Science or Sexism?

Perhaps it is true. And perhaps not. I haven’t read the studies, but on the face of it, it doesn’t sound impossible.

If it does turn out to be true, though, that still won’t mean we’ll be allowed to talk about it. Truth may be defense against libel and slander, but it’s no defense against PC.

Women and men are not equal. By that I mean they are not the same. They must have equal rights, they are all persons after all, but the evolutionary pressures have instilled different attitudes on them. They do not always think alike. For example men are usually more risk takers than women, who by way of their “responsibility” to raise their children, have become more conservative thinking. It just happens that religion is as conservative as you can get and so I think that it may well be that women tend to believe more.

It doesn’t matter if it is true or false, it doesn’t stop it being unhelpful.

There may be a time when the general public can sit down and discuss race, gender and sexuality differences without the baggage of discrimination. But until that time it is perhaps better not to promote those kinds of explanations.

If I were a scientist publishing in this area I’d be genuinely conflicted about the political role my work would be used for.

Having said all that, I think it is sometimes too easy for evolutionary ethologists to tell just-so stories about how behavior came to be, without due rigour.

Is the “therefore less rational than men” something that you added or did this appear in any of the research papers? Sounds inflammatory.

However, I think that one can/should support equal rights for women and respect them as a group and as individuals without pretending that there aren’t real differences between the genders. If you argument hinges on biological equality then what happens when evidence comes in to demonstrate that there is a difference?

We know that humans make decisions through a range of processes, many of which are not strictly rational. We know that group cohesion, social pressures and emotions are factors in all of our decisions, so it isn’t implausible that some groups may weigh these factors differently.

If these studies are confirmed then we should accept and acknowledge them and try to utilize them to advance our positions. If you care for women’s rights this goes doubly.

For a start, we should be looking at the actual differences and the variation within the groups. Individual women will be more “rational” than individual men, even if the means are different.

Definitely interesting-I haven’t read the studies either but read some of the coverage on Double X. My first impression is that I am aware of WAY more male atheists than female. But of course, being an atheist or even an agnostic in the U.S. is so fraught that it’s difficult to separate the societal repercussions of non-conformity from the actual practices of belief, and standards of societal conformity in most areas of life are more severe for women than for men.

However, stepping outside my little world, my second thought is that among the 3 major world religions, it is predominantly men and boys whose minds are poisoned powerfully enough by religion to commit murder (of abortion doctors, museum security guards, etc) and blow themselves up with the intent of achieving simultaneous mass murder and sexual/eternal bliss, and woman and girls who are predominantly victimized in countless ways by the allegedly religious motivations of men.

Women may very well be “evolutionarily, biologically, or psychologically conditioned to be more emotional or social” than men and therefore more likely to preserve traditions, like religion, that are in some ways harmful but in other ways beneficial to preserving the unity and cohesion of the herd. But to leap from this to the assumption that women are “therefore less rational than men” is indeed a logical stretch that does seem to accommodate a fairly evident sexism on the part of the speaker.

Yes, it could be true.

The potential sexism, however, lies more in whether this is the hypothesis that most immediately comes to mind for many.

Religion is more common among oppressed peoples, is it not?

And women are the largest group of oppressed peoples in the world.

Seems pretty natural to me, no sexism required.

but rather the implicit value judgment that inevitably comes along with saying that women are more emotional/social and men more rational

Some women are, some aren’t. The mean of men and women appears to be different but there’s almost certainly a large overlap. If true, this isn’t a value judgement, it would be a fact. If feminism requires physical, biological equality rather than legal, social and moral equality then it’s doomed. It doesn’t and it isn’t, this is just a silly “irrational” overreaction.

Don’t fight reality, you’ll always lose.

of course we don’t want to fight reality. But the reality TODAY, is that sexist society shapes the development of boys and girls, and muddies up most results of these types of studies, TODAY.

WHEN we remove sexism, THEN we can get clean signatures in the data and see what differences, if any, actually are inherently biological. To try to do this now, to latch onto the muddled results confused by today’s inherent social sexism and start jumping to “women are more emotional and less rational” is perpetuating the culture in which you WON’T get good scientific results. You’re poisoning the research by doing that.

(note, general “you”, I’m not addressing any commenter in particular)

Ian said:

I think it is sometimes too easy for evolutionary ethologists to tell just-so stories about how behavior came to be, without due rigour.

Couldn’t agree more.

Let’s ask a different question: What’s the big deal about behaving rationally, anyway? Seems to me the success of both, individuals and the species at large has much more to do with irrationality – envy, vanity, unjustified confidence, and greed – than logic.

Being emotional and social does not imply being less rational. Its a non-sequitur; as if being a Vulcan is the pinnacle of rationality.

Responding to your and others emotions, which are naturally occuring and evolved, is a rational thing to do. Not taking others’ emotions into account when you make a decision doesn’t make you more rational. They occur, and should be factored in to decisions about dealing with people.

This is a bit like the whole nasty and very uncomfortable discussions a few brave souls are willing to have about why some racial groups, on average, score higher on IQ tests. That the differences exist is indisputable. Speculation as to why only gets you into trouble. There’s also the implicit assumption that atheists make that religious belief is the opposite of being rational. I believe it, but most religious people probably would dispute it. Of course, they’re stupid… (I kid! I kid!)

There are psychological and biological differences between the sexes. To pretend otherwise is idiotic. It’s debatable whether certain things are socially constructed or bio/psychological – but even socially constructed things have their roots somewhere in psychology.

I understand feminists attempting to change the stereotype of women so they can be treated more fairly – sexism is a reality. Maybe, in that narrow goal, this article is negative as people who aren’t smart could read it and enforce those stereotypes even more. But science and reality don’t give a shit about your agenda, nor should they. There was an interesting finding – women, statistically, are more religious than men. Then things were proposed to try and explain it.

If you replaced women with “horses” in that article (and pretend it still makes sense), it suddenly isn’t offensive. Science SHOULD examine even the uncomfortable truths – but this one shouldn’t even be uncomfortable unless you’re an idiot. No one is saying a woman can’t be more rational than a man. Just that on AVERAGE women think DIFFERENTLY from men, and perhaps this predisposes them to be less rational.

Women are biologically different from men. This is a plain as day FACT. It shouldn’t be “off the table” as a scientific explanation of a difference between sexes just because it offends someone.

If horses had culture that defined much of their behavior then it would still be BS even if we didn’t find it offensive. That study is drawing conclusions from behavior that is culturally influenced with no apparent attempt to mitigate that influence.

I don’t deny there are biological differences between men and women just that studies like this are so flawed as to be useless. You are making the same flawed judgment that those doing this study did: that our biology completely matches up with our culture. Even a cursory cultural anthropology class would show that such assumptions are incredibly naive.

Who gets to decide what is “rationality” is? …*generally speaking*… men. So, if men get to decide what is rational, and women don’t make the same decisions, women are irrational.

Perhaps evolutionarily women have developed to think differently than men due to child protection or whatever, but it doesn’t make that thought process less rational. It might be incredible logical given the input data. If religion appears to give safety and a woman knows that her child needs safety it is perfectly logical and “rational” to be religious. duh.

The idea that, in general, men/women think differently, big deal… assigning one of them to be rational and the other irrational, BIG problem.

I think women can be as rational and logical as they want to be. There are quite accomplished female mathematicians for example. Perhaps all the study suggests is that there is more to life than being rational and logical and many women (for cultural reasons and possibly genetic reasons as well) tend to show more attention to those other aspects of life than males.

OINK!

“women are more religious than men because they are evolutionarily, biologically, or psychologically conditioned to be more emotional or social and therefore less rational than men.”

Gotta say I’ve got to resent this blanket statement. I’ve also got to say that point A in the above statement does not necessarily lead to point B.

I’m pretty high strung. I like to spin myself as passionate. I am passionate about life and have an opinion on everything (in case you didn’t notice). Is this because I’m a woman, don’t know. I do know that being someone (and there certainly are men who are too) who is highly emotional, doesn’t mean you can’t think rationally and skeptically. I call bull on that.

The new breed of male chauvinist pig: declares there are differences between men and women (no, duh!) but all that means is our differing roles should be of equal value. Somehow this seems to imply I should be a good little girl and accept what they mean is my role as a woman. The thing that amazes me most about the new breed of male chauvinist pig is that they are invariably the ones who cry the loudest at preceived inequities in family court towards men in things such as child support and custody.

I say you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If women are invariably different from you (biologically or whatever spin you want to put on it), then the courts are right to favor them in custody matters. After all, we’re the nurturers and you’re the risk takers? Right? Hmmm?

We’ve come so far from traditional roles, these blanket assumptions, whether they be about men (I certainly know men who are braver than me and also know men who are bigger cowards than I am) or women.

BTW, thank you Siamang, for that bit above. It beautifully shoots down that silly notion better than a year’s worth of arguing.

As a woman, I have no problem with that conclusion. As another poster said, reality can be uncomfortable. I think women do tend to be more emotional but that doesn’t mean we can’t be logical as well. I’m more logical and rational than most men I encounter yet I could see how the research still holds up.

Thoughts from a feminazi: How can we know how much of the female religiosity is biological and how much is sociological in a society full of religious misogyny? The answer is, we can’t. The essential problem is that there is no way to completely remove women from their past social influences to study them. We can try to adjust for it, but we must understand that any and all studies are only the best we can do right now. Once we are all born and raised in a society where men and women are respected equally, then we’ll be able to take a deeper look at the hard science.

I would like to second (third? fourth?) the comments about the impossibility of accurately determining the cause of differences between the behavior of men and women in our current social structure. Occam’s razor would suggest that the easiest explanation for women’s greater religiosity—the force that we can see every day in almost every culture—is socialization, not evolution.

When I read the article by Lauren Sandler, I was struck by the assertion by a Pew researcher that the discrepancy between men and women’s religiosity is found even in “prehistory.” I sincerely doubt that there could be any such conclusive studies. Certainly there aren’t surveys!
But what really disturbs me about some of the comments here is the glib use of the words “emotional” and “rational.” What scale are we using to measure either? It’s been my experience that men are much more likely to express anger than women are, yet they rarely view that as being emotional. It’s only the “softer” emotions that are denigrated. Unless it’s a woman expressing anger, and then she’s definitely irrational. As long as the behavior of men sets the standard for these terms, any deviation by women will be considered substandard.
As for rationality, since when have the behaviors of all these male-led religions been rational? Self-serving, maybe, but far from reasonable. I guess that’s an important distinction.

Also, there is no strong evidence that prehistoric women were more likely to depend on community than men were—that’s strictly a “just-so” story. However, historically, women have faced far harsher penalties for nonconformity, while church attendance has been mandatory for all practical purposes.

totally sexist

Sexism (as well as racism, etc. ) is about having equal rights. I don’t see how putting forward a theory that women have different thought pattern to men is sexism – it doesn’t take anything away from women, it just suggests that we can be different.

It’s really no different than saying men are better at physical sports than women. people need to stop cowering behind political correctness and being offended every time someone suggests something they don’t want to agree with.

And given the total sausage-fest that is atheism, i’m inclined to agree with Dawkins and Shermer regarding most cultures (but not all).

These were all very good reads. I found the response by Jessica Glaser to be nonsensical and not even close to being on target. I’m sorry if the actual state of the word offends her, but it doesn’t change anything.

Hemant, similar to any studies on the differences between the sexes when it comes to religion, are you aware of any similar studies when it comes to belief in science?

I’m 30 years old. I grew up in a generation where women did not have obstacles to pursuing a scientific education. But when I went off into University to study Math, Physics, and Engineering, there were fewer than 10% females in any of my classes. However, my observation is that there were a much higher percentage of women in chemistry and biology.

So to me it has always been interesting that given absolute freedom to choose their education, that very few women seem to be picking science. And if they do pick science, they pick chemistry and biology far more often than physics or math (if you consider math a science).

These of course are all based on my own personal experience of course, which is why I’m wondering if there are any official studies that you’re aware of.

Women that get oppressed at many levels by the church and stay in it, are nuts. As are those that stay in abusive relationships. There may even be a connection between the two having to do with confidence.

Having said that, there is not one iota of evidence that there is any genetic reason for this. Our culture treats men and women very differently and this is far more likely to be the reason. This is purely untestable speculation and a waste of time at this point.

At one point I would have said this is true. But my wife and daughter break the mold. They are both brilliant, can out shoot most men, not religious, and only emotional AFTER the stress situation is cleared up.
But If you watch lots of TV/movies they mostly portray woman in the way stated in the article. Although I prefer the strong-Kickass type most women are not portrayed that way. I know that movies like religion is not reality but these do program people to be that way.

It doesn’t matter if it is true or false, it doesn’t stop it being unhelpful.

Really? Because I’ve always heard that facts are useful in making informed judgments.

I’ve always thought it was glaringly obvious that women are more religious because society has made them the ones responsible for the religious upbringing of the family. If kids don’t go to church, the mother is blamed (not the dad, he works all week and needs to rest on Sundays!) It’s just like how if the house isn’t clean, the mother is blamed, no matter how many able-bodied adults live in the house.

There are some rather annoying comments, but I have to say that the general tone isn’t as sexist here as I’ve encountered on some other skeptic/atheist sites. Kudos to Hemant for attracting a more logical audience.

That said, let’s take the reasoning that the article starts with and apply it to some other groups. African Americans are more religious than whites; does this mean that African Americans are less rational than whites? Personally, I don’t think so; from what I’ve heard, the pressures against coming out atheist are much stronger in African American communities than in white communities. Given that women are likely to be labeled ‘bitches’ for displaying unsocial behavior that men would get a free pass on, maybe social pressures are part of what keep women from leaving the religious communities that they grew up in.

As someone above said, men are vastly more likely than women to believe in UFOs, bigfoot, and conspiracy theories. Does this mean that men are vastly less rational than women? Or is it somehow more rational to believe that the president of the United States orchestrated the deaths of 3K citizens than it is to believe in human parthenogenesis (of a male offspring, no less)? Is it more rational to believe that the vast majority of climate scientists are in some sort of conspiracy with the environmentalists to fabricate global warming evidence than it is to believe that the Catholic church is, on balance, a force for good?

Maybe there are some biological differences that make women resort to religion more than men, and men resort to conspiracy theories more than women, but there are a hell of a lot of confounding factors that haven’t been controlled for here.

Guys, please avoid jumping to the conclusion that you’re intrinsically better (‘more rational’) than half of the human population because of your gender – at least until we get some better evidence.

Lastly, let’s look at the consequences of this argument: where does the conclusion that women are naturally more religious than men (and naturally ‘less rational’ than men) leave the women here who are atheists? As aberrations of their own gender? Are female atheists supposed to accept second chair to male atheists because, even though they’re both atheists, the male ones are inherently ‘more rational’ than the female ones? Or are female atheists somehow the ‘extra rational’ outliers who have struggled to atheism against longer odds than the male atheists have?

I just saw this. I have to comment.

*Sigh. Atheists pride ourselves on being skeptical. But as this discussion shows, we are also prone to accepting uncritically things that fit with our pre-existing beliefs. Disappointing.

The whole discussion has been so absurd – most people have been saying that, yes, there are differences between the sexes, and to ignore them in the name of being PC is stupid/ patronizing/ whatever. Okay, fine. The same point was made 50 times – with NO discussion of whether *this* particular supposed difference exists. I read the article and was completely unimpressed with the way the write seemed to conclude that, just because slightly more men in the U.S. identify themselves as being unaffiliated with any religion, this must mean that women are more religious. Ummm… why? There could be any number of explanations for the statistical difference. For example, we know that some in the “Nones” group have religious belief but do not like organized religion. As other commenters have pointed out, women are still a socially devalued group, and religion is often a tool for gaining social advantage on the part of devalued groups. They may be more willing to identify with an established group due to their lower social position.

Also, the article ONLY mentions the U.S. – except to say that women in Europe are not religious, as a side note. Is the U.S. the only place in the world that matters? Ugh. The article also treated the situation far out of proportion to what the numbers suggest. Even if we ONLY look at the U.S., the strong majority of men are religious! How can we start making claims about women’s supposed lack of rationality due to their (unproven) (slightly) greater religiosity when most women AND most men are religious in the U.S.? (And when most people of both sexes are NOT religious in European countries?)

The bottom line is, people of all stripes, including atheists, are far too eager to latch on to ideas we find appealing, such as that women are less rational than men. I completely agree that women and men are biologically different in evolutionarily predictable ways. But that does not mean that every difference someone suggests fits with reality. This one certainly does not seem to hold water.

And finally, I’m sorry but, as a strongly atheist woman, I TOTALLY resent the idea that women are more “emotional” somehow (a concept that never seems to be defined) and that this keeps us from thinking logically. If you think that, go join the fundies. Seriously.

Okay, I was going to leave it with that last sarcastic remark, and then I read Voodoo Chile’s comment on women in science.

“I’m 30 years old. I grew up in a generation where women did not have obstacles to pursuing a scientific education. But when I went off into University to study Math, Physics, and Engineering, there were fewer than 10% females in any of my classes. However, my observation is that there were a much higher percentage of women in chemistry and biology:

“So to me it has always been interesting that given absolute freedom to choose their education, that very few women seem to be picking science. And if they do pick science, they pick chemistry and biology far more often than physics or math (if you consider math a science).”-Voodoo Chile

First I have to ask–how do you know there were no obstacles to women in science when you grew up? What do you base that off? Because I can assure you that such obstacles still exist today. Ask any female physics graduate student, and she will tell you that women are not welcomed when they are hired. I know of one woman who told me that her department was recently informed by the NSF that if they didn’t hire more women, they’d lose their grants. So they hired a woman. And no one respected her, or would talk or collaborate with her, because they believed she wasn’t hired on “merit,” she was hired because another vagina was needed to walk their halls so they could keep their money. She was completely shut out from her colleagues. I would say that’s a definite obstacle.

Secondly, as outlined in this very interesting, though highly speculative article [http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science], science isn’t a great career. In fact, adjusted for IQ and education requirements, science jobs are some of the lowest paid in the nation. Which begs the question, who’d be dumb enough to take such a career? I’ll let you read the article, but it makes some pretty interesting points about why women don’t pick physics or math as often.

Lastly, I was both a physics and molecular biology major, and I can tell you why most of the women in my physics classes dropped out. 1) We did our research and knew that jobs in physics were scarce and paid crap. Almost all of my girlfriends who did physics and graduated and went to grad school got done and were completely unable to find jobs–most of them learned chemistry so they could find work, (for example, in wineries). 2) Faculty positions were scarce, and also paid crap. 3) You spend much of your career locked in an office writing code or typing up papers, which is boring. 4) Physicists are generally unfriendly. The only friendly ones I met in all my six years were women. 5) There’s a lot of sexism. I’ve had several friends complain to me about their professors belittling them, then later using their ideas and claiming them as their own. I’ve also had many if not most of my female colleagues in physics tell stories of sexual harassment and blatant staring. One girlfriend of mine walked into her professor’s office to ask a question, and all he did was stare at her, blatantly up and down, for a solid 30 seconds before responding. I would consider such things obstacles, to say the least.

As for biology, it pays better. I could become a nurse anesthesiologist and make 200k a year easy, or I could work as physics researcher and make 50k, struggling to make tenure. Also, the fields of biology and chemistry are exploding. There’s tons of opportunities and money and research available for the taking. With physics, the best you can hope for is to work for the government (NASA or the Department of Energy) or a few small private companies.

The so-called “hard” sciences like math and physics aren’t difficult to break into because women don’t have the brains (while women made up about 7% of my class, they were often top-scorers on tests) but because the odds are stacked against us. I ultimately picked a career in molecular biology not because I was any better at biology than I was at math or physics (I rocked them all, I can honestly say), but because the career opportunities were numerous and more reasonable and inviting. It’s not about brains, my friends, it’s about choices.

Sorry if this has been said….I only had a couple of minutes and not enough time to read all the comments….but in case it hasn’t, I was just going to point out that it seems odd to point out that women are “more likely to be religious” (assuming that’s true) as though the information is really helpful, considering that *most* major religions are run by men, and in a particularly sexist fashion at that (orthodox Christianity/Judaism/Islam, anyone?).

I mean, even if women are/were more likely to be religious/superstitious, I still don’t think that would change the way I feel about anything when I consider the fact that there are just as many *men* waiting there in positions of priesthood and religious authority to take advantage of that kind of belief — whether it’s coming from a man or a woman.