I do think men are more attuned to studying finances, stock markets, and so forth than women. And I think this has to do with the way men think, they are more oriented towards things and objects, and women are more oriented towards people and people’s feelings. Men are more concept oriented, women more person oriented.
Well, if you want to, you can google the subjects which I just did, and it pulled up for me a college paper on the differences citing that famous book I haven’t read ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ and some scientific studies, as well as some other pages that show for example developmental differences between girls and boys as they grow up.
For example, women use both sides of the brain to talk, men only use one side of their brain. This is why women tend to be conversationally superior to men, especially combined with the emotional focus, empathetic conversation. So women talking together yes, it’s about people, and it’s about emotions, and yes the man has trouble sometimes getting a word in edgewise.
Men tend to dominate still, the field of chess for example, there are some rare birds who can do very well there too, but the combination of a game without strong emotions and relationships combined with spacial logic and thinking ahead, is more suited to the man.
It’s like how men and women tend to process directions on a map differently.
Now you are free to disagree with all this, but the scientific studies are out there. How much weight you want to give them, the details, that is all open, but I think if you look into it you’ll be convinced that there are some fundamental differences there. Perhaps you can tell me what your views of the differences mentally and in preferences and the actions they are happiest and best at, are between men and women? You do accept I hope that there are differences, even if you haven’t gotten them all thought out in a little list or decided to ever think that because they are there, men and women -should- pursue different courses?
Now we live in times where these differences are seen as irrelevant to the goals and paths a person pursues in life. But… are they? Do they not in fact very likely, if sufficiently unmasculine or unfeminine tasks are always taken up, possibly have a detrimental effect on a person’s psyche? And in the case of pursuing the natural specialities a positive effect? And also, should we be urging men and women to pursue tasks that are contrary to their gender? Is there any underlying spiritual and moral reason to prefer more manly tasks for men, more feminine tasks for women, I think there can be a good case made there.
As Catholics we also have to accept that the traditional family roles in society that the Church never had a problem with… the Church never had a problem with, at the very least, and still truly doesn’t in its fundamentals. Once something is established always and everywhere, things don’t change, though sometimes a large portion will go off the rocker with the current culture, the view that always existed is the one that is the Church’s.
We are forbidden to blur the gender lines by God Himself who calls it an abomination for example, to go sufficiently on that route.
Our God is a very hierarchical, role placing God. He has a role for everyone, and He wants people to take up the place He has for them, rather than be completely self determinate. We are interdependent creatures, each having our own specialities and needs to rely on others to perform better in other areas and help us in them.
I don’t agree with Williamson in regards to formal education, and it takes some effort at speculation as to why he believes that and how fully and in what regard he believes that, I think I have some ideas but I don’t feel fully satisfied and would like to hear why he would believe it rather than his soundbites.
My mother graduated summa cum laude, my father has a Phd., my grandmother was always an intellectual giant, able to quote authors, poetry, art, design. .
And I have to say, looking back at their lives – my mother wanted to be a stay at home mother, and it was her divorce that forced her into a role she did not prefer, in the working world. She would’ve flourished if she’d been able to stay married, compared to out there. My grandmother, let her intellectual pride get the better of her to a degree, and that did her life and marriage some harm. Though we were always two peas in a pod, she thought she knew better than a lot of men, she was somewhat anti-patriarchical feminist for a long time, and if she’d had a little more humility in her intellectual abilities rather than an anti-reaction based on her sense of superiority, she would’ve done a lot better.
