
Boys Rules, Girls Lose - Women at Work - icey
http://steveblank.com/2010/08/30/boys-rules-girls-lose-%e2%80%93-women-at-work/
======
sunir
I have worked for many male and many female led organizations. Since life is
too short, I only work for high achievers who do amazing things. Nevertheless,
I have observed that the rules of workplace status differ between the two
organizations. Actually, the rules of workplace status differ in every
organization as the leader sets the tone. However, since we are generalizing,
I wanted to express my thoughts to see what people thought.

Steve Blank describes this as a competition vs collaboration model. I think
it's better to take it to the school yard and it's about play fighting vs.
social belongingness which are each expensive strategies that require total
investment and exclude each other.

Men (let's say) usually play fight to determine the pecking order. Aggression
for men is like a status bubble sort: continuously comparing and swapping
status with your peers. This strategy consumes energy continuously, but
transactionally.

Women (let's say) often mistake play aggression for real aggression and
respond inappropriately, thereby losing the game.

Women (let's say) have a different status game. While it's usually described
as building relationships, I think that's not quite it play fighters build
relationships too. The other game is about constantly demonstrating support of
other people around you. This is more like neural networks: reinforce
connections or prune them. This strategy also consumes energy continuously,
but over time.

Men (let's say) often make a mistake of not responding correctly and come off
as insensitive.

 _If we are truthfully generalizing_ , none of this really matters since every
leader is different so you'll have to adapt skillfully to your situation.
Trust me: gender is not a true signal of which strategy is in play.

Lessons:

1\. Learn how to be acutely aware to your organization's status game and play
accordingly.

2\. When you're in power, make sure you create a productive status game and
enforce accordingly.

------
Tichy
I must admit, my experiences are rather the opposite. That is, men seem to
collaborate more than women. At least with women I constantly see mobbing
behavior, they can get really worked up about having people around they don't
like. With men there seems to be more of a laissez faire attitude.

Purely anecdotal, of course...

~~~
yummyfajitas
I've observed this as well.

But I think it is not because boys are more collaborative, but because boys
are taught not just how to fight, but _when_ to fight. We start fighting when
someone yells "fight", but more importantly we stop fighting when the bell
rings. Then we hug our opponent and share a beer, because we've got a lot more
in common with him than with the people sitting around watching.

I've never observed women being unable to compete - that's just a matter of
technical competence. I have observed women being unable to stop competing
when the bell rings. Losing is fine, holding a grudge isn't.

(To be fair, some men exhibit the same problem. Academia seems rife with
them.)

~~~
Lewisham
This is about right.

When I've seen my SO in female-dominated workplaces, the constant strain of
"collaboration" is exhausting. However, "collaboration" in this sense is
usually playing a competitive popularity contest, and in the archetypal case
this was achieved by bad mouthing people behind their backs. If you were able
to talk to every girl individually, you'd eventually build a picture which
painted everyone loathing everyone else. That wasn't true, but that's how they
bonded ("You're my favorite in this office, I don't like everyone else" being
said to multiple people). In my small sample size (< 4), this seems to be how
a lot of female-dominated workplaces are.

I think the difference might be that the bell never rings for females, the
popularity game they are playing is constant and exhausting. Men are able to
see each individual flash point as an individual battle, and that it's usually
a battle of ideologies rather than active dislike. Actively disliking someone
is tiring; I can't keep it up for longer than a couple of weeks. The ability
for guys to hug the opponent and share a beer is drastically underestimated,
in my opinion. We don't often talk about positive traits of males in
workplaces, but I think that is definitely one of them.

------
abalashov
That's strange. While some boys were undeniably competitive (mostly athletes,
where they're expected to be), on the whole, my observations growing up were
that girls were viciously competitive, following the maxim "it's a small
world, so use your elbows a lot." They were also often cruel to each other,
and in any case, keen to establish explicit hierarchies of social popularity
and dominance. I am not sure they were in it for authority or power or respect
per se - psychological desires often attributed to men - but they were
definitely aggressive and competitive.

Most men I knew, meanwhile, easily made friends with each other, were not
particularly standoffish, and tended to work together to achieve common goals
rather effectively. Sometimes there would be a little bit of healthy
competitive dynamic, but almost always within the context of a universally
acknowledged, healthy group effort.

~~~
gaius
Completely true. Men and women are equally competitive. The difference is that
men compete explicitly and in packs (e.g. team sports) and women compete
implicitly and _within_ the group (any Hollywood high-school movie).

------
ojbyrne
I think some of the stuff about "hard-wiring" is actually parents
underestimating the influence of society vs their own influence. I once read a
study that found that eight years old was the point at which children were
influenced more by non-family sources than family sources.

~~~
bmelton
My daughter was raised similarly to the girls in the article -- we bought
gender-neutral toys, painted her room in neutral colors, and deliberately
avoided buying any toys that swayed particularly one way or the other.

By the age of three, she had all but insisted that we buy her pink clothes and
girlier toys, to which we of course caved (I mean, if she wants it, so be it
-- we just weren't trying to influence.)

She's a smart kid, and she's into plenty of non-girl things (She's currently
training mixed martial arts at the age of 8, and loves playing in the mud) --
but her school wardrobe almost entirely consists of decidedly non-boy attire,
and her field hockey and lacrosse sticks are pink.

We weren't exactly TRYING to steer her away from it, and it was by no means an
experiment on our part, we just didn't want to predispose her to girlie things
without provocation, so it's in no way scientific -- but we definitely didn't
steer her.

~~~
elblanco
I have a male cousin who's parents absolutely refused to supply gender
specific items. Going so far as to purposely ban toy weapons and other
"kinetic and violent" items from the toy chest. By four he was turning
anything and everything into a sword or a gun -- legos were assembled into
firearms, airplanes were turned upside down and held by the tail as a mock
gun, sticks and cardboard tubes were swords and clubs...finally after trying
to put the lion back in the cage, at 7 or 8 they finally relented and let him
join the rest of the world.

The whole exercise seemed like an utterly pointless endeavor to everybody
else...boys will generally find kinetic ways of expressing themselves, girls
will generally find non-kinetic but more social ways -- prompting or no
prompting.

Most surprising is watching my female cousins and nieces grow up, several of
whom were quite physically active (doing more kinetic type play activities,
climbing, wrestling, etc.) until 5 or 6 when they all very quickly toned that
part of their activity patterns and started upping their social patterns. I
think this had to do with their development of more complex speech patterns.

~~~
natrius
How did he know what guns and swords are? There are plenty of outside
influences that could pass on societal gender norms even if the parents avoid
doing so.

Five or six is when kids typically enter kindergarten in America, where
cultural influences from others abound. I don't know what the right
explanation is, but I wouldn't discount culture.

~~~
frossie
_How did he know what guns and swords are?_

Excatly. I am very wary of the whole "we were gender neutral with our kids and
then the girl wanted a pink dress SO PINK MUST BE HARD-WIRED!" argument. I am
pretty sure if we took a human child to a planet where boys wore pastels and
girls wore primary colours and that is what the shops had, that is what the
characters on TV advertised, that is what the kids in the playground wore -
the girl wouldn't turn around and say "You know what someone should invent? A
pink dress!".

You only have to look at historical non-western cultures - if you look at some
of the African Tribes, men and women dress in bright primary colours. In
India, gold, green and red dominate. If you look at historical Japanese
kimonos, you see black and red and purple and gold and so on.

So, if pink for girls is cultural, and you didn't promote it to your kids,
somebody else did. And they are passing all sorts of other messages too. You
can't raise a kid in a box.

~~~
gyardley
If you liked, you could look at historical Western culture as well. In the
1800s, both boys and girls wore white, and gender differentiation in clothing
style was quite subtle for the first few years of life. Styles only began to
diverge around 1900 and the pink / blue dichotomy only became really prevalent
after WWII.

That doesn't prove all gender preferences are cultural, but color choice
certainly seems to be.

~~~
billswift
I was browsing a book on etiquette published in 1905 a while back and stumbled
across an interesting mention that "a parent couldn't go far wrong following
the standard conventions and dressing a girl baby in blue and a boy in pink";
it stuck with me and I have been wondering when the conventions changed the
other way around. [The quote is from memory and probably not exact, and I
can't check it, because I can't remember the book's title.]

------
emmett
Hm. Growing up, I spent most of my time on collaborative play (building giant
lego structures and creating intricate dioramas with action figures), not
competitive play (though I certainly liked competitive games, and still do).

I'm not sure that men really spend any more time competing that collaborating,
compared to women - is there any evidence to that effect that's not anecdotal?

~~~
ramidarigaz
From what my sister (still in highschool) has to say about the girls in her
class, girls are ridiculously competitive. Far more than I ever was.

~~~
presidentender
On what is their competition based? How is the winner determined?

~~~
16s
Shoes, clothing, make-up, houses, boobs, boyfriends, husbands... you name it.
Women are just as competitive as men.

Something the article did not mention, that I have found to be true. We tend
to collaborate with people we trust and fiercely compete with those we do not.
Two women may get on fine together (no fierce competition only friendly
competition) but two who dislike each other, will not get along and will try
to outdo the other... just like guys. So I'm not sure it's 100% gender that
determines the situation.

~~~
presidentender
So the women in your example compete to see who can _have_ the best boyfriends
and husbands and possessions, right? While the men compete to see who can _do_
the best job, run the fastest, hit the hardest, and win the football game or
finish the job or beat the other guy at pool.

~~~
Lewisham
I think this goes back to sunir's post.

Women at the school yard are competing on who is winning the popularity
contest, which is like a political campaign. You need to bring together all
the money and the tools to win the hearts of the voters. The tools are an
enabler, rather than the end-game.

Like you said, men simply need to bring the biggest X, where X is football
prowess, muscles, humor, girlfriend. Then the job is done.

~~~
ryanpetrich
Bring the biggest girlfriend? That can't be right.

------
SecretAgentMan
Boys rules, Girls lose? Do these theories still hold true? This year, for the
first time in the US, the number of women in the workforce surpassed the
number of men. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-
end-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-
men/8135/) I don't believe this majority exists in blue collar jobs, but I
could be mistaken.

~~~
joshuacc
That's a good question. But cultures have inertia, so it's likely that even
with women forming the majority of the workforce, "masculine" conventions will
prevail for a while. This is especially true given that men still tend to hold
more positions at the top of the corporate hierarchy.

~~~
zeynel1
yes i agree with your comment - men are now coasting - that is - they move on
inertia - riding the male system designed 2000 years ago - but women have the
momentum and therefore they will conquer the workplace within 50 years

i have been researching this topic lately and as i wrote here
<http://makebelieve1.wordpress.com/about/> women have kept alive from
generation to generation the memory of a society where females were rulers of
men

this information comes from the book -when god was a woman-
[http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Woman-Merlin-
Stone/dp/0156961...](http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Woman-Merlin-
Stone/dp/015696158X) especially this quote

in the original female society

–all authority was vested in the woman who discharged every kind of public
duty – the men looked after domestic affairs and did as they were told by
their wives – men were not allowed to undertake war service or to exercise any
functions of government or to fulfill any public office – such as might have
given them more spirit to set themselves up against the women – the children
were handed over immediately after birth to the men who reared them–

[http://books.google.com/books?id=plkmFjler8cC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=plkmFjler8cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=when+god+was+a+woman&hl=en&ei=-G96TM-
aK8P_lgf928XrCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=diodorus&f=false)

~~~
SecretAgentMan
For the record, this book is pretty controversial. It theorizes about a
society that may have existed over 6000 years ago. It references the Amazons -
who were mythological - and there is quite a bit of disagreement in the
academic community about the validity of the conclusions.

~~~
zeynel1
\--it references the amazons - who were mythological--

these are the references in the book to amazons - what do you find
objectionable in them

[http://books.google.com/books?id=plkmFjler8cC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=plkmFjler8cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=when+god+was+a+woman&hl=en&ei=-G96TM-
aK8P_lgf928XrCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=amazon&f=false)

\--there is quite a bit of disagreement in the academic community about the
validity of the conclusions--

i read a book for myself and draw my own conclusions - the authority of an
-academic community- means nothing to me - if you read the book and wrote your
own opinion that would have been a valuable contribution instead of a
reference to the authority of something that does not exist namely -academic
community-

------
jpark
Here's one tragic result of forced gender assignment:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer>

plus anecdotes from friends and family:

""When I say there was nothing feminine about Brenda," brother Brian Reimer
later recalled, "I mean there was nothing feminine:

She walked like a guy. Sat with her legs apart. She talked about guy things,
didn't give a crap about cleaning house, getting married, wearing makeup. We
both wanted to play with guys, build forts and have snowball fights and play
army. She'd get a skipping rope for a gift, and the only thing we'd use that
for was to tie people up, whip people with it. She played with my toys:
Tinkertoys, dump trucks. This toy sewing machine she got just sat."

<http://www.singlesexschools.org/reimer.html>

------
GFischer
Anecdote: I've had women bosses in 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked for
(not IT shops).

In all cases, IT was a collaboration/support department, subservient to the
"men's" departments like sales

And of course the CEO, president or equivalent was a man

However, I think the fact that the #2 person was a woman in all three cases is
a win for women.

I wonder if it was subconsciously set up by the leader that way, maybe they
feel less threatened by a woman as #2?.

Being in a department that's not in the line of fire hinders the possibility
of advancement in the career ladder significantly, I've noticed.

~~~
Lazlo_Nibble
I'm in IT and six out of the dozen or so managers I've reported to in my
eleven years here have been women. (We're definitely a serious outlier—there
was at least one time when my entire five- or six-level management chain was
female except for the CEO.)

I haven't seen much direct evidence for the competition-vs.-collaboration
model in our organization, but there's one generalization I can make: for
whatever reason, on average the women have been far more competent than the
men. I've encountered several men up the hierarchy from me who were
indifferent, ineffectual or incompetent, but none of the women have been, and
the sharpest woman I've worked for could run rings around the sharpest man. I
suspect this happens because women have to work twice as hard to be taken
seriously in IT. The main difference here seems to be that they can eventually
get real career traction.

~~~
GFischer
I have to agree that most of the women bosses I've had were much better than
the men.

And they do get some career traction, what I wanted to say is that they have
some kind of glass ceiling at the CEO / President level.

Since I'm praising them, I guess it's okay to use real names :) . The women
bosses that were excellent were:

Matilde Milicevic ( <http://uy.linkedin.com/pub/matilde-milicevic/6/12/905> ),
currently chief of operations at Equifax Uruguay

and Noela Próspero, currently chief of operations at Urudata Software

------
amatheus
I've read a very good book on the subject, Pink Brain Blue Brain, in which the
author writes about what are the really physical differences between genders
and which are social differences (basically nature vs. nurture). A good read
for anyone trying to understand where science stands as of today on the gender
gap questions.

The main theme of the book is, there are differences, but not as dramatic
between genders as between two individuals; and much of the differences may be
alleviated by paying attention to stereotypes when raising or educating
children.

------
Jd
"Women can be equally competitive if they desire. It’s not a question of
competency. Or a skill only boys have. If they want to succeed by competing
they can. They just have to learn the rules and practice them."

It is hard to imagine that someone who decides that play fighting with sticks
is important for their career will be better at it than someone who has been
play fighting with sticks for fun since they were 8 years old and it is
misguided to tell that person that does not have the competitive instinct that
they can "succeed" in an environment of play fighting enthusiasts.

------
Goladus
I think the competition vs. collaboration is a little off, but the general
point about recognizing the rules of the game is spot on and very important.
When you understand the rules you can choose to play, choose not to play, and
may in some situations be able to change the rules to suit you better. (When
you don't understand the rules and just have a vague sense of being treated
unfairly, all you can do is whine, blame, and be miserable)

------
bpyne
One of the most important take aways is understanding the rules of the game.
It's important any time humans organize. A French professor I had in college
gave me the sage advice, "Know the rules before you try to break the rules."
It's a little out of context to the situation at the time, but still
applicable nonetheless.

------
theklub
I think electronic medical records is going to help equal out the amount of
women in IT type jobs. At the place I work now medical billing/EMR
implementation there are about 40 women and just 3 men.

And yes the women all talk shit about each other constantly, and few get along
genuinely.

------
masklinn
> We started to believe that _perhaps there was some hard-wiring about
> gender_.

Uh... gender, perhaps?

~~~
joshuacc
I'm not sure how Steve was using the term, but "gender" isn't equivalent to
"sex" in this sort of discussion.

"Sex" denotes biological differences, while "gender" denotes cultural
conventions (which may or may not be directly related to biology).

~~~
ubernostrum
Fallacy of begging the question.

"Gender" denotes the things which are not the physical genital apparatus, and
includes but is not limited to types of behavior or preferences or tendencies
toward behaviors or preferences. Whether all differences between the sexes in
such areas are "cultural conventions" or whether some are in fact "wired in"
at a non-cultural level is a topic of endless debate.

~~~
joshuacc
Indeed. I don't disagree with any of this. Perhaps I didn't phrase it well,
but my parenthetical was intended to convey what you said in your comment.

~~~
ubernostrum
You described gender as "cultural conventions". Which sort of assumes an
answer to the nature/nurture debate; thus my reply.

------
HilbertSpace
Part IV

To be more clear, is pink hard wired? No. What is hard wired is that she wants
to grow to be an adult woman and wants to fit into the group of other girls
who want to grow to be adult women. In particular, she wants to fit into the
_group_ of other girls who want pretty, pink dresses. And notice, the adult
women with the greatest influence on girls 3-4 are the ones who are MOMMIES.
E.g., can't expect that a women, who for the past 5-10 years has been working
24 x 7 to be a mommy, would mostly communicate to her daughters that what
women should do is to be information technology entrepreneurs. Sorry 'bout
that.

Here's a guess: Use standard color graphics software and see how to make a
pastel color: Take any _saturated_ color and just mix in a lot of white. Done.
So, saturated colors are more _bombastic_ , and pastels are more _sensitive_.
So, guess which is more appropriate for a human female?

But, fathers, there's another reason, comparably strong, she wants pretty,
pink dresses: One of the A+, astounding talents of little girls is being able
to be endearing and to elicit supportive, protective emotions and behavior
from their fathers. A girl of 4 can totally outclass her father, wrap him
around her little finger. How does she do this? She copies from women and
other girls, runs experiments, and sees what gets supportive, protective
behavior from her father. Quickly she figures out that being in a pretty pink
dress and acting cute, sweet, meek, darling, adorable, precious, dependent,
needing to be supported, cared for, and protected, smiling, having her eyes
big, looking small by keeping her elbows at her side and her feet together,
looking meek by keeping her hands together, being spotlessly clean, etc. gets
back an ocean of support, protectiveness, approval, smiles, affection, more
pretty, pink dresses, etc. from Daddy. She says, "Daddy, Daddy, will you get
me X?". For X a hammer, gun, or toy truck, she sees it doesn't work. For
anything pretty and pink, it does work. Age 3; pattern set for life. Mainly
she does this work with her astoundingly effective _emotional sensors and
processors_ ; always right along she knows what Daddy is feeling and likely
thinking about what to do. Fathers: She can read your emotions, ones you never
knew you expressed or even had, like a book. If you smile at her, even a
little, when she looks a little prettier, and you WILL, then she will look
prettier. Bet on it. Mother Nature does.

So, fathers, you've been telling your daughters in terms loud and clear to
them that you want them to be cute, sweet, pretty, .... Or, she's nearly never
so happy as when she can look cute, sweet, pretty, ..., because she knows that
then she can get what she really wants -- supportive and protective behavior
from Daddy.

So, fathers, to see why she wants a pretty, pink dress, in part look to your
own reactions.

Again, just what is it about motherhood we're having such a tough time
understanding?

It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.

Be not deceived: I've only touched on a little of what Mother Nature has, and
I omitted the many monsters in Pandora's box. Don't mess around with Mother
Nature.

------
HilbertSpace
Part I

I tried that: it was a super strong effort, didn't work, and was a disaster.

Too much in this thread is "dance 'round and 'round and suppose while the
secret sits in the middle, and knows.". Since I've been there, tried that, "Oh
he suffered terrible. Got the scars to prove it", I discovered much of the
secret and will let you know some of the main points.

So, here's _Girls and Women 101 for Dummies, That Is, Men_. Hackers, listen
up. Girls, not just like boys but softer!

Here are three simple explanations:

(1) Just what is it about motherhood people are finding so difficult to
understand?

(2) It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.

(3) The strong parts of the tree are from the strong limbs, not the weak,
sick, or dead limbs.

I know; I know; now it goes:

"Women, not just for babies anymore.".

Believe much of that, and I've got a great bargain on a bridge over the East
River you'd really be interested in.

Warning: The ways Mother Nature has to fight back are intricate, strong, and
deep beyond belief, well hidden, and very poorly understood. Why? Sure, now we
want women to do _men's work_ for more in _economic productivity_. A woman
wants a nice paycheck as a source of financial security; her husband might
also like the extra income.

I suggest that essentially just this desire for _economic productivity_ goes
WAY back, to whatever men and women did day by day over the past few hundred
thousand years at least. The result was nearly always the same and remains so:

Women who did much on _men's work_ were weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree.

Or, for many thousands of years humans have tried to find, and occasionally
have found, ways women could do _men's work_ and for each way found Mother
Nature quickly pruned out that part of the tree. By now Mother Nature has a
huge catalog of well proven, fully effective, long never seriously overcome
means to keep women from doing _men's work_. So, now for a woman to be good at
_men's work_ , the work essentially must be quite different from anything
Mother Nature pruned out over the past few hundred thousand years. Lot's of
luck finding such work now!

So just why don't women like real-time, object-oriented, multi-threaded,
multi-processing software technology, with a dynamic inheritance hierarchy,
active objects, transactional integrity, with an extensible hashing symbol
table? Don't ask, but be sure Mother Nature knows!

"But, but, but, she has great grades in school, has a very high IQ, is very
determined ...! She's AWASH in ability." Still, for nearly anything in _men's
work_ , better bet that Mother Nature long since found a way so that she
couldn't do it. Do I have any strong, real world examples? Unfortunately, yes,
some VERY strong examples.

Like we said back in Tennessee, "That dog won't hunt.". That's a fact, Jack,
and that we don't have a detailed explanation for why doesn't change the fact.

~~~
HilbertSpace
Part II

I concluded:

The subject of sex differences is MUCH deeper than we know, so deep that for
nearly anything new it as if Mother Nature was there long before we were. If
you look like a really good candidate for being a good father and want her to
be a good mommy, then likely you have something promising; for anything else
very good for her, f'get about it. If she's not a mommy and soccer mom in an
SUV, etc., then she can be a nurse, school teacher, HR staffer, customer
service representative, retail clerk, pediatrician, OB/GYN, CPA, and a few
more. How do we know? Just observe facts. Beginning to understand?

In this case, for that old theme of "The Great Natural Order", take it
seriously.

Men: If you see your way clear to striking out in new directions on an
adventure to do new things, then by all means go for it. When you get back
with your fortune, then by all means sweep her off her feet with flowers, etc,
and marry her and make her a mommy (maybe not in this order!), with a nice
house with a white picket fence, her own SUV, etc. But if you bring her along
on your adventure before you have your fortune, then far too soon she will be
terrified and crying in her sleep. Remember the scene in the 1939 'Drums Along
the Mohawk' with Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert when as newly married they
reached their frontier log cabin, an Indian friend dropped by to pay a visit,
and she went all hysterical; movie audiences understood right away, and so
should hackers.

Candidate reason: For nearly anything we might try having women do what men
now do, long ago there were things sufficiently similar and for those Mother
Nature had her way: Mother Nature pruned weak, sick, and dead limbs on the
tree. So, for anything we want women to do that is very different from the
patterns of strong limbs on the tree, long ago women who did such things just
are not our ancestors.

Try hard enough to go against those patterns of strong limbs on the tree, and
Mother Nature will open a Pandora's box of monsters. I've seen some of those
monsters; you can't win against them; don't open that box; don't go against
those patterns; don't try to fool Mother Nature. You can learn this lesson
quickly, easily from me now or with great pain as you throw much of your life
away later.

I have to insert one crucial point so far omitted: Women are MUCH more
emotional than men. So, whenever a man looks at some subject in ways that are
rational, if the subject has to do with her own life mostly what will really
concern her is what is emotional. Sorry about all that rationality guys: For
her own life, her emotions overwhelm. It's not that she has no ability at
rationality; she can be brilliant at rationality. It's just that for her own
life her emotions overwhelm. The rationality is still there, and for subjects
far from her own life can be fully meaningful and effective, but for her own
life her emotions can and nearly always will overwhelm.

Chalk up this mechanism to Mother Nature. What fraction of men really
understood that Mother Nature could have such a _rationality blocking_
mechanism, that is, have her be brilliant at rationality and carry around that
brilliance but in crucial ways not be able to use it? What fraction, guys?
Getting an idea of what you are up against, how strong are Mother Nature's
defenses?

Or, the Henry Fonda character, with his rationality, that he was comfortable
with, saw his way clear to a good life starting with just that log cabin, but
for the Claudette Colbert character, for that situation so close to her own
life, his rationality was meaningless and her emotions overwhelmed.

~~~
HilbertSpace
Part III

One more big, huge point so far omitted here: I want to be short and clear and
don't want to be crude, but in simple terms human females are _herd animals_.
They are desperate to join groups, mostly of other females, and to be in the
center of those groups, receiving approval. Then they feel MUCH more secure.
If they can be the leader of such a group, then they can feel even more
secure; so, they are _social climbers_. Yes, they are very cooperative within
their groups and very competitive outside their groups: One of their main
means for both is gossip. As in D. Tannen, gossip, especially expressing
emotions, is how they form _group bonds_. Cell phones? Social media? Gossip --
female bonding. Hackers form _bonds_ by sharing work (ever hear of _open
source_?); women, sharing emotions!

For little girls and pink dresses, big skirts, puffy sleeves, flimsy and,
thus, delicate cloth, pastel colors, tied up with ribbons and bows, a standard
explanation is: Children are just desperate for _adult competence_ , that is,
want to grow up. Little girls quickly realize that they are little versions of
Mommy, and boys, Daddy.

Ever look at pictures of girls and young women, just the faces, without clues
to age from hairstyle and makeup, and try to guess the age? Tough to do, ain't
it? E.g., Elizabeth Taylor was born in 1932; if just look at her face, JUST
her face, in the 1943 'Lassie Come Home' and in the 1951 'A Place in the Sun',
darned tough to say how many years are between them. Why? Mother Nature has
arranged, the way her face is endearing at age 7-10 is much the same as at age
17. Net, Mother Nature wants her to be endearing and to have her husband care
for her much (but not exactly!) like her father did.

The Claudette Colbert character had been very carefully cared for by her very
strong father; then she expected the same from her new husband, the Henry
Fonda character. To her that log cabin didn't look much the same, and that
Indian friend was the last straw! Her emotions had her sense that she wasn't
being cared for, and she went hysterical. Rationally Fonda knew that that
Indian friend was GOOD to have; emotionally Colbert went hysterical. Actually,
what she did was self-destructive; the level 102 course goes into that, but I
omit it here (hint: It can create dependency and, thus, have reproductive
advantage).

Remember the Dr. Carol Nadelson, "Traditional marriage is about offspring,
security, and caretaking". A human female is supposed to be CARED FOR, first
by her father and then by her husband. In particular, she is not supposed to
be out there, on rationality and little more, facing dangers, taking big
risks, being the first in something very new and different in information
technology entrepreneurship. Mother Nature was there LONG before Silicon
Valley. Sorry 'bout that.

Or, we shouldn't forget the old psychology experiment of the wire mother and
the cloth mother. Well, a mother in lots of soft, flowing cloth is much closer
to the cloth mother; a mother dressed up in a navy suit and carrying a leather
brief case into a tall glass and aluminum office building is much closer to
the wire mother. Guess which one will be the stronger limb on the tree, what
good mommies will be more like, and, thus, what little girls will want to be
like.

So, how does a girl of 3-4 get interested in pretty, pink dresses? A woman who
is a mommy has likely strongly followed at least some of the standard
patterns. So, a little girl sees from Mommy and other mothers and other little
girls what little girls _should_ look like and, thus, wants pretty, pink
dresses.

