Friday, January 29, 2016

Differences between women and men

In my last post you could read my thoughts about "The problem with the obsession with beauty".
Now I want to write about another interesting topic the “Differences between women and men”.

All of you know that women and men are looking different and why this is necessary. That's why I won't write about the distinction between the female and male body. But women and men are also different in their inside. (I don't mean the organs here. :-))

I want to start with one interesting example, which I saw in a German documentary movie a few month ago.
You probably know that girls usually play with dolls and boys usually play with toy cars. But why is this so?
You probably will answer ”It's the fault of the society.”. Yes you're right. The society tells the parents that girls should play with dolls and boys with toy cars, because this is normal and everybody is doing so. And the parents think “Why changing it? The society certainly know what's the best.” And this was so for many many years.

Nowadays in times of equal rights of men and women parents often offers their children both dolls and toy cars so that the children are able to choose themselves. But even today girls usually choose dolls and boys toy cars. Why?
This time you again could argue with the society, for example that the society needs more time to change, ….

But is the society the real reason for this?
Several scientists wanted to know if this is so. Are girls only preferring dolls because the society and their parents told them this?
But how could you test this? There are no children who grew up without the influence of the society. Even children from native tribes don't grew up without such an influence.
Then the scientists had an idea. They could test it with apes. Apes are very similar to humans and they aren't influenced by the human society. That's why they took several female and male apes and put them together into one big cage. Then they put some dolls and toy cars on the floor and left the cage.

What do you think happened?

The female apes preferred playing with the dolls and the male apes preferred playing with toy cars, although apes don't know what a doll or a toy car is. Now it's very difficult to argue with the society. :-)

Unfortunately the scientists don't know till now why it is so. An obvious reason why female apes and girls prefer playing with dolls is that they will get children and usually they are responsible for raising them. But why are male apes and boys preferring toy cars? This is really a good question. They scientists think that they are interested in moving things through the space. In the past men were hunting while women stay in the cave and look after the children. For hunting you need the ability to see moving animals and so on. This would be perhaps one answer for this but till now you don't know it exactly.

Another interesting example for the differences between women and men is the way of thinking. Scientist watched several brains from men and women solving problems. And they discover something very astonishing. If men are solving a problem they use the left or right part of the brain depending on what kind of problem they are solving. All their thoughts are only moving in one of the hemispheres. This of course is an advantage to solve a problem very fast. The signals only have to travel short ways in your brain. But the brains of women work different. They are always using both sides of their brains. They think more complex and involve more aspects while solving a problem. This way they are able to find better solutions but they need more time to find them. Unfortunately schools, most jobs and also most intelligence tests only focus on the speed of solving a problem. If the solution works, everything is OK even if there would be a better one. This is completely mad.

Please don't misinterpret me. I didn't write this blog post to tell that men are better than women or the other way around. But there are differences between both sexes and it is very interesting and necessary to explore them. For example most of the medicines are developed by men for men because most doctors thought that the male and female body are working mainly the same. But this isn't so. If a man and a woman takes the same medicine it could operate completely different. Even the symptoms from a disease could be completely different between men and women. One example is the heart attack. Men have clear and well known symptoms like a violent pain in the chest. But women don't have such clear symptoms. That's why many women and even doctors don't realize that a woman had a heart attack.

Now you perhaps see why it is important to explore the differences between women and men.

But even many differences between men and women are already and will be discovered, it's a silly and wrong point of view to think that men are better than women or the other way around. Even today in times of equal rights of men and women there are unfortunately many people who are thinking that their own sex is better than the other one. There are still much more men working in responsible and well-paid jobs, studying science, and so on. As I already wrote before the society and the companies are still focusing on the speed of solving a problem instead on the quality.

Stop thinking that one sex is better than the other one. God (or the nature) created two different humans, men and women. They belong together and not only because of biology. In my mind women and men are the perfect match. The differences between the sexes aren't a disadvantage or a reason to discriminate each other. They are very important advantages! No one is able to solve all problems alone. For living a happy and successful life, you need the ability from men and women. Women and men complement each other on the best possible way. There is no better match. That's why I think that all responsible jobs in politics, companies and also in religions should be done by a couple, a man and a woman who work together. Only this way you are able to solve all problems on the best way.

Always remember: Women and men belong together! There is no need do discriminate each other!

I was inspired by Lindsey Stirling to write this blog post. She is talking regularly in front of pupils to help them finding their way in life. She is mainly focusing on girls and young women because they are still discriminated in our society.

Written by Andreas S. Janke

Lindsey Stirling talking to a school class.


Lindsey Stirling performing for a school class.

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