Are women better than men?

Are women better than men?

Someone once asked me if I though men or women were the better gender so I figured I’d blog a little on my opinion there, what my thoughts are surrounding that and my reasoning. For those that don’t know me I am a red blooded heterosexual male in his early 40’s at the time of this writing.

First a little disclaimer: I’m going to be talking generalities and stereotypes here. As such when ever you talk generalities and stereotypes you tend to over generalize, and as such it is very easy to find cases where such overgeneralization fails. I’m specifically staying general while acknowledging that it doesn’t hold true in all cases. I further acknowledge that I will be over generalizing, and exaggerating on purpose to illustrate a point. OK with that out of the way there are at least three separate topics embedded in the question “Are women better than man”.

1. Can one survive (individually and/or as a species) without the other
2. Which one is more capable, wider skill set, etc.
3. Personal preferences

Can one survive (individually and/or as a species) without the other?

The short answer to that one is an unequivocal NO. Of course the species can not survive with only one gender. So lets expand the question into exploring which gender “needs” the other more. Naturally each gender will claim that they don’t need the other one. However I’m going to argue that men would have a much harder time being without women than the other way around. While I presume most guys will deny this and argue against this, even make derogatory statements against me for making this argument with statements such as “I’m revoking your man card”, I think those same guys would agree with me when they think about it even if they can’t admit it. One only needs to analyze a random sampling of single men vs. single women to see evidence of what I’m talking about.

As a species which would work better to repopulate society, lots of women of child bearing years and only handful of guys, or lots of guys and only a handful of women. Again I’m going to argue that here women have the upper hand. While it is still necessary for sperm to come from a man, a man doesn’t actually have to be involved with the process of impregnating women. Modern science has made it possible for a women to get pregnant without ever having to even see a man. I have not heard of science growing a baby without a woman carrying it to term. While it may run counter to social norms one man can impregnate many women even without any scientific means. While some might argue that this makes the man more useful, etc., it does demonstrate that fewer men than women are needed to maintain the species, making the women more important.

Lets look at an analogy. Lets say for the sake of argument that a person could either know how to drive a car or know how to start it, that it was impossible for the same person to both know how to start the car and drive it. Ideally the number of starters would equal the number or drivers. They are both important as without the one the other is useless, you can’t a drive car that doesn’t start, and there is no point to start a car than no one can drive. If there a lot of starters and very few drivers, most of the starters have nothing to do. However just because the drivers are factor of magnitude greater in number than starters things can still work smoothly. Drivers may have to wait a bit until a starter comes along but ones the car is started the driver is on their marry way and the starter can move onto the next car. To put the analogy in context of bringing a baby into the world, a man gets the process started but after the woman is pregnant the man is not really needed. Therefore I submit that women are better than man in this context.

Which one is more capable, wider skill set, etc.

Here again I’m going to argue for the woman. First lets examine what men tend to be better at generally speaking. The most obvious one is that a man can generally lift heavier items than women, in today’s society though there isn’t a lot of need for that, so how important is that ability? The other is that men tend to have greater spatial abilities. Spatial abilities is the ability to visual objects both in two dimensions as well as in three dimensions (for example to take a two dimensional architectural plan and visualize it in 3D), the relationship between the objects and the ability to rotate those objects in your head. Key example of this ability is when you are looking at a map, those with high spatial abilities keep the map oriented the same way regardless of which direction you are going, those with lower spatial skills will want to rotate the map so that the direction they are going points up. Men tend to have higher spatial skills, this has been attributed to men being greater navigators and scientists. Some have argued that all the greatest inventors in history have been men as well as the greatest warriors and politicians and thus men must be superior. This is a false argument in my mind as we don’t know all the variables. Throughout history woman has always been the caretaker of the family and as such undoubtable has had little time to be tinkering with stuff that would lead to invention. Men on the other hand, history tells us, were not that involved in their families and thus had a lot of time on their hand so they would tinker with stuff. So what is the true reason for all those great inventors through history were men? Is it just because men have superior spatial abilities, or because women were too busy raising families to have time for that, or a little of both? We will never know the answer to those questions, I suspect the answer is along the lines of “little of both”. So we’ve identified two things men tend to be superior at: lifting heavy things and spatial abilities. So now lets look at things that woman are better at. Here are few items I can think of where women outshine men:

1. They can multitask. Guy’s are very single focused. Each gender is amazed at the other in this regard and both have their uses. In today’s society being able to focus on a lot of different things is a huge advantage in my opinion.
2. They can tell the difference between eggshell, cream, ivory, and off-white, as well as the difference between hunter green and forest green and all the other different shades of colors. To guys it’s white, red, green, blue, etc. Not so much as critical skill set I suppose but still amazing to me.
3. They can give birth to a child, talk about miracle of life!
4. They are better communicators. They can talk about more than sports and cars. Most guys that seems to be all they talk about. I am constantly amazed the breadth of conversation women can have, sometimes all at the same time.
5. They are much better at paying attention to detail for example they actually remember your birthday. As result they are better care takers.
6. They can talk about their feelings, this is not something a guy is capable of doing. Guys can’t even identify their feelings let alone talk about them.
7. They have stronger immune systems which may explain why they tend to live longer

So with 7 items versus 2 items I think it is clear which is the greater gender. Some may argue that men are greater leaders but is that really true? Are men really greater leaders or do women just let men think they are greater leader, in which case is that a strength or a weakness? My take is that is strength. If you look at most households men may claim they are in charge but up on closer inspection it is really the woman that is in charge.

Personal preferences

I have been called “girl crazy” which is a accusation I can not deny. As I think is evident from this post that I hold women in the highest regard. I guess it is all summed up in this joke:

Question: What did God say after he created Adam? Answer: I can do a lot better than that!!!!!

Then he created Eve and was pleased with his work.