Well, I would recommend the book "Why is sex fun" by Jared Diamond. I don't know all the theories anymore, but the gist is that there is/was a biological arms race between men and women. For example, the reason that women have to be inseminated inside their bodies is so that men can not be sure who is the father of the women's babies. Because otherwise, men are prone to killing offspring of other men (at least in the animal kingdom). Now, if a woman sleeps with another man, we still can not be sure that she is not carrying our baby. At least that is one theory, as far as I remember. There are several more aspects that come into play.

There actually was one chapter with the theory that men go hunting to impress women (and I would be ready to make the leap and equate hunting with startupping). Gathering would be more energy efficient than hunting, but hunting allows men to come home as bigshots, make a big party, and impress lots of women. That theory was only based on one study of a primitive society, though, so I guess the evidence is not yet very strong. Just a theory... Anyway, a good book to read in my opinion.

Other than that, I am not sure I agree to your question. Men and women certainly have different genes, have they not? I think the asymmetry is inherent in the problem of growing a baby inside of your body. Perhaps it would have been possible to allow both men and women to get pregnant, but it might have been too much overhead (although there are animals that can switch gender, and come to think about it, there are human hermaphrodites).

Most animals seem to have a difference between men and women - for example the spiders that eat their mates...

The point of the question is that, unless you can answer it (generally, or in particular cases), then it implies that once culture existed, culture met all selection pressures.

Men and women do have genetic differences, which they had before culture existed. But the thing at issue is whether modern-day, high-level personality features are a genetic difference, or not.

Culture responds to the genetic preconditions. Of course monogamy, marriage etc are memes, but they exist because of the biological necessity. Culture can't change the biological needs - no matter what culture, babies need to eat.

Are you saying you think all reasonable cultures would deal with (respond to) our biology by treating women in such a way that they don't like to do startups as much as men? What is it about female biology which is so adverse to startups that many layers of culture interpretation can't possibly do anything about it?

No, I am not saying that. The biological conditions are changing - there is the pill, there was a guy recently who cloned himself from his own skin, there is genetic testing for fatherhood etc. Things like that might change the scales in the gender war.

Even without the technology there are different ways society reacts. Polygamy should in theory raise the value of women (even fewer women available per men if some men have several women). But some societies reacted by putting women behind veils and removing them from the market by force.

I can imagine a culture, for example, where men do nothing and just force women to do startups. So it definitely is possible.

What I claim, though, is that the current situation in western societies might not be due to repression of women, but due to other factors. And those stem from biological differences, which give men and women different sorts of weapons in the gender war.

As the example of life-expectancy shows, it is not clear to me that women are currently getting the worse deal.

I see that with present technology, mothers need a few month vacation per child at the end of pregnancy and for physical recovery after. This is a fairly minor thing, and it is no reason a culture must assign people wildly different roles and personalities.

You'll probably say the mother will want time to raise her kid. But that could equally well be true of the father -- can't you imagine a culture where fathers are expected to stay home more and raise children, and mothers aren't? There's nothing impossible about that. Or it could be treated equally.

Sorry, I was a bit tired - the discussion is not about culture affecting the roles of men and women. Of course it does - we have different cultures on earth with different role models.

The discussion was about men and women being different, and I still maintain that is true.

Also, I don't think pregnancy is a minor thing. 9 months is 1-2% of the working life time of a women.

Besides, other effects might come to play. There is currently another thread about it on news.yc: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20wwln-freak-t.ht...

I think effects like that are more likely to be the cause for inequality than repression.

You don't need 9 months off -- you can work through a large portion of a pregnancy. Further, for example, you can pay someone else to be pregnant for you. That doesn't cost enough relative to a serious career to make a major difference. And that price can be split with your husband.

As I said, technological advances might tip the scales - making somebody else carry the child for you was not an option for women a few decades ago.

Anyway, isn't the whole discussion completely moot? If you don't accept anything else, then what about physical strength? Can you accept that differences in physical strength can cause differences in behavior, and certainly differences in career choices?

I must apologize, but I am tired now, and we have been talking circles for a while now. Let's let it rest (I'll read your answers, if you give any, but I don't intend to reply).

Having someone else bear a child for you was an option, millennia ago. It's really not very complicated how to do this: they get pregnant, then give you the child when it is born.

That you overlook this demonstrate the power of culture. Doing what I described violates taboos, so it's hard to imagine.

I was talking about the pregnancy itself. Btw., there are other costs for the mother besides missing a few weeks of work: there could be medical problems, the mother might even die. So it is still more costly to have babies for women than it is for men. I seem to remember that women also have a higher risk for infection through many STDs.

However, I think we might not disagree as much as you may think: of course, in theory, since the mind can control the body, it is conceivable to create any kind of culture. Maybe we could teach our children to only walk on legs and feet, so you could rightfully claim that "walking upright is just a cultural thing". The "richer" human societies are, the more wasteful cultural habits like that we could afford.

I am not sure that society can be reprogrammed in an arbitrary way, though. First of all, it still needs to survive, and it must be able to compete with other societies, even other animals. I think you have to take into consideration WHY culture evolved into it's current state - it has an evolutionary history. I read your statements as such that you think that it was a random whim of nature to give us our current culture. If you are convinced that men and women are equal, then there must have been a 50:50 chance for gender roles being exactly reversed. Do you agree thus far?

My claim is merely that it was not random, but that there was a bias due to the differences of men and women, which makes certain cultural habits more effective than others. As you say in your previous post, and I said somewhere else, inventions might tip the scales, and other cultural models could become viable.

It's strange you would think I had said our current culture is the random whim of nature. I actually think it is a mix of the good ideas and mistakes of people not nature. My comments the entire time have been human-centric in where they attribute causes.

Why does our culture have major gender roles that permeate people's personalities, today? It's not because it made logical sense in the past. Whether it did or not then, it does not now. And hasn't for some time. And this has been pointed out on a number of occasions. A particularly well-stated case was made by William Godwin in the 1790s.

What happened? People did not listen. They let their biases and closed-mindedness and unreasonableness get in the way of progress. That is the reason gender roles remain entrenched. If people were more thoughtful during the last few hundred years, then we wouldn't have recognizable gender roles today. That's the sort of cause I consider important and meaningful to explaining the present day situation.

Another fact of the situation is that parents teach gender roles to their children, whether the children like it or not, and without regard for whether it is helpful or hurtful, useful or not, makes sense or not, etc In a culture which does this, it isn't reasonable to say the gender roles exist because they are correct: the mechanism which perpetuates them does not depend on them being correct, and people are unwilling to change it so that it does.

People still do it with surrogate mothers...