Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Biocultural Differences between Men and Women


Now, you have it. A piece of scientific evidence suggests that men and women are not biologically equivalent. But then, researchers will need to contort their minds to explain the gross disparity in terms that fit the feminist narrative. They cannot accept that it has something to do with biology. They have to make it all a social construction, one that, in this case, they want to solve by making men do more housework.

At issue is diabetes. It turns out, by the latest scientific study, that working more at a job increases a woman’s risk for diabetes while working more hours on the job decreases a man’s risk. Puzzling, don’t you think?

It’s not about a greater propensity for women to contract the condition. It’s about the fact that extra work actually reduces a man’s diabetes risk while it increases a woman’s. Hmmm.

Here is the summary, via the Daily Mail:

Working at least 45 hours a week increases the risk of type 2 diabetes in women - but appears to protect men from the disease, a new study has found.

The Canadian study on 7,065 workers is the first to look at the impact of working hours on diabetes risk in substantial numbers, including both genders. 

They found that, while longer hours decreased a man's risk of the disease, clocking up more than 45 hours boosted a woman's risk by 63 percent.

Might this suggest that women ought to work less? That would be a sensible solution. But, the researchers do not even consider this possibility. For them, it’s all about what used to be called the second shift, the simple fact that women spend more time with children and spend more time performing household chores.

The story continues:

Lead researcher Dr Mahee Gilbert-Ouimet said it seems to boil down to the fact that female workers still tend to take on the bulk of running their household outside of the office.

She said it might be the same for men if they were in similar positions, but those that work the most hours tend to be the best paid, in higher positions, with little housework, affording them a sense of stress-free happiness that seems to be protective, Dr Gilbert-Ouimet said.

Of course, this is absurd. Men who work more hours tend to have more responsibility. Only an ignorant researcher could imagine that having greater responsibility leads to less stress. Do you think that generals in the army have less stress than corporals? Do you think that being responsible for the outcome of a battle is less stressful than making dinner for the children? People who occupy high executive positions are simply better at managing stress.

As often happens, the feminist mind warp misses the point entirely.

And besides, why is housework necessarily more stressful? Do you consider helping a child with homework is more stressful than managing a factory? Did you consider that many mothers actually enjoy spending time with their children?

The researchers are having none of it. Having put their critical faculties to sleep, they pretend that the solution is to have men do more housework. The lead researcher does not consider the possibility that more housework might mean less office work and that less office work might mean lower salary and fewer promotions. She fails to consider that these men might resent having to do more work around the house, and that they might not be able to do it very well. Their presence might simply gum up the works.

'I expected these findings for women because they still assume twice the family responsibility compared to men, so when you sum up the amount of paid work and the amount of work at home compared to men, it makes sense,' Dr Gilbert-Ouimet, a postdoctoral student at Centre de recherche FRQS in Quebec, told DailyMail.com. 

'Having better pay and a better position helps [to lower the risk], and I think it would help if husbands did a bit more of the work at home.'

The research is compelling. Apparently, the division of household labor seems to support better health for both men and women. The solution to the problem, obviously, is not for men to vacuum more floors, but for women to work less outside of the home. Naturally, the thought did not cross the feminist mind.

8 comments:

David Foster said...

"those that work the most hours tend to be the best paid, in higher positions"

Really? There are certainly a lot of high-paid people who work extremely long hours, but there are also a lot of low-paid people who work a lot of hours because they need the overtime, or need to work multiple jobs to survive.

The researchers should support this statement with data rather than just making an assertion.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

The researchers go into explanations "seems to," "might be," and the like. Why do research at all if you are just going to give the same explanation regardless of the data. Wouldn't they have had exactly the same recommendation if the data were the opposite?

Walt said...

Epidemiology can (seemingly) "prove" anything it wants to and then arbitrarily link two mathematical propositions and come up with a rationale . Aside from the fact that 1.63 is still below the standard by which to attribute causality (at minimum, 2.0; preferably, 3.0) what is the biological plausibiliy of "work causes diabetes" or even "stress causes diabetes"? What were the relevant confounding factors that weren't accounted for? (Eg, do women working longer hours eat more carbs and sugars to keep going than do men?) Then, too, how many of these working women were married? Had children? How many children? Of what ages? How many were single and simply needed to clean out the litter box at night? I not only question the writer's conclusions but the "study" itself....Alvan Feinstein, the noted Yale epidemiologist, traditionally asked his classes to come up with the most absurd correlations they could find, and then rationalize causality. He reported that one year it was found that the frequency of video rentals correlated with a high rate of HIV. The explanations were hilarious.

David Foster said...

"Eg, do women working longer hours eat more carbs and sugars to keep going than do men?" Yeah, I was thinking that women on the average tend to react to stress by eating more often than men do...men may react in other non-wholesome ways, but those wouldn't show up in the diabetes numbers.

David Foster said...

Also: I think that studies based on "hours worked"...and there are a lot of them...are increasingly problematic. Fewer people these days are punching a timeclock. An executive or a research scientist is often thinking about work when at home, when driving, etc, and these thoughts may be more or less stressful depending on what is going on.

Sam L. said...

Men and women biologically different? I guess that's why I've never gotten pregnant!

Ares Olympus said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Ares Olympus said...

It's good to recognize the differences. I recall the more male stress responses, "fight or flight", and the contrasting one "tend and befriend" more for women. Men can retreat from psychological pain by throwing himself into work, and that can work reasonably well for decades, until his bad health starts fighting back. And women do the same thing with their "care taking", which can energize them for decades until their bad health also fights back.