Gender & Thought

I was having a discussion with my friend who's always been a good source of skepticism about my thinking - as I am to her's. The debate focuses on whether we need more feminine traits in society and also what exactly those would be. 

From my point of view, generalizations about gender roles aren't very useful because there are many shades of gray between genders - it's not a dichotomy as anyone from the LGBT community would tell you. At the same time, those who say "there are only societal differences between men and women" are living in an idyllic fantasy. There are of course gender-linked (though again not dichotomous) traits in the way everyone develops physically and mentally, and of course these traits express themselves in society in productive and unproductive ways. The true question is what those ways are and which should be use / encouraged.

My friend encourages a revival of femininity because the balance has been in the men's favor since the dawn of civilization - though there is much evidence that women were far more equal in many paleolithic cultures. The question is what caused this bias, what has it done, and should/can it be reconciled. 

In my friend's view, men are more left-brained (logical, etc.) than women, and the dominance of men has made this way of thinking dominant in society. The left/right brain theory is largely consider discredited - even so women would be more correlated to left-brainedness due to their better developed verbal skills (a strong left-linked activity). Let's instead call this
"men's thinking" logical instead of "left-brained". 

I would argue though that the causality of this phenomenon is actually the reverse. Once civilization was established, logical thinking dominated because of its clear advantage to organizing and maintaining power in a complex civilization. Therefore men tipped the scales in their favor using a type of thinking they gained due to their neolithic role in coordinated hunting. Hence, men dominated early because their knowledge of coordination gave them an advantage to leading organized society - not to mention control over the major food source. Perhaps you could call this coordination logical or "masculine" thinking - though I'd say that's an oversimplification.

However, this balance currently looks to be tipping in the other direction. If we look at what Richard Florida called the "Rise of the Creative Class", we see that purely logical thinking is becoming a commodity and creative thinking is becoming the competitive advantage. Therefore, by the same logic, those (whatever gender) who possess creative abilities will become the dominate ones. In fact, it appears this is fast becoming the norm. Could the recently flourishing of various gender & sexuality-linked movements actually be the result of creativity becoming the driving competitive advantage within society? I can only speculate that creativity could be a factor.

Let me conclude by saying that creativity is not limited to things like art, writing, etc., but in fact it's more related to the concept of synthesis - taking current knowledge and creating novel implementations to solve a problem. This is the type of thinking that is fast becoming the dominant competitive advantage. All flavors of gender have these abilities, perhaps in different expressions, and this leads me to believe that the scale of gender equality will tilt more towards the center as the initial conditions that created the imbalance have largely passed in their influence. 

Thoughts?

Comments

[sweet1lani]

well i have a couple thoughts, about what you think my argument is....i don't think a person's gender has anything to do with what side of their brain they use most, most tests i've taken say i use both pretty equally. i was saying there are feminine qualities and masculine qualities. hunter gatherer. compete nurture. i think in today's society most people use a mixture of both in many different ways in their lives. Especially in the LGBT community.
the idea of the feminine revival is not about a change in guard. you are correct most primitive cultures worshiped the goddess and nature, were pagan, then the patriarchy took over. and monotheism. which included the women's holocaust. or the witch trails throughout europe and the colonies. what i propose now is a return to balance between both feminine and masculine qualities. the best of both. its the evolution, we have come full circle. so the women have to remind everyone of their feminine qualities to embrace. creation, nurturing, compassion, emotions, leadership, one-ness. for so long feminine traits have been considered weak, especially for men to embrace.
but it needed to happen in this order, as you mention, the logical nature which expanded civilization, the competitive nature which drives the economy now. were needed as a part of our evolution.
http://www.girleffect.org/
http://www.grandmotherscouncil.com/
http://www.womenwakingtheworld.com/
http://www.gatherthewomen.org/aboutus.html
http://www.wholepersonwholeplanet.com/
http://www.suppressedhistories.net/

[Nick Pinkston]

Yea, I guess my own qualms are:

1.) The generalities of saying women have X qualities and men Y qualities.
2.) That we really need to try to tip the balance - it seems inevitable.

[Shannning]

When did men come to power? The theory I read about said because of men’s physical advantage to defend enemies and bring more food to the community, they rose to leadership positions since Neolithic Era. After that men have taken on the self-imposed responsibility to be leaders. A lot of the traits were developed and reinforced when this group of people has to oversee the societies. I believe women will show the same traits if they are given the same responsibility, opportunity and nurture. In other words, these so called masculine traits are job-related not gender-related. If the society changes its requirements in management and productivity, over the years the leadership traits will change accordingly. As you said, because of the era we are in, we will be seeing more and more leadership presenting creativity (not in the narrow sense of art and music but in the sense of innovation in every industry.) However, “the power game” that underlies human society didn’t change fundamentally. I'd say the leadership traits remain the same. Creativity, well, innovation to be more precise, is only a new “card” in people’s hands.

Another issue I wanted to bring up (despite its controversial nature) is that I tend to think the biological structure has a great deal of influence on men being instinctively proactive, explorative and invasive.
Hope it made sense. :) Thoughts?