Re:Why Aren't There More Female Entrepreneurs?
by ebishop on Sunday November 06, 2011 @04:59PM
(#3203997)
I think the article you're referring to is called "Is There Anything Good About Men", and has been submitted to Hacker News multiple times. Even though it doesn't have anything to do with technology it's one of the most insightful articles I've found here.
Here's a link to the article: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm
(Note, I think this location copied the article from http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm, but I find the formatting on the first link is a bit nicer and easier to read)
If you want to browse the comments on previous submissions to HN, you can just follow the links on HNSearch: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=anything+go...
1. Women tend to have more intimate social networks than men. (Fewer people, stronger connections).
2. In almost every aspect of life, women tend to deviate less from the mean. For better and often for worse, men are bigger risk takers.
This second point I find really interesting. Lots of statistical gender differences can be explained by this one fact. Apparently, if you plot male and female behavioural patterns on just about any scale (income, crime, exam marks, etc), women cluster around the mean more than men.
Some of the effects of this:
- There are more men in prison.
- More men run big companies.
- Statistically, girls do better at high school. This is because the dropout guys bring the mean mark down more than the high achievers bring it up.
The best evolutionary justification I've heard is that humans were polygamous for large periods of our evolution. In a society where the top blokes got all the babes, it made a lot of sense to be a big risk taker. -- How else do you compete with attention from war heroes?
There was no benefit to risktaking behaviour in women because most women would reproduce anyway.