4 ms·
It seems to me that these very qualities of a woman being nurturing, risk-averse and emotionally expressive harken back to the earliest times. In hunter-gathere
by selmnoo 13y ago
It seems to me that these very qualities of a woman being nurturing, risk-averse and emotionally expressive harken back to the earliest times. In hunter-gatherer communities the woman normally didn't partake in the risky, competitive sport of hunting, she was the gatherer and the childrearer.
I have two young nieces that I look after quite a lot, one's almost 2 years old and the other's 3. They have a variety of toys at their disposal: little cars/trucks, barbie dolls, puzzle games, cooking playsets, action superheros, etc. I have myself tried in some capacity to steer them towards playing with the traditionally boys' toys: I display extra excitement when we're working the little car, I walk them through programming basics like for loops in goofy and fun voices, I try to spice up games involving superheros (hey, they can do more tricks than the barbie dolls, so that's easy!). But yet, they do have some sort of natural preference for girl toys. They love the cooking playset and the dolls. The cooking playset is the go-to-toy when they're mad and crying -- it's the thing that works, can't explain how.
I understand that this anecdote is worth only 2 cents. I'm not going to make any conclusive statements because I'm not a female. I just want to tentatively say that in my observations girls and boys are wired a little differently -- and maybe it just so happens that the woman's propensity to seek stability over excitement, security over competition lowers the chance of success in the current capitalistic system. But mind you I don't like the current capitalistic system, precisely because the winning players are so often very risk-prone, resulting in the system being very unstable and unsafe for society at large. If we step away from a capitalistic system and step toward something more communal -- a society in which values are emphasized, I think woman (along with the rest of society) would probably do exceedingly well (or at least that's my pet theory anyway).
- speeder 13y agoI saw in a norwegian documentary about gender roles (the name is "Brainwashed") where he finds a scientist that want to test if toys are related to culture or not. What he do is get newborn babies as soon as he can, and give them human-looking toys, and mechanical-looking toys (ie: human looking are dolls of all sorts, and animals, mechanical toys range from simple geometrical shapes, like boxes and cylinders, to vehicles, machines, etc...) And the reaction from the babies to the toy is so precise, that you can predict what baby is male or female by toy preference alone. (ie: female babies always drift toward liking animal/human looking toys, while male babies go for the non-alive stuff)
- xixi77 13y agoI used to like my cooking playset too, and I am not a woman :) And the question is whether "woman's propensity to seek stability over excitement, security over competition" is socially driven, perhaps exactly because it lowers their chances of success.