The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap
Susan Pinker
Scribner
Buy: The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap
From A Press Release
Book Description
In her provocative new book, THE SEXUAL PARADOX, Susan Pinker asks: why is it that girls outperform boys in the classroom, but despite similar opportunities in the workplace, most women make different career choices and are thus outnumbered by men in fields such as corporate law, politics, and engineering? Pinker proposes that while socialization is a factor, genetics, hormones, interests, and goals all play a part in women's career paths. She fleshes out the details in what she calls the sexual paradox, focusing on the hormones testosterone and oxytocin (the empathy hormone) as an important driver of male and female behavior. In THE SEXUAL PARADOX, Pinker writes about men at the extreme ends of the spectrum-successful men with ADHD, learning disabilities or Asperger's Syndrome, school dropouts who are poker wizards, scrabble champions or CEOs, and compares their fortunes to the gifted and successful women who have turned down promotions or taken alternative career paths, effectively self-imposing a glass ceiling. Along the way, she entertains with lively stories and reveals startling findings about how hormones and biology affect performance in the workplace and life:
- 38% percent of high-achieving women have turned down a promotion or deliberately taken a position with lower pay.
- 1 in 3 women with MBAs chooses not to work full time - as compared to 1 in 20 men.
- Oxytocin may be responsible for women's greater ability to read faces, detect liars, and empathize and contributes to making more altruistic or empathetic-but lower paying-career choices.
- In some ways, men are the more fragile sex. Premature girls are 1.7 times more likely to survive than premature boys. In one Hawaiian study, researchers saw that boys were 50% more likely to have their psychological development and health affected by poverty or family instability. No one knows why, but one hypothesis suggests that the second X chromosome affords some protection. If a gene is damaged, girls have a spare. Many brain related genes are located on the X chromosome.
- Male and female performance is similar on average, but there are more males at the extremes of performance-both at the extreme highs, and extreme lows. Meanwhile there are more women in the average to high average ranges.
- ADHD is at least twice as common in men, dyslexia is at least four times as common in men, and Aspergers Syndrome is nine times as common. Yet, outside the classroom, many of these men demonstrate gifts that allow them to out-earn women in certain careers.
- A survey called the National Longitudinal Transition Study tracked 13,000 learning disabled teens, and found that out of the 25% who did not graduate from high school, most were male. Yet learning disabled boys who left high school were twice as likely to be working full time, were working at different jobs, and earning more per hour than the girls.
- Based on the stronger academic performance of girls in high school, if universities are seeking a 50-50 balance in their population, they actually have to practice a kind of affirmative action for men-which is not widely publicized or even discussed. In a 2005 study, Sandy Baum and Eben Goodstein followed admissions at thirteen liberal arts colleges and found that the bottom quarter of both applicant and acceptance pools were disproportionately male.
Through anecdotes and case studies at the beginning of each chapter, meticulous research, and surveys and studies of both men and women, Pinker compellingly explains how women and men are not mirror images of each other, that neither should serve as the standard for the other, and where we go from here.
About the Author:
Susan Pinker is a psychologist and a Globe and Mail newspaper columnist who writes about social science for the daily press. Her writing has been recognized in awards from the Periodical Writing Association of Canada (2002) and the Canadian Medical Association (2000), and she has been nominated for the John Alexander Media Award (2000) the Aventis Pasteur Medal for Excellence in Health Research Journalism (1999) and The YWCA Woman of Distinction Award. An experienced clinician, she has been in practice since 1982, and has taught in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at McGill University. She lives in Montreal with her husband and three children.
Buy: The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap
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