Are Humans Hard Wired to Prefer Men as Leaders?

[Jimmy Higgins]

I see nobody in this thread is saying that women aren't capable of being in power or being leaders. The thread is whether or not humans are hard wired to assume men will be leaders. Considering the lack of women in leadership positions we need to explain it somehow. I'm not seeing any explanations in this thread.

Other than the inertia of biology. Men likely had control due to physical strength. They consolidated it, created rules to enshrine it. Now days that is being reliquished as there is little to make it endure, including the human brain not being wired for it.

People are wired to follow charisma. The gender is irrelevant.

I believe the disparity is explained by women traditionally having within home gender roles, and men having outside home gender roles. Instinctively people judge men on their ability to make money (drop an Elk at the tribe's feet), and women on their ability to care for children. Women being outside the home, and sometimes even more successful than their partners is a very new thing.

That is inertia, not human wiring.

This may be partly why women have an issue breaking the glass ceiling, they are expected to be both motherly and a leader, which is hard to pull off. I've seen it done, but women in leadership positions are often extremely talented.

Again, inertia. Males in power want their male only club, this is about male self-preservation at the top, not about human wiring not being able to recognize women can lead. Male self-preservation kept women from voting only to about 100 years ago! That wasn't because women could think. It was because men wanted to maintain a status quo.

The parallels to blacks in America is notable, and there certainly is no argument that whites are hard-wired to think blacks are inferior, though extremists think blacks are inferior, a laughable concept seeing that slaves were forbidden to learn how to read... an odd restriction if said people were mentally inferior.

 

[rousseau]

I believe the disparity is explained by women traditionally having within home gender roles, and men having outside home gender roles. Instinctively people judge men on their ability to make money (drop an Elk at the tribe's feet), and women on their ability to care for children. Women being outside the home, and sometimes even more successful than their partners is a very new thing.

That is inertia, not human wiring.

This may be partly why women have an issue breaking the glass ceiling, they are expected to be both motherly and a leader, which is hard to pull off. I've seen it done, but women in leadership positions are often extremely talented.

Again, inertia. Males in power want their male only club, this is about male self-preservation at the top, not about human wiring not being able to recognize women can lead. Male self-preservation kept women from voting only to about 100 years ago! That wasn't because women could think. It was because men wanted to maintain a status quo.

The parallels to blacks in America is notable, and there certainly is no argument that whites are hard-wired to think blacks are inferior, though extremists think blacks are inferior, a laughable concept seeing that slaves were forbidden to learn how to read... an odd restriction if said people were mentally inferior.

Sure, it's partly inertia, I agree. But you haven't presented any evidence that instincts aren't playing a part as well. Granted, neither have I, but it's pretty clear how sexual selection has wired us over time. I don't think people are hardwired to view men as leaders, but people are hardwired to view men more favourably when they exhibit ambition. This makes it more difficult for women to be ambitious and still come across well.

I don't know why there's such a hang up on this. Is it such a problem to admit that people have instincts, and not everything is completely arbitrary and socially constructed?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There is no problem with assuming instincts have an influence, but I feel it is important to know when instincts lead to choices and selections from when things are seized and held away.

The trouble is, knowing history, we know males seized the power and did everything that could to hold it. Women have been voting for 100 years in the US, and that was after a 100 year process to get the right to vote. Women aren't running the world yet after a very short period of time and then people ask, 'well are people just wired to select men to lead'? The answer is no, women simply haven't been provided long enough time to even the gap from centuries of repression.

Men dominated everything from acting, music, literature. Any time women enter a field, there is gnashing and then the women do just fine. From acting, music, literature, and gay porn. Why should politics be any different?

 

[rousseau]

There is no problem with assuming instincts have an influence, but I feel it is important to know when instincts lead to choices and selections from when things are seized and held away.

The trouble is, knowing history, we know males seized the power and did everything that could to hold it. Women have been voting for 100 years in the US, and that was after a 100 year process to get the right to vote. Women aren't running the world yet after a very short period of time and then people ask, 'well are people just wired to select men to lead'? The answer is no, women simply haven't been provided long enough time to even the gap from centuries of repression.

Men dominated everything from acting, music, literature. Any time women enter a field, there is gnashing and then the women do just fine. From acting, music, literature, and gay porn. Why should politics be any different?

That's fair, but I think seize power isn't a generous enough explanation of what happened, or what is happening. First, it starts from the assumption that women don't hold any power via the caretaker role. Just because women traditionally care for children, doesn't mean they don't have power. Throughout history men have relied on women to raise their children, take care of their households, and a multitude of other equally important things. So this argument starts from the assumption that being a mother is less important than holding power in society, which just isn't true. Both positions are important for child-rearing. And throughout history women have been able to dictate that men go find some fucking food or we're not having children.

The other part of it is that men didn't exactly seize power. Gender roles just became what they became as our societies became more specialized. Women did one thing, men did another. Over time, as our communities became more prosperous this allowed a small subset of men to become very powerful. And now, with only about a century of modernity under our belt we have a post-hoc rationalization that the only valid thing for a human to do is make money, and women are becoming important for family income. So some women are pushing for the ability to make that income. IOW, I don't think it's a big conspiracy by men to hold down women, it's just that for almost the entirety of our history they were forced to hunt (be outside home). And the world has changed dramatically in the past few centuries.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Male self-preservation kept women from voting only to about 100 years ago

I agree with you 100% but I just want to point out that the description is very US-secular-centric. There are still religious groups in the US and worldwide that don't want women voting, less that would physically stop them in the US, but worldwide much of that. The fact that women worldwide are disallowed equal participation in politics makes it a confounding variable in any analysis that purports to conclude humans are hardwired to prefer men as leaders...even analyzing politics over the last 100 years. Anyway, I would reword the thread question as Do men prefer X since it's been men in charge whether through force, subtle threat of force or civil war, or inertia and I'd reframe X as the true goal of whatever it is they are trying to do. Maybe Are men hardwired to prefer authoritarianism or Are men hardwired to prefer unequal opportunity or Are men hardwired to prefer societies where women are not as free? Then...watch the reactions from the same crowd...

 

[bigfield]

I think the preference for male leaders may be the result of a kind of survival of the fittest. In most ranges of human habitation, there are populations of people pushing up against each other, competing for pastoral and farming space. In such an environment, warlike groups are likely to take over their more peaceful neighbours. A society that survives on the success of its warriors is likely to give warriors status and power. And warriors are going to be men.

Modern society has preserved that structure simply because the underlying impetus has always remained: War. The warriors remain in charge, even in the twentieth century. In most modern states, the country's leader also ultimately commands the military. Even though they are just ornamental, British princes still do military service, conforming to an aristocratic role that has existed since ancient times. Leadership contests are still often an audition to be a leader fit to command a military.

But in some countries, the military is relatively unimportant. New Zealand, for instance, has a female leader who is demonstrably and publicly compassionate and highly popular due to that style of leadership. NZ enjoys natural isolation, and they are simply too small to be a meaningful player in geopolitics, so there's not much demand to elect some big swinging dick.

Basically what I'm getting at is our preference for male leaders seems to be environmental, not innate. The less warlike a society becomes, the less it will prefer men as leaders.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I see nobody in this thread is saying that women aren't capable of being in power or being leaders. The thread is whether or not humans are hard wired to assume men will be leaders. Considering the lack of women in leadership positions we need to explain it somehow. I'm not seeing any explanations in this thread.

Other than the inertia of biology. Men likely had control due to physical strength. They consolidated it, created rules to enshrine it. Now days that is being reliquished as there is little to make it endure, including the human brain not being wired for it.

People are wired to follow charisma. The gender is irrelevant.

According to what I've read on Hunter/Gatherers, men and women don't hang out much. They have different roles/jobs in the tribe. Women have their own power structure and men have their own. Men rule men. And women rule women. Making muscle power less relevant when it comes to leadership. That seems to be the instincts we've been imbued with. Which suggests to me that muscle power isn't likely to explain why men have been leaders in the past.

The situation where women are reduced to property, (ie patriarchy) according to what I've read is a product of agrarianism. 10 000 years is not a long enough time to impact our innate behaviours. So it wouldn't be that.

A thing people we rarely talk about is the fact that mixed workplaces where men and women are equals was rare or special cases before the 1950'ies. Gender mixed workplaces is a recent and massive social experiment we're treating as if it should just work smoothly out of the box, and we're supposed to do soul searching whenever it fails. Instead of being amazed whenever it has worked at all.

When reading second wave feminist texts we need to keep in mind that what they're talking about is stuff that to a large extent, in their own age, was science fiction. Simone de Beauvoir was speculating wildly. These are the POMO's. While third wave feminism is material written after we'd run the experiment for a while. Camille Paglia has a much more sober outlook on gender. And then fourth wave feminism went back to science fiction.

I wonder what wiring leads anyone to vote for people like Donald Trump. It's hardly charisma.

 

[Elixir]

I think the fact men have more brute strength on average than the typical woman puts them in the leadership category. Reasoning, compromising, ect will only get you so far and sometimes it wont get you what you have to have to survive. The bottom line is you have to use brute force to get what you want. And it's not just a man vs woman issue. A man twice the size in bulk and strength will be looked at as a leader of some type by men much smaller than he is.

It's not about being able to beat up women. Beating up women does not typically contribute to reproductive success. Even forcibly raping women has little if any positive effect upon an individual's reproductive success. What does contribute to reproductive success is the ability to protect a very pregnant woman and do necessary things that a very pregnant woman cannot do without risking the fetus. That might include warding off competitive males, but it mainly involves obtaining food, defending against predation, maintaining shelter etc.

 

[TomC]

I see nobody in this thread is saying that women aren't capable of being in power or being leaders. The thread is whether or not humans are hard wired to assume men will be leaders. Considering the lack of women in leadership positions we need to explain it somehow. I'm not seeing any explanations in this thread.

Other than the inertia of biology. Men likely had control due to physical strength. They consolidated it, created rules to enshrine it. Now days that is being reliquished as there is little to make it endure, including the human brain not being wired for it.

People are wired to follow charisma. The gender is irrelevant.

Pretty much this, although I think the differences run deeper than brute strength.
From body chemistry to neural structures, men tend to be wired for competition and risky behavior more than women. In a "Might makes right" world those characteristics will also result in leadership positions. The biological characteristics get embedded in the cultural and ethical norms, especially concerning gender norms and stereotypes. People tend to live up the expectations, which is why such things are so slow to change.

In recent centuries, technology has changed and culture is following along, albeit slowly. This is particularly true of communication technology. In a world where "The pen is mightier than the sword" men have far less advantage, and cooperation is valued more, competition less.

But the culture remains slower to change.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I see nobody in this thread is saying that women aren't capable of being in power or being leaders. The thread is whether or not humans are hard wired to assume men will be leaders. Considering the lack of women in leadership positions we need to explain it somehow. I'm not seeing any explanations in this thread.

Other than the inertia of biology. Men likely had control due to physical strength. They consolidated it, created rules to enshrine it. Now days that is being reliquished as there is little to make it endure, including the human brain not being wired for it.

People are wired to follow charisma. The gender is irrelevant.

Pretty much this, although I think the differences run deeper than brute strength.
From body chemistry to neural structures, men tend to be wired for competition and risky behavior more than women.

Yes, because of all things, women are known to not be competitive at all.

In recent centuries, technology has changed and culture is following along, albeit slowly. This is particularly true of communication technology. In a world where "The pen is mightier than the sword" men have far less advantage, and cooperation is valued more, competition less.

Again with women not being competitive? There aren't many fields where women are not able to hang with men.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Anger management break.

 

[Politesse]

You're really bad at googling, then, as you should have hit upon a basic description of Mosuo political structure within the first few pages the search engine suggested to you. All meaninglful authority in Mosuo society outside of the official Chinese govenrment is family based, and the head of the family is its eldest female member, called the Ah mi of her clan. All economic, social, and political control ultimately come back to her "office", symbolized by her ownership of a private room and the keys to the family larder, passed down matrilineally.

I didn't try very hard - my curiosity doesn't run that deep - but I found this:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...e-tibetan-tribe-where-a-man-is-never-the-boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuhd3lRF7CY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiefdom_of_Yongning
https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/the-decline-of-chinas-kingdom-of-women/

Definitely a matriarchial society: women own the land and the property, and make the rules. They mostly seem to exert control other women: women have strict social roles which involve a lot of work and motherhood is virtually compulsory (either by bearing children or adopting). The men seem to have no power but are also relatively free from social obligations and do less work than women. So basically, it's matriarchal but women still get the short end of the stick. Also it seems like there used to be a Mosuo chiefdom with a male chieftain, but that ended in the fifties. I'm guessing the Chinese government made him obsolete, leaving the Mosuo as a collection of matriarchal households.

Can we at least agree it's a Red Herring? Even if we agree the Musuo is a matriarchy, it's a statistical population of one. Not much to base a theory on. And since it's in Communist China, where the government uses all kinds of nefarious ways to destroy the power structures of hill tribes, I'm less and less impressed by this matriarchy.

I see nobody in this thread is saying that women aren't capable of being in power or being leaders. The thread is whether or not humans are hard wired to assume men will be leaders. Considering the lack of women in leadership positions we need to explain it somehow. I'm not seeing any explanations in this thread. I find the postmodernist tradition of blaming it on the patriarchy unconvincing. It's too simplistic an explanation to convince, me at least. It seems to me more likely that what appears as a conspiracy of men (ie patriarchy) is a result of something innate. At least it maches the world we see around us.

"Hard-wired" is a strong claim. No one in this thread has denied that patriarchy is common; it's the claim that it is absolute and "natural" that we find very dubious. No, if there multiple exceptions to the rule, it's not "hard-wired" in, even if those exceptions don't make up a global majority at the moment. There are other cultural near-universals, and that isn't surprising given that humans talk to each other and spread ideas around.

And I note that you didn't think it was a red herring until you were educated against your will about the nature of Mosuo society. Funny how irrelevant a data point becomes when you realize it doesn't support your ideological projects.

 

[TomC]

Pretty much this, although I think the differences run deeper than brute strength.
From body chemistry to neural structures, men tend to be wired for competition and risky behavior more than women.

Yes, because of all things, women are known to not be competitive at all.

In recent centuries, technology has changed and culture is following along, albeit slowly. This is particularly true of communication technology. In a world where "The pen is mightier than the sword" men have far less advantage, and cooperation is valued more, competition less.

Again with women not being competitive? There aren't many fields where women are not able to hang with men.

I don't believe that. Which is why I didn't say it.

But if you want to set your strawman on fire and dance around it naked, I'll probably get naked and dance with you.

I like that sort of thing
Tom

 

[Emily Lake]

They already can do that. They already DO do that.

Except that currently, if a person who looks like a man comes into a female locker room or shower, the females in the locker room have the authority to ask them to leave, to complain to management, or to yell at them to get out. The females currently have the agency to do so, because the current expectation is that the female changing room is for females only, and people with penises shouldn't be there.

This changes that. With this act in effect, females do NOT have the authority to ask them to leave, even politely - because they can just claim to be trans. We lose agency and consent.

If there were any reasonable way to identify who is a transwoman and who is a man with malicious motives, I'd have no real complaints about it.

There is no reasonable way to identify who is a CIS woman and a man with malicious motives, unless you plan to make me flash my lady parts to get into a bathroom?

Really? You cannot tell the difference between a female and a male at a glace, at least 99% of the time? I can - and so can almost all humans. Even when they're fully clothed. Even when it's only their faces that you see. Humans are sexually dimorphic. The differences are not limited to our primary sexual characteristics (reproductive organs). Secondary characteristics are usually pretty obvious too - breasts and hip width, height, hand and foot size, facial hair, adam's apple, heavier arm and leg hair, broad shoulders. Males and Females aren't built the same. And our tertiary sex characteristics are usually pretty obvious too. Male orbital sockets are more oblong and angular, where as female sockets are rounder. Male brow ridges are heavier, females have a smoother ridge. Our eyebrows are shaped differently. Our jaw line and our chins are shaped differently.

I mean, is it really so much of a challenge for you to tell which of these is male and which is female?

 

[Emily Lake]

I believe the disparity is explained by women traditionally having within home gender roles, and men having outside home gender roles. Instinctively people judge men on their ability to make money (drop an Elk at the tribe's feet), and women on their ability to care for children. Women being outside the home, and sometimes even more successful than their partners is a very new thing.

The follow-up question to this is... why? Once we left the living-in-caves stage... why do women have traditionally home-based gender roles? I say it's because that's where the men wanted to keep us, and because for a long time women weren't allowed to own businesses or work outside of the home or the farm.

It's amazing how deeply a convention gets embedded in society when people are not allowed to do anything other than conform.

 

[Gospel]

Except that currently, if a person who looks like a man comes into a female locker room or shower, the females in the locker room have the authority to ask them to leave, to complain to management, or to yell at them to get out. The females currently have the agency to do so, because the current expectation is that the female changing room is for females only, and people with penises shouldn't be there.

This changes that. With this act in effect, females do NOT have the authority to ask them to leave, even politely - because they can just claim to be trans. We lose agency and consent.

Boogieman Alert, Boogieman Alert. Please use the martial arts called Google-Fu to bring up at least one instance of a man using transgender as an excuse to sneak into the lady's locker room? You won't even find that on the onion.

 

[rousseau]

I believe the disparity is explained by women traditionally having within home gender roles, and men having outside home gender roles. Instinctively people judge men on their ability to make money (drop an Elk at the tribe's feet), and women on their ability to care for children. Women being outside the home, and sometimes even more successful than their partners is a very new thing.

The follow-up question to this is... why? Once we left the living-in-caves stage... why do women have traditionally home-based gender roles? I say it's because that's where the men wanted to keep us, and because for a long time women weren't allowed to own businesses or work outside of the home or the farm.

It's amazing how deeply a convention gets embedded in society when people are not allowed to do anything other than conform.

Because they've evolved over, perhaps, hundreds of millions of years to be particularly effective at nurturing and raising children. They are the ones who give birth and feed their children for the primary years of their lives. By necessity this confines them to the home, and forces men outside home.

This shouldn't be a controversial or interesting statement.

 

[Metaphor]

It's not transphobic to want to maintain sex-segregated spaces for times when females are particularly exposed or vulnerable.

I'd have to say it is.
You're afraid of being in a locker room with Wendy Carlos, because of medical history and imaginary crime potential, but not concerned about, say, Ghislane Maxwell having had access to every ladies room and unisex bathroom on six continents.

Do you have evidence that transwomen, or anyone who says they are a transwoman, commit crimes against women at a lower rate than other male-bodied people?

 

[TomC]

Boogieman Alert, Boogieman Alert. Please use the martial arts called Google-Fu to bring up at least one instance of a man using transgender as an excuse to sneak into the lady's locker room? You won't even find that on the onion.

I've known about it happening twice.

That's still quite rare, given my familiarity with the lbgtq. But it happens, I know for a fact.


Here's the thing.
I'm a guy. I don't care who comes in the men's room while I'm taking a leak. I wouldn't even care if a gal joined me in the shower at the city swimming pool. Odd, but not threatening. I simply have no reason to be concerned about women invading my privacy or worse. I'll open my pants, or get naked, I just don't care what chicks do.

Women have far better reasons to want a man-free place to do personal business. Far better! Men are far more dangerous to women than women are to men, in that context.

Believing that women should behave like men, in public showers and such, is the height of "privilege". It's a profound male privilege to not care who else is in there with you.
Tom

 

[Politesse]

Even if it didn't, the idea that it is acceptable to oppress an entire class of people to prevent a rare crime from occurring is abhorrent and wrong. We have certain rights and liberties as citizens, and public ownership of public facilties is one of those rights. We have been through this many, many times. Black men were accused of being unable to control themselves from raping white women. Interracial marriages were portrayed as inherently exploitative, and "experts" warned of hideous deformed mutant-children. If women were given the vote, they would only duplicate their husbands vote, and their lack of awareness of politics would make them vulnerable to evil demagogoues. Gay people were accused of being unable to control themselves around children. On and on. In all of those cases, though the arc of justice was long in bending, eventually the Supreme Court has had to step in and say that your rights as a citizen are not dependent on what your fellow-citizens are afraid you might do if you have them. No matter how earnestly others believe you to be dangerous, no matter how genuinely terrified they are of your evil potential, their paranoia is not the basis on which your civil rights are founded. Rather, you have inherent worth and inherent rights, and if even if our individual freedoms do on some level create danger and dissension, that's the cost of having a true democracy.