The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender GapSusan Pinker, psychologist and award-winning columnist, has written a groundbreaking and controversial book that reveals why learning and behavioral gaps between boys and girls in the classroom are reversed in the workplace. Pinker examines how fundamental sex differences play out over the life span. By comparing fragile boys who succeed later with high-achieving women who opt out or plateau in their careers, Pinker turns several assumptions upside down: that women and men are biologically equivalent, that intelligence is all it takes to succeed, and that women are just versions of men, with identical interests and goals. In lively prose, Pinker guides readers through the latest findings in neuroscience and economics while addressing these questions: Are males the more fragile sex? What do men with Asperger syndrome or dyslexia tell us about more average men? Which sex is the happiest at work? Why do some male college dropouts earn more than the bright girls who sat beside them in third grade? After three decades of women's educational coups, why do men outnumber women in corporate law, engineering, physical science, and politics? The answers to these questions are the opposite of what we expect. A provocative examination of how and why learning and behavioral gaps in the nursery are reversed in the boardroom, this illuminating book reveals how sex differences influence career choices and ambition. Through the stories of real men and women, science, and examples from popular culture, Susan Pinker takes a new look at the differences between women and men. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 19 | |
Chapter 2 | 38 |
Chapter 3 | 62 |
Chapter 4 | 92 |
Revenge of the Nerds | 126 |
Chapter 6 | 157 |
Chapter 7 | 183 |
Chapter 8 | 198 |
Chapter 9 | 234 |
Chapter 10 | 254 |
Acknowledgments | 267 |
Notes | 271 |
| 309 | |
| 331 | |
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Common terms and phrases
ability academic achievement ADHD adolescence adults aggression Alice Eagly American asked Asperger syndrome Attention Deficit attention deficit disorder autism average babies behavior biological boys Canada careers chapter child choices choose cognitive colleagues compete competitive Daniel Darwin Awards Developmental disorder dyslexia dyslexic early earn effects emotions empathy ence engineering evolutionary expected experience extreme feel female brains Gender Differences genes genetic gifted girls Globe and Mail graduate Hakim Harvard high school higher hormones human idea imposter interests Journal language lawyers less levels look male maternal mothers neural numbers oxytocin parents percent physics problems professor profiled Psychology reading risk role Sandra Sandra Witelson scientists second-wave feminism Sex Differences Shaywitz Simon Baron-Cohen skills social someone Statistics story stress success teachers testosterone there's tion traits Uta Frith Witelson woman women York young
Popular passages
Page xii - ... made of chromosomal difference until it is manifested in development, and development cannot take place in a vacuum: from the outset our observation of the female is consciously and unconsciously biased by assumptions that we cannot help making and cannot always identify when they have been made. The new assumption behind the discussion of the body is that everything that we may observe could be otherwise.
Page 9 - Each of these is followed by a quote from one of her "magnificent extemporisations." Thus he says, "She can be breathtaking: "There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.