This was an interesting article, and a very important counter-point to the notion that any difference between men and women is evidence of discrimination or at

This was an interesting article, and a very important counter-point to the notion that any difference between men and women is evidence of discrimination or at least socialization. That said, I think the article is a little extreme. I suspect that the genetic benefits of "playing it safe" for men and "risk taking" for women were greater throughout our evolutionary history than the author suggests. For starters, a brief glance out into the world suggests that women do take risks and seek power - sometimes through a man, but often independently. They may not build boats and sail to far away lands, but they sure will follow the yellow brick road to hollywood on a pipe dream of becoming a high status movie star or singer. The author used the example of Genghis Kahn as an example of why men would benefit from high status in a way women wouldn't - GK fathered hundreds (thousands?) of children, whereas a woman wouldn't be able to exploit this power in the same way. This isn't necessarily the case. Sure, a woman can't have hundreds of thousands of kids, but her sons may be able to. In fact, the biggest fights among Bonobo apes are between Females, usually over their son's status in the mating hierarchy. For men - I've read (and sorry, no cite here) that many hunting gathering societies are quite egalitarian, mainly because the leverage that great wealth and concentration of power aren't present. While good hunters do more mating than poor ones, the opportunity and benefit to shooting the moon with extreme risk taking may not be nearly as prevalent in our evolutionary history as the author suggests. Again, a brief glance out into the world suggests that the norm among males is to exhibit some risk taking and status seeking behavior - and perhaps a bit more so than women - but ultimately, I suggest that for at least some of our evolutionary history, many males had the opportunity of, well, behaving more like females, but acting fairly monogamous and playing it safe. Still a good article, I just think it overstates the case considerably.