The science of gender

The best part of Susan Pinker's terrific new book, "The Sexual Paradox," isn't even in the book.
We heard her on a radio interview. "Science must triumph over ideology."

This summarizes one of the huge huge battles going on right now.  The ideology of the last century versus the science of the 21st century. 

Pinker makes a tremendous contribution by presenting mounds of evidence and science about gender as it relates to the workplace and schoolhouse.

Like Nine Shift co-author and fellow female Julie Coates, Pinker has hundreds of references and back-up sources.  This is a gender thing too, methinks, as male authors  (like me) tend to start out with a big idea and then try to find facts to back the "big idea" up.  Pinker, like Coates, starts with the facts and works toward the big idea.

"The Sexual Paradox" attempts to answer the 'paradox' about why boys get worse grades in school than girls, and why girls make less money than boys in the workplace.   She fails to explain the boys-school thing (no matter, we figured it out) and you can determine whether she succeeds with the gender pay gap issue.  But there's no discussion on what really matters:  her great research and writing on the science of gender. Read this book.  Underline passages (we did) from this book.  If you get the chance, listen to her as well.

(First of a three part blog series)

Comments

[William Draves]

NineShifter Don Elliott caught a grammatical error in the original posting, which I hope has been fixed. Nice catch, Don. And thanks to everyone who comment here or email me.