An evolutionary psychologist joins our party.
Thankfully, she goes beyond just differences in performance, assessment, or feelings regarding these differences. In particular, she examines the role testosterone plays in male risk taking (including those amusing Darwin Awards) and the role oxytocin and empathy play in female career choices. It is important to note that this is not the shallow glossing over seen in other books. Pinker is thorough enough to leave this biopsychologist satisfied, but also understandable enough for nonacademics. My brother, who didn’t go to college and shows little interest in biology, lazily picked up the book in my car last week. He read a line about gender differences out loud, and immediately launched into the SSSM explanation; “because that’s what girls are told to do.” Then he read farther. He became quiet. Then he asked to borrow the book when I was done with my “book report.”Welcome aboard.
Pinker does more than dryly discuss the biology; she provides example after example of women who have succeeded in this “man’s world” and found it wanting. As Pinker explains, let’s move on past the idea that a woman can’t do the same work as a man, and discuss why she may not want to. Any woman who has wondered if her preferences run counter to the feminist cause should pay close attention here; believing that a woman should have every right to pursue the same goals as men is different from believing that every woman should want to.
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