Quiet Mountain Essays; vo.I, no.I

Copyright,2003

By All Means, Celebrate Gender Differences!

by Suzanne Sunshower

I  hear lately that statistics show a reversal in the gender gap when it comes to which sex is out-performing the other for scholastic achievement and enrollment in college.  According to a May episode of "60 Minutes", American college campuses are now nearly 60 percent female.  A male psychologist interviewed for that show did not blame feminism for boys' failings (unlike the opposing, female interviewee), but he did say that it would be no good for this trend to continue, leading to presently male-dominated fields switching over to "all the engineers, architects, and surgeons being women!"

At least by my memory, that is exactly what he said.  According to the CBS website transcript, what he said was, "We can't have a country of women in white-collar jobs and men in blue-collar jobs.  That's not going to be good for this society."

Whichever way I heard it, I remember turning to the television and saying back to it, "What? Why not?" Setting aside the obvious argument favoring all professions enjoying gender equity, and setting aside, too, the perhaps less-pleasant argument favoring women wielding the power/money muscle of the professional elite, I still want to know what is wrong with all the engineers, architects, and surgeons being women? It only makes sense to me that women should dominate career fields that require attention to detail!

I don't know one woman who hasn't expressed exasperation, or even disbelief, at the impractical layout of a building or design of her car.  So why aren't the important structures we use most often, more often designed and built by women? What would be so bad about that?

There's so much yapping these days about appreciating the differences between the sexes, about how we have to allow boys "to be boys", and about how now girls have the advantage over boys.  We should put this thinking to work for us.  Let's clean up this mess boys are in before another ignored, 'embattled' boy limps his pitiful way through school only to end up as President.

Do you want a man who can walk past the overflowing trash pail six times in order to grab himself a beer, cutting you open and putting you (maybe) back together; and, why should it be the man who can't remember to close a door, designing your house?  Think about how little sense the current clustering of males in certain fields really makes. Do we think that these males clustered in professions requiring acute attention to detail are somehow really any more attentive than all the other males we know in real life; that they are somehow a magical breed apart? Dream on.   That's only what we might hope was true - if we thought about it at all.

We could reduce the nasty stress on males by letting 'girls be girls', and openly exploiting the natural talents of women to logical conclusion.  As to the "60 Minutes" expert's belief that too many women in white-collar jobs would not be good for this society, I say not so!  I know a woman can pull the levers in a bulldozer on a construction site as well as a man, but to take full advantage of all the wonderful, natural differences between our sexes and knock some real pressure off the fellas, we should be more concerned about who is designing the buildings to be built, and our cars, too, for that matter.  Let's think about engineering and design jobs.

I always read that males have greater spatial abilities than females; a better ability to 'see' how a puzzle fits together, through visualization and mental manipulation of three dimensional objects.  Many researchers believe that this contributes to why males dominate the areas of structural design; jobs choked with males, literally from the drawing boards to the positions of oversight in the field.  Controlling these jobs would seem to be a reasonable burden for males, if the whole truth of spatial ability not be told.

Let's face it, packing a car for moving or travel involves the use of spatial ability, and there are decided differences in how the sexes go about it.  Left to his own devises (and the following example is the reason why men rarely ever are), the average man I know will throw whatever is within grasp into the car until everything is jammed inside in a hodge-podge fashion, leaving no room for himself, his wife or kids, and resulting in the family dog seated at the steering wheel.

On the other hand, the average woman I know will first thoughtfully note how much space with which she has to work and will then carefully position each item in the car according to how much buffering it requires and what will be needed soonest or most often, until every bit of space within the vehicle is taken up by something she deems 'useful', in the most ergonomic manner - right down to the kid who needs 'correcting' most often being placed closest within 'tapping' reach of her, and the gassy dog being furthest.

Consider the above, contrasted examples of spatial ability.  Now think about if you could choose which gender-member should get the job of visualizing and creating a space that you must use.  Which gender-member do you believe might take more factors of use and comfort into consideration during the design phase of the space? Then think about which gender members currently design most of our usable space.  Make any sense?

Many males could be suffering less frustration right now, if women simply took over the jobs necessitating visualization and design in the industrial setting, just as they do on the homefront.

The psychologist on "60 Minutes" related that a statistician had joked that "the last man to get his bachelor's degree will do so in 2068."  It was also reported that the numbers for female admissions to graduate schools such as medical and law are on the rise, causing alarmists to warn that in the future, for one thing, there could be more women lawyers than men lawyers.

Although the field of law is still predominately male for now,  it is what I call 'an acute attention to details' type of field, and it just so happens that 'details' are exactly the area in which researchers agree girls 'will be girls'.  Heck, studies tell us girls at play often make up their own details if the accepted rules or scenarios of the game seem insufficient to them.

A popular joke in our society is that a woman can remember the tiniest details of a past promise, discussion, spat, or written list (if written by her), and can rattle-off these details at will  in any defensive situation.  Many men I have met don't notice much of anything, let alone can remember something seen or said a year ago, last week, or yesterday.  Call me biased, but wouldn't a woman's orientation to detail be just the kind of gender-member attribute you should look for if your butt is on the line - or your company's -  in an important negotiation, or in the courtroom?

As for medical school admissions, let me remind you: Who do you want attacking that tumor on your brain - a man who can't see, let alone wipe up, a spill he himself made, or the woman who not only cleans up the spill, but feels compelled to wipe down the rest of the tainted table, appliance, etc., as well! Need I say more?

Breathe easier society, the women are coming! Perhaps there really is a natural order to things and American society has finally come far enough along to just now be stumbling upon it.  Or, maybe the boys are lagging behind now, because they're not looking forward to being pressured by all those jobs for which women are really better-suited.  Either way, the new researchers are right: Long live our differences! Class dismissed.

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