An invited talk given last Friday at the gathering of the American Psychological Association has been circulating online, titled Is There Anything Good About Men? It made for fascinating reading. The course I took on the psychology of gender back in college bent over backwards to stress that the variation within genders dwarfed the variation between genders; it took a low-level, data-driven perspective that catalogued the minute differences between the genders in many facets of life. So I found it interesting to see a psychologist take a step back and expound a thesis that forms broad generalizations about gender and culture.

The talk tries to get away from the war-of-the-sexes take on gender as a power struggle between men and women, instead perceiving culture as a system that has evolved to exploit both genders to perpetuate itself (and in competition with other cultures). It argues that some inherent differences in gender roles arose from evolutionary biology, citing research showing that the world's population has twice as many female ancestors and male ancestors. Throughout history, most women reproduced, so their optimal strategy was to remain risk averse ("save the women and children!") and simply to choose from among their suitors. In contrast, men exhibited a much higher variance in number of offspring. Scholars estimate that Genghis Khan may have had over a thousand children; most of his soldiers probably had none before dying in combat. The suggestion is that culture exploits men by instilling in them an insecurity about their legacy in the gene pool, forcing them to take risks to prove their manhood. Thus women's role has been to foster the deep, intimate relationships (family) that nurture the next generation; men's role has been to build shallow, broad groups that allow them to win respect by making public contributions (armies, religions, universities, companies). In this theory, men are the expendable risktakers, explaining why they outnumber women both at the top (corporate CEOs) and at the bottom (prisons).

Much of this theory rings true to me. Of course, it is more descriptive than proscriptive. It potentially explains why women have encountered problems in the workplace, which in this view originated as arenas where men could prove themselves, in competition with even their own coworkers for dominance. It doesn't identify any "proper" role for either gender. The talk points out that studies repeatedly show that men and women are nearly identical in terms of their average capabilities; they diverge in their motivations and interests. In short, the theory only predicts what men and women have wanted to do, not what they could do.

Anyway, I found the talk to be some delightful food for thought. I think you might find it worth reading. It's fairly long, but this NY Times blog entry hits the highlights.