The other night a friend and I were having a bit of discussion about the role of men and women in a marriage.... i.e. the "proper" role. He took the position that women should stay in the home because, "women suck at work." Obviously, as a woman who has worked hard for the past 20 years (I started at an early age of 12, filing and preparing mailings for my grandfather's family business), I took issue with his response. I asked him why he thought that women "sucked" at work, and he concluded that women are naturally bad at things like science and math, and therefore are no good for the workforce. He then asked me to name any one woman scientist that has contributed anything worthwhile to the world of science. A-hem. Marie Curie? His response? "Who's that?" I listed off some more women of science and other highly compitent women of history, none of which he was familiar with.
As he is my friend, and things were getting heated, I decided we should table this topic and "agree to disagree". I ponder at his thought process on this partly because I am a woman, partly because I have been a woman of science since I was a teenager and I hold a BS in Biology. Mostly though, I ponder his thoughts because I am curious about cultural differences and I am certain it has something to do with his mindset on this issue. So, how are we different?
- I am female, he is male (stating again for the list)
- I am born and raised American, he is born and raised Egyptian
- I was raised Christian, he was raised Muslim
These are the only differences that I am certain of. It may be possible that his mom did and does not work, whereas mine has worked my entire life and could easily be referred to as a work-aholic. Both of my grandmothers also worked outside of the house. Therefore, our expereinces in the home could have differed in that way too. He is probably used to a different "normal" than I am.
I have decided to post this question of who is better at science and math, since that was his main reasoning, on my twitterfeed, @myownenigma77. I will update with what is presented in replies here in this blog. Feel free to add your comments here as well. I do ask please that you don't just leave an opinion, but also offer some type of referernce as well. Thanks!
Happy debating!
