Overview
Susan Pinker, psychologist and award-winning columnist, has written a groundbreaking and controversial book that reveals why learning and behavioral gaps between boys and girls in the classroom are reversed in the workplace.
Pinker examines how fundamental sex differences play out over the life span. By comparing fragile boys who succeed later with high-achieving women who opt out or plateau in their careers, Pinker turns several assumptions upside down: that women and men are biologically equivalent, that intelligence is all it takes to succeed, and that women are just versions of men, with identical interests and goals. In lively prose, Pinker guides readers through the latest findings in neuroscience and economics while addressing these questions: Are males the more fragile sex? What do men with Asperger syndrome or dyslexia tell us about more average men? Which sex is the happiest at work? Why do some male college dropouts earn more than the bright girls who sat beside them in third grade? After three decades of women's educational coups, why do men outnumber women in corporate law, engineering, physical science, and politics? The answers to these questions are the opposite of what we expect.
A provocative examination of how and why learning and behavioral gaps in the nursery are reversed in the boardroom, this illuminating book reveals how sex differences influence career choices and ambition. Through the stories of real men and women, science, and examples from popular culture, Susan Pinker takes a new look at the differences between women and men.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" My Fair Lady's Henry Higgins posed the question succinctly in 1964, but as Susan Pinker notes in this groundbreaking book, it has been asked in variant forms long before and ever since. Pinker, a psychologist and award-winning columnist, maintains that a proper airing of the question will dispel misconceptions that we all seem to share about gender differences and similarities. To illuminate matters, she explores a wide range of data, including neuroscience research, school test results, economic statistics, and preference surveys. The Sexual Paradox reconfigures a discussion that won't stop here.Anna Fels
lively, well-written…the main conclusion of The Sexual Paradox is important and timely: Our society must adapt to the different needs, talents and life cycles of women.—The Washington Post
Emily Bazelon
Pinker deserves credit for hacking away at the vanilla male model. She is right to point out that "grueling hours do not always translate into productivity" and to seethe at employers for ratcheting up their demands "even while extolling the virtues of gender balance." And she is also right to call on schools to give the troubles of boys a fair share of attention. Pinker may not convey all the complexity that goes into making many men's and women's lives different, but she has a good prescription for helping more of us be our best selves.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Why, according to 2003 figures, do women constitute 49% of law school graduates but only 27% of practicing lawyers? Defying taboos, Pinker, a psychologist and columnist for the Globe & Mail, presents a compelling case for a biological explanation of why men and women make different career choices. Drawing on comprehensive scientific and social evidence and case studies, she proposes that hormones are a determining factor. The hormones predominant in men lead to action, focus and, often, to competitive and rigidly hierarchical professions such as law. Women's hormones lead them to focus on empathy and social interaction, and careers as teachers or social workers. Thus, despite their early advantages-girls have better language skills and discipline, while boys are more prone to dyslexia, autism and Asperger syndrome and other difficulties-women tend not to seek out "the highest status or the most lucrative careers": They're reluctant to take jobs whose demands won't allow them the choice to focus on other aspects of their lives. Pinker says she isn't calling for a return to the 1950s housewife model. She emphasizes individual differences among men and women, but hopes that wider recognition of gender differences can lead to greater workplace flexibility and room for women's professional advancement on their own terms. She may draw a great deal of fire for this book, but her strong evidence could also open a better-informed discussion of the issues. B&w illus. (Mar.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
Psychologist and Globe and Mail columnist Pinker makes a well-constructed case for interpreting gender-based workplace trends through the lens of gender-based sex differences. Equally conversant in clinical psychology, neurobiology, linguistics, and social science, Pinker engineers this familiar dichotomy, proposing that gendered biological wiring-and not discrimination-is at the root of workplace inequities. She offers evidence showing young males to be more vulnerable than girls, right from frequency of premature birth to behavioral problems, ADHD, and chronic illness. So what happens later on? Why aren't women running more board meetings? Pinker likens men and women to two "software programs that run at different speeds," arguing that subsequent hormonal changes that females experience at puberty lead them along separate professional trajectories. Generalizations throughout the book weaken the credibility of her rigorous research, as when Pinker concludes a section on women opting out of high-powered business roles for more people-oriented jobs by asserting that women demonstrate "a capacity to be attuned to others," a tendency "that makes women feel pretty good." Recommended, with the above reservations, for all libraries as a good basis for continued consideration of the issues it raises.
—Elizabeth Kennedy