The question whether women and men have the same cognitive capabilities is heavily mined territory. I‘ll take the risk and present some of my observations (and an analysis) in the following. To anticipate my results: they have not, and this is a great thing! Don‘t stop reading now and give me the chance to surprise you.
Let me explain with an example. It’s a proven fact that men are better at playing chess than women. Of course there are women who play far far better chess than me (I‘m a lousy player). But this does not falsify the general statement: the chess playing capabilities of a large number of women/men can be described with a distribution: from both sexes there is only a small number of individuals which plays really well. But as the average skill is higher for men, there is also a larger number of players with exceptional skills. So far most men will agree. But this is only half of the story!
Let‘s look at the chess problem from an greater distance: chess is in fact a small game which is embedded into a larger game. If you look at the room where the chess match is taking place, you will see many people: relatives, friends, journalists, a tournament director etc.. And this much larger „game board“ is exactly where the female mind shines!
From my experience women have more difficulties focusing on small games. They prefer to look at the bigger picture, how everything fits together. To focus on the small game you must ignore 99.9% of the environment. Women don‘t feel comfortable doing this. For them everything matters somehow. Even details, like what color the socks of the players have, don‘t go unnoticed. In the context of the large game these things are important in the sense that they carry valuable information which can be used to win the large game. In the context of the small game they are irrelevant and only ballast.
Therefore men prefer simple, small problems which can be solved exactly (e.g. using analytical thinking) while women prefer complex, large problems which can often only be solved approximately (using methods like intuition). Also from my experience women are more interested in inductive reasoning, while men prefer deductive reasoning. Note that intuition, often disrespectfully called „gut feeling“, is in fact a very important and powerful form of intelligence.
But there is not only a difference in preference but also in capability. Maybe it is possible to explain such differences from an evolutionary perspective. But I don‘t want to waste your attention on such an attempt. The important thing to understand is: the male and the female brain are designed to solve different kinds of problems! They have different strengths and, because the brain has finite volume, different weaknesses. And this is exactly why mixed sex teams can potentially show much higher performance than single sex teams.
It is important to understand that the large game typically can be won only in a sequence of small games. Therefore the need for the male intelligence is easy to explain. But it is equally obvious that you should not lose the big picture, otherwise you might win some (arbitrary) small games but still lose the large game. This is disastrous, because the large game is what all is ultimately about. Winning the small games is only a means to win the large game. Somehow the female mind excels at highly complex strategical problems where the male brain is more optimized for solving relatively simple tactical problems. But we all know: both good strategy and good tactics are indispensable if you want to win. Therefore men and women are actually designed to work together (and not against each other).
Note that this statements are again only valid in a statistical sense (i.e. on average). There are lots of women who think more like men (and other way round). And this is also totally OK!
Unfortunately, due to the predominant patriarchal culture of our society, only the male way of thinking is valued. Most people associate intelligence only with the skills needed to solve small problems (like chess, mathematics, physics etc.). Intelligence („IQ“) tests typically only test for such skills. E.g. they never include a test about how quickly a person can assess the personality of another person only after a short chat and a quick look. But of course such skills are extremely important too.
This preference for „male defined“ skills might also come from the fact that highly complex problems can be solved only approximately. This means that women are more often wrong compared to men. It’s a necessary consequence of them trying to solve the more difficult problems. Because of this, men often make the big mistake to look down on the female way of thinking. This, in return, often misleads women into overstating the confidence of their analysis: men only listen to them when they are „sure“. Therefore they claim to be sure even if they are actually not.
Decisions based on a very large number of variables are difficult to explain. This makes women sometimes fake simple „male arguments“ for results they have actually obtained using a „female“ thinking process. This is especially damaging because men can often identify the flaws in such „fake“ arguments with ease and think that the woman must be stupid. And because men often won‘t listen properly to women, women are sometimes tempted to play certain small games themselves (for which their partner might have been better suited).
Many men are often even ignorant regarding the existence of the large problem. For them, all that matters is the capability to solve the small games they are aware of. Often they extremely oversimplify the large problem to be able to „solve“ it with the cognitive tools they master. Of course this is major foolishness! Men should even consider the possibility that many women don‘t care much whether their intelligence is valued by men or not. Maybe they identify this correctly as a small game which can be lost without much damage and which does not play an important role in the grand scheme of things. It is even possible that women have been mostly winning the large game for centuries without men even noticing.
Todays feminism, surprisingly unaware of the unique strengths of women (!) and blindly copying the male definition of intelligence, often insist that women are „equally intelligent“ than men („women could be equally good at mathematics if they were not suppressed“). Such an attempt is doomed to fail. If you must fight, you should choose a battle ground which lets you use your strengths and makes it difficult for the enemy to use his. Of course women are equally intelligent to men, but based on a more generalized (and more accurate!) definition of intelligence.
And maybe we should not fight, but work together! Women are good a figuring out which small games should be played. Men are good at winning them.
As a „practical illustration“, let‘s look at two couples trying to solve a problem.
1st couple: „Mr. and Ms. Today“
- W: „I‘m sure there is a dead dog buried in our garden. It must be under the apple tree.“
- M: „I‘m sure you are wrong again, but I will - just to make you happy - dig anyway“
- M: (digs exactly under the apple tree, finds nothing)
- M: „I was such a fool listening to you. You have wasted my precious time!“
2nd couple: „Ms. and Mr. Tomorrow“
- W: „I believe that we have a dead dog buried in our garden. It could be under the apple tree, but I‘m not sure“
- M: (thinks hard about the most likely place to find the dog, digs at a place near the apple tree, finds a huge dead cat)
- M: „Good that we could find the dead animal together.“
I‘m very sure that humankind, in order to be able to solve the challenges of the coming decade, cannot afford the sexes to waste their energy in a unnecessary battle. It is high time that we start to unleash the power of mixed sex teams. Romance at the workplace should be encouraged and not forbidden (we should even let the couples work together instead of separating them!).
Some advice to men: learn to listen to women. Let them guide you. Learn to understand, value and make effective use of their way of thinking and you will find success and happiness.
Some advice to women: become aware and proud of what you are, claim your rightful place in society but let men do what they are really good at.
For this post I harvested a - not very flattering - visual comment from a reader:
Yes, I see now that there are significant flaws in my arguments. But there is also a good intention and some truth. But it will take me a while to sort it out. There are some deep questions involved.
Stay tuned!
Image: DALLE-3
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