Men Smarter Than Women

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Clarkey

I wrote this:

"A major reason why women don't make it as high in the workplace is voluntary absences to have children and raise them. Any man that takes off numerous years to raise his children would not climb up the corporate ladder as high as he would if he just worked the whole time."

I agree with you on this; at a starting position, women are perceived to have slightly more risk of leaving than men, and so they aren't worth as much of an investment. But once a woman is started on a lower salary path, it becomes very difficult to remove that precident, even once she's gone past any likelihood of leaving to have children.

But in households where the woman is the primary bread winner, I'd wager that women tend to have fewer children, take shorter maternity leaves, and have the man as the main caregiver in the household.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Clarkey

"A major reason why women don't make it as high in the workplace is voluntary absences to have children and raise them. Any man that takes off numerous years to raise his children would not climb up the corporate ladder as high as he would if he just worked the whole time."

What is so wrong with this arguement? Is it really such a stretch to suggest this as being one of the factors for why women don't make it as high up the corporate ladder as men?

But when studies claim that women get paid less for the same work, they take into account a higher likelihood of maternity leave. Same work, same timeframes--women get paid less.

What you are suggesting is that there is a widespread practice of discriminating against women because they are likelier to want to have children. And that may be; but if so, that practice is reprehensible and should be stopped. Plenty of men consider having a family and raising children to be a central life goal. Plenty of women either have no desire to have children or can't have children for medical reasons. That's not a "liberal pc alarm," that's just practical thinking.

Often when people say "oh, you're just being pc" what they really mean is "I know that I'm defending the indefensible here--but the REAL problem is that YOU are too sensitive." Well, sorry--that isn't going to fly. Saying that women "naturally" or "inherently" are more likely to want children than men is the height of 19th-century silliness. There's a reason there are laws to protect women from that kind of discrimination.

Saying "women naturally want to have children" is effectively another way of saying "women's natural role is to raise children." I'm not accusing you of having that attitude--just pointing out the end result of that argument.

The topic of the thread is the intelligence of men and women, so a few remarks on that: It seems to me that any study that uses I.Q. as its benchmark is completely and fatally flawed. I.Q. measures exactly one thing: your ability to take I.Q. tests. The fact that this particular researcher still thinks that's a good measure of intelligence just shows how completely out of touch with reality he is. If you and a marathon runner from Kenya took part in an "athleticism" test where the test involved playing hockey, my guess is that the study would conclude that you were "more athletic." These results are just as flawed.