Today I want to talk about gender differences and why it might make evolutionary sense. To be clear, we can’t test evolution and we can’t do a randomized control trial, but it’s an interesting argument. So, please hear me out.
There are a lot of gender differences. If we think about the distribution of lots of things, men’s distribution ends up being wider. There are more men on the negative side and more on the positive side. Is this for everything? No. But it is for lots of things.
Let’s think about mental illness, for example. There’s no question that the distribution on the negative side for men is larger. There are more people with mental illnesses. The same thing is true for people who are born with genetic abnormalities, negative abnormalities. There are more men on that side. The list goes on and on. Men develop more mental illness. I never know the current correct terminology but think about things that have to do with emotion, mental capacity, and so on. There are more men on the negative side. And I’m starting with the negative side because nobody’s arguing about that. Now it’s also true that there are more men on the most extreme side. If we look at the top performance of intelligence, whether it’s connected with some genetic mutation that we know about or not, there are more men on those distributions. So, I’m not talking about the average, I’m talking about the distribution. What has happened is that the tails of the distribution for men are wider. I think that’s not debatable. (A lot of the time people debate about the average. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the width of the distribution.) Nobody argues that there are more men on the negative side of the distribution. More men are hospitalized in mental facilities. But the evidence is also that there’s more men on the top side. So that’s the basics.
Why might that be sensible from an evolutionary perspective? Imagine you are mother nature. And as mother nature, you create mutations. You decide to roll the dice with every kid that is born and make some mutations. Is there a difference in reward for nature to gamble with men versus women? To create more mutations for men that could cause more things on the negative side and more on the positive side. If you were mother nature and you were gambling with mutations on genetic differences, it might work out well or it might not. It’s a risk. So, should mother nature take more risk with men, or should mother nature take more risk with women?
Here’s the argument and whether it’s true or not true, it’s beautiful. If mother nature gambles with men and the gambles turn out to be correct, work out well, and fall on the positive side, what will happen to the genetic mutation? If it’s good, more women would procreate with that man and that genetic mutation will end up well. On the other hand, if the gamble doesn’t work out well, what will happen? Women as gatekeepers of procreation will not have kids with that man and that genetic mutation will die. In other words, if nature gambles with men, good outcomes would be rewarded. There’ll be kids coming out for this genetic mutation that would keep it going and negative mutations will be (maybe not 0%) but will be less likely to propagate.
Now, what happens if nature gambles with women? If the gamble is correct, men will procreate with that woman and there’ll be more kids. But if the mutation is not that good? Would men now be the barriers for procreation? And here the argument is not so much. Because historically, not now, but historically, men would have sex with any woman and would try to procreate. Men are not good barrier mechanisms, and women are. Because of that, because women have more vested interest and stay longer with the kids and so on, the evolutionary argument goes, it’s better for women to be the gatekeeper and better for nature to gamble with men.
Now, I’m not sure if this argument is correct or not correct, evolution and so on. But you have to admit, it’s quite interesting to think about nature this way, deciding to gamble more with men than with women.
