known that behavioral
> expression is environmentally contextual to a large
> extent.  Lucky for us we are sufficiently self-aware
> to purposefully manipulate our own environment (for
> our purposes I mean primarily our cultural
> environment) to suit our needs.  We are not stuck
> embracing our so-called "biological tendencies" for
> better or worse, nor do we need to think of ourselves
> as shoving them shamefully under the rug.
> Conceptualizing things in this way is not very useful.
>  Instead we should think of our natures as more
> pleasingly manifested under certain conditions, some
> of which can be manufactured.  So long as these
> cultural constructions effectively work around,
> manipulate, and cater to humans' proximate mechanisms
> designed to maximize their inclusive fitness we're
> golden!  Human behavioral ecologists have already
> posited that such "work-arounds" must be employed in
> order to allow for the high level of cooperation seen
> in modern societies.	Amazingly, even behaviors very
> costly to one's inclusive fitness are theoretically
> sustainable in a population via cultural group
> selection.  This is extremely encouraging.  It means
> (to me, anyway) that we can imagine even more
> prosocial societies than those that exist today.  And
> we certainly need not resign ourselves to any
> preordained gender roles.
>      My argument does no rely on males and females
> being essentially equal in all ways.	They are not.
> But we have a plausible mechanism which circumvents
> these pesky fears about male vs. female differences
> frustrating social progress.	And by no means am I
> suggesting this is the only mechanism by which we can
> exact world improvement.
>      Back to the original discussion.  It has been
> shown that cross-culturally the more equitably public
> and domestic duties are distributed among males and
> females the less gender stratification exists.  We
> should work towards that ideal.  Women voting, gaining
> more power, and entering the workforce has been
> categorically good, though a struggle all the way.
> Thus, I consider many more permanent stay-at-home
> mothers than permanent stay-at-home fathers as
> distinctly counterproductive and undesirable.  We can
> do a whole lot better.  There, took me a while to get
> to it, but there it is.  I greatly appreciate your
> endurance.  Any replies will be relished.  :-)
>
> -Erica
> P.S.	References on cultural group selection available
> upon request.
>  
David P. Morris, PhD
aka thecat Æ umich.edu, aka KB8PWY
home: 734-995-5525  UofM (2104 SPRL): 734-763-5357  fax: 734-763-5567
ElectroDynamic Applications Inc.
phone: (734) 786-1434 fax: (734) 786-3235
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