And those differences are either cultural/sociological or they are a function of the natural differences between all individuals. What we are consistently finding with the dreaded Science is that the differences between all individuals far outweigh any innate differences between men and women.
I don’t know what kind of ethnographic fairytales you’ve bought into, but prior to agriculture (less than 12k years ago) we lived in highly collective societies where everyone taking care of everyone else was the primary survival strategy. Unless they lived in places where they hunted big game, both men and women hunted, both men and women gathered, with foraging providing much more of the reliable daily nutrition than hunting, which was inconsistent. There are modern H/G tribes where this is still the case — where 60–80% of the food comes from gathering, and where although there are ostensibly gender roles, no one pays all that much attention to them. Men weren’t “providers” in the modern meaning of that word — because everyone worked together to care for the tribe. They watched each other’s children and shared food, and generally looked out for the wellbeing of the group because that was the most effective way for more people to survive.
Pair bonding is an ancient practice but it didn’t come with the expectation of sexual exclusivity because again, genetic diversity is the surest way to ensure that more people are born and survive. It is only with the onset of patriarchy, about the same time as agriculture, that sexual exclusivity is prioritized in order to ensure paternity. It came with a lot of mores and laws that had severe punishments for breaking them — but that wouldn’t have been needed if it wasn’t a new thing or the “natural” way of things. When everyone cares for everyone else and there is nothing to inherit, who cares who the father is?
Partible paternity, where several men have sex with a woman and are considered the father of her child is a long-standing practice in some parts of the world and a far from rare dynamic even today. Spreading fatherly feelings throughout the group helps to maintain solidarity and cohesion as well as promotes the well-being of a greater number of children.
“A female who mates with several different males will have more genetically diverse offspring, boosting the chances that at least some of them will thrive.” Source This goes for human females as well as other non-human animals and it is confirmed in our anatomy. The coronal ridge of the human penis is specifically designed to displace semen left there by another man or men. In addition, animals that engage in mate competition prior to copulation (like gorillas) tend to have small testes and penises. Animals that instead engage in sperm competition are more well endowed relative to body size (like chimpanzees and humans) because they need to have a large supply of semen on hand to inseminate multiple partners.
So the long and short of it is, of course you observe and experience differences because gender indoctrination begins at birth and is a pervasive and ubiquitous force. It’s OK to talk about how to work with that as far as communication goes, but it is not factually correct that this is due to some imaginary difference in the biology of how men and women think.
“The idea of the male brain and the female brain suggests that each is a characteristically homogenous thing and that whoever has got a male brain, say, will have the same kind of aptitudes, preferences and personalities as everyone else with that ‘type’ of brain. We now know that is not the case. We are at the point where we need to say, ‘Forget the male and female brain; it’s a distraction, it’s inaccurate.’ It’s possibly harmful, too, because it’s used as a hook to say, well, there’s no point girls doing science because they haven’t got a science brain, or boys shouldn’t be emotional or should want to lead.”
The next question was, what then is driving the differences in behaviour between girls and boys, men and women? Our “gendered world”, she says, shapes everything, from educational policy and social hierarchies to relationships, self-identity, wellbeing and mental health. If that sounds like a familiar 20th-century social conditioning argument, it is — except that it is now coupled with knowledge of the brain’s plasticity, which we have only been aware of in the past 30 years.
