Gender specific roles are growing ever more confused. Androgyny is becoming ever more idealised by the media. I do not oppose the modern trend and am far from a male chauvinist. I was primarily raised by my single mother and I know the strengths women possess. My sister, whom I often meet’s at loggerheads, accuses me of supporting the patriarchal society. She said this when I asked her, without malice, not to play her music so loud at eight at night because I needed catch up sleep. At first took this to heart; I was quite offended by this allegation. However why wouldn’t anyone ask a hypothetical brother politely to turn down their music. On reflection I know she is simply blurting a newly learnt word from her politics and journalism course at university. Petty sibling arguments stand to belittle my argument before I have started however is was an argument measure of the success of feminism with a friend Helena Pliotis that actually got the ball rolling.
The Oxford Dictionary defines feminism as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes”. The emancipation of women in relatively recent history is, in my opinion, an embarrassingly late progression in human culture. The consensus is that women deserve the same rights as men. However are men still dominant in the administration of politics, economics and sciences?
Men and women’s psychological differences originate in hormonal balance in the developing fœtus and every child starts its development in a feminine form this is partly why men have nipples, I would imagine retaining them is favoured by sexual selection. The hormone œstrogen contributes mostly to feminine specific development. Girls are known to develop language faster than boys and have a greater portion of the brain allocated to social skills.
Direct evidence for women being far more inclined to talk among themselves than men for is a regular experience. Nowhere is the more blatant than the wait outside a primary school to collect a child. Mothers quickly form social circles, a regular group of friends to speak to and wait with. Whereas men often adapt to solitude, never have I before seen a group of more than three fathers interacting, even then such a sight is not common place. However groups of such proportion are common place among waiting mothers outside a primary school.
Socialising is clearly not as elementary or appealing to men as for women. Various peers who live within a conventional nuclear-family model insist their mother ‘wears the trousers’ and this apparently entails acting as spokesperson for the entire family. A women’s vocation in verbalising thoughts and ideas coupled with the absence of aggressive behaviour, associated with the male sex hormone testosterone, make women seem like a an extremely viable candidates for leadership in a peaceful democracy. I would speculate women’s temperament is juxtaposed against the egotism of war.
Man’s oppression of women may thought be due to intimidation. A friend has argued that it is pure narcissism of male kind that has perpetuated gender specific roles by physical force for so many generations. By conditioning have women been trained to be subservient to men? I would argue no however: the male sex hormone – testosterone - is vastly responsible for temperamental and physical development of the male fœtal development.
Men are typically physically stronger than women; however there are acceptations and my sister for one could demonstrate. The golf between male and female physical capability is a publicly accepted inequality and is endorsed by the Olympics. Man’s lack of further development of the social modules in brain is compensated by investing further space for problem solving and lateral thinking modules. Could this be why the emaciation of women is poorly represented in academics? I do know females that have higher academic achievements than I do. My friend believes man’s long exclusion of women from higher education is the reason and women lack the self-confidence and role models to become high academic achievers. I would defy anyone to say women simply lack academic ambition, Marie Currie physicist and Jane Goodall naturalist are house hold names for their contribution to the sciences. Contrary to this women have shown an innate lack of drive because they have never taken a left wing initiative for social reform within classical history. The rise of feminism in recent history is completely unlike any other social uprising. There is no documented evidence for any attempt in vain for women’s rights undertaken and not a single known martyr for the sake of the equality of women until fairly recently.
Observational psychologist Margaret Mead’s field observations in papa New Guinea of a tribe that exhibited gender role reversal further plausibility of learned physical intimidation in women and gender specific roles. Mead experiments also don’t contain enough information of the biology of her observed minority to say that that perceived patriarchy is purely cultural. The reverse roles of gender in this tribe may just as likely be an unusual caused by hormonal imbalance. The males could be feminised or females may have been subjected to more testosterone than normal during fœtal development. Therefore mead may well be observing a behavioural phenotype of developmental reversal. The tribe has never been seen since; this may suggest matriarchy is not favoured by natural selection. Narcissism cannot be the only factor for the modern patriarchy. Each newly born girl is not successfully brainwashed to comply with a completely arbitrary concept of gender roles without any questioning of the reasoning behind it. The fight for gender equality was fairly easy once enough women had rallied for the vote and is nothing close to the persecution of women of Iraq today or the blood-stained plight of the Afro-Americans.
I do not doubt that there is a proportion of male intimidation in domestic situations but my argument orientates around social, political and economic equality (where aggression is typically taboo). Whether or not the relationship between man and woman fully orientated around sexual jealousy and social-romantic dynamics it cannot be said. I speculate the high mortality risks in child birth, low superfluous-fecundity and viviparous wide hips for a biped in in prehistoric women contributed to gender specific roles.
The relationship between man and woman is an affair that dates back countless æons to the first sexually reproducing life forms. Social animals often have gender specific roles indiscriminately placed upon each gender; lions live in a female dominant social order. It would be ignorant to think that natural selection has no tapered the psychology of each living creature to obey his or her gender roles innately. Similarly male lead social orders can be observed in all higher order mammals including dolphins, apes, elephants, whales and wolves.
Evolution was planted into our minds, via the Baldwin effect, complex instincts manifested as archetypal social roles. This is consistent with men and women alike have typical preference for example to be nursed by a woman or lead by a man. Accepting an evolutionary reason of sexism opposed to a cultural prejudice will better facilitate reform, for women to hold animosity pointless. A potential against the evolutionary gender roles argument I have posed are sexual roles.
(
) and pressure of 
pascals. IUPAC recommends that the former use of the pressure of 1 atm as standard pressure(equivalent to 
) should be discontinued." - PAC, 1990, 62, 2167 (Glossary of atmospheric chemistry terms (Recommendations 1990)) on page 2216 
