Read Abinandan here on the gender gap, with links from Ramnath on Amartya Sen’s views on the missing women
In the same post, Abi also links to another interesting article Do women shy away from competition ?
Incidentally, Grant McCracken has a post in his blog (which to my delight sits at the intersection of anthropology and economics) titled ‘has business and branding been feminized?’
And he categorically states, Here’s the simple anthropological truth of the matter. None of the higher intellectual or creative abilities is gender specific.
We laugh disdainfully (and slightly self-consciously) at zodiac sign archetypes but find it easy to accept gender pigeonholing?
Hi Charu,
Just a quick clarification about this ‘women prefer cooperation’ thing. I provided the link to the original article (pdf), and an extract from John Tierney’s NYTimes op-ed that just summarized one key finding in the research. While this research seems solid and sheds some light on gender differences (and I am sure follow up work will either strengthen the findings or qualify them), people tend to trip up when they talk about what it all means, how they may be applied to real life, etc. I think Tierney’s article goes some distance along that latter road in a pretty silly way (Also read Shiva Pennathur’s comment — on my post — about Tierney). It is a road that I would be leery to take. It does not mean the research findings cannot be applied to real life; but I would much rather have that spelt out by psychologists themselves, not someone like Tierney.
In sum, I will take the research, but not the speculations from a non-expert about what it means.
Cheers!