I've seen this argument come up a lot. Generally, when a feminist or whatever mentions inequality (such as the gender pay gap ), someone brings up the argument that
"The most likely cause of these gender-based psychological differentials is the structure and function of the male brain. Which in turn can be traced back to our genetic hard-wiring."Yup, we're all just wired that way. Girls are hard-wired to like pink and ponies and babies and cooking. Boys are hard-wired to like race cars and combat boots and running into each other at high speeds.
Of course, I call bullshit.
I present you with some anecdata:
As a lot of you already know, I work in the childcare industry. I know, I know, a woman working in a female-dominated industry, how feminist of me ;) Anyway, I have the amazing opportunity to observe many children growing up. I won't pretend to be an expert on this, because, after all, I'm new in the industry, but there are some trends I have noticed.
Let's take the child I will refer to as G. When I started work at
the centre, G was in the toddler room. G was a very sweet little
toddler. He would talk to me a lot (he was a big talker) and would
often play tea-party with me. He made me imaginary tea and cakes, and
had great fun caring for baby dolls or pretending to vacuuming the
floor, or telling me how much he loved corn while eating it kernel by
kernel.
Now? Well, now G is in the kindy room. He rarely
talks to me, won't accept hugs anymore, won't go near the dolls because
they are "girly", thinks tea parties are stupid.
And so I wonder,
what precisely is it that made him change so much? If it was simply a
matter of nature, why wasn't he aggressive earlier? There were plenty
of aggressive children, both male and female, that he could have chosen
to play with but didn't.
Throughout the centre, gender
differences become more obvious the higher the age of the children. The
children in the babies room don't have the same segregation as far as
interests and activities are concerned. That's not to say that they
don't all have distinct personalities. Even the youngest baby will have
its own personality. But they don't seem to notice the gender
differences.
The toddler room? Also not segregated. the
toddlers don't seem to notice gender differences, and they certainly
don't act differently be they male or female. The same number of boys
and girls are playing with the prams as are sitting in a corner with
cars as are constantly asking me to read to them or swing them around
or chase them.
But when we reach the kindy room, suddenly
everything is different. Suddenly girls are playing in the home corner
and boys are playing with the trains. G and T, two boys who have moved
to the kindy room since I began, occasionally played with the dolls,
but slowly gave it up.
This leads me to believe that Nurture, not Nature, is the reason for a lot of gender discrepancies we see in adults.
Secondly, the theory that our brains are "hard-wired" is just ludicrous! Haven't you heard? The Brain Is Plastic!
As Marguerite Holloway says in Scientific American :
"It
is as if the brain is a vast floodplain. One year the water might run
eastward in a series of small channels; the next it might cut a river
deep through the center. A year later, and a map of the floodplain
looks completely different: streams are meandering to the west. It is
the same with a brain, the argument goes. Change the input--be it a
behavior, a mental exercise, such as calculating a tip or playing a new
board game, or a physical skill--and the brain changes accordingly."
So don't you think it's worth considering that a lot of these "scientific differences" described in books such as Why Men Want Sex & Women Need Love
(Alan and Barbara Peace) can be explained by socialisation? Perhaps it
is socialisation causing these differences, and not innate gender
differences?
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"The mind has no fixed characteristics; depending on circumstances, it may turn out any way at all." -Dogen Zenji, 1200-1253
It's interesting to hear about this from the perspective of someone who actually does work with very young children; all the people I know who do early childcare don't usually think about that sort of thing. The other interesting thing is the fact that much of that is imitative play, meaning they pick up the idea that it is Very Important that women and men be considered Entirely Separate Classes of Beings, with Completely Discrete Domains from the adults in their lives, even though the boundaries between the two in society are muddier than ever (which I, for one, think is a good thing). It's fascinating that they still pick up on those increasingly subtle cues.
One last comment, though: it might be a symptom of a patriarchal society that childcare is a women-dominated industry, but the fact that you are a woman who works in that industry is neither inherently feminist nor unfeminist.
I teach martial arts for children, with classes ranging from preschool up to middle school, and I have to say that my personal experience, like yours, has shown me that if there are any biologically determined social differences between genders, they are minor, and are vastly overshadowed by socialization. Little girls want to run, jump, kick, punch, climb, play fight and slam into things just as much as little boys. Little boys want to play cooperative social games, hold hands, give hugs and get sparkly stickers as rewards just as much as little girls.
It's a shame that so many people are so dead set on limiting the natural range of children's behavior.
I think biology plays a factor in the debate to some extent, but I wouldn't rush to any sort of conclusion without taking into account the fact that socialization plays. The brain is malleable, certainly, and we would be wise to acknowledge that assuming absolutes in anything exist is lazy logic at best.
Now, having identified the problem, I wish I was wise enough to find a solution. Education is one answer, but again I answer that if there was some way for us to be encouraged to be self-aware, we'd all be richer for it.
now I know that for the most part the hard wire theory is ridiculous. but I do think that some children automatically like one type of toys over another. Just as an example. I am ten years older than my brother and 13 years older than my sister. My little brother has always seemed to be more interested in playing with girl toys and nobody in my house ever discouraged that. But my little sister who also had to choice of playing with either the girly toys or the boys toys always went for the girls toys. She has never really taken any interest in playing with the toy cars, but she loves her dolls and enjoys playing with her play kitchen.
The hardwired theory is ridiculous, I agree - my main points of annoyance with it are that a) if it were hardwired nobody would need to teach kids "don't play with that, it's a girl toy" since they'd do it automatically, and b) as far as I know, in so so many studies that have shown statistically significant brain differences between men and women the difference was small, especially compared to the in-group variation. But then it gets picked up by non-scientists and turned into "Men have X brains and women don't!" when the truth is often along the lines of "if you pick a random group of 100 men and women with X brains, on average 54 of them will be men and 46 women." You can't apply conclusions about populations to individuals *anyway*, but it's even more wrongheaded when the conclusion is a relatively small group difference added to a high in-group variation.
Especially since, as you say, brain differences can *also* be the effect, rather than the cause, of a certain activity. People are currently trying to figure out whether a disability I have is neurologically based or not, so I've had to deal with the subject, but it's astounding how little it's acknowledged that brain difference =/= something that has been there since before birth and is utterly immutable.
The thing I don't understand is why there has to be a nature/nurture dichotomy. Why does it have to be either/or when, at least to me, it seems so obvious that environmental factors play upon psychological factors that are partly hereditary (hence biological) and some factors (mostly related to mating issues) that are mostly biological.
"Embodiment" is a complex thing. Interestingly though, I usually don't encounter people who claim biological determination but people who are adamant about biology playing no part in the development of human behaviour (blank slate). Which I find equally absurd.
thank you for this wonderful post - very interesting observations.