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Real causes of human sex differences? + Can we learn from Sweden?

#1
C C Offline
The real causes of human sex differences
https://quillette.com/2020/10/20/the-rea...fferences/

EXCERPTS (David C. Geary): Scholarly debate over the magnitude and origin of human sex differences is seemingly interminable. As one might imagine, the arguments are often quite acrimonious, and the associated positions differ sharply in terms of the relative focus on social or biological contributions to sex differences. The prevailing view in the social and behavioral sciences is that human sex differences are typically small in magnitude, largely social in origin, and driven by gender roles (below). The proponents of this view will give ground to biology for traits that are all but impossible to refute, such as the sex difference in height, but quickly dismiss these as being of trivial importance in the modern world. The gender roles explanation of sex differences enjoys wide popularity inside and outside of academia, a level of acceptance that qualifies—given abundant contradictory evidence—as one of Mackay’s extraordinary popular delusions.

Here, I describe how gender roles are thought to shape human sex differences and why these theories fall short. I illustrate the latter using the social development and play patterns of boys and girls, because these are thought to result from the sex-typed beliefs and behaviors of parents, advertisers (e.g., of toys), and other people (e.g., teachers). More critically, these early sex differences, and any social influences on them, are thought to place children on a trajectory that will perpetuate stereotyped sex differences in adulthood, such as more men than women becoming engineers. One associated and rather hubristic belief is that social and psychological sex differences can be eliminated by changing young children’s beliefs about stereotypical gender roles and by encouraging them to, among other things, engage in gender neutral play and play that is more common in the opposite sex.

[...] In some European countries, such as Norway and Sweden, the laudable goal of gender equality is at the forefront of national policy, but the devil is in the details.

[...] Ironically, these same policy documents promote children’s agency or their ability to pursue their own interests. Yet, when children express their agency in ways that conform to stereotypical beliefs and behaviors, such as boys engaging in more intense physical activity than girls, adults need to intervene to eliminate the associated sex differences. The most consistent result of such interventions, I suspect, is frustrated children who are asked to engage in activities that they do not find particularly interesting. It is probably just as frustrating for teachers who are tasked with ensuring equality of interests and activities of the girls and boys in their care... (MORE - details)


What we can learn from Sweden
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/21...om-sweden/

EXCERPTS: No country has devised a perfect response to the coronavirus pandemic. Despite its growing list of admirers, Sweden is no exception. [...] That said, Swedes have good reason to be proud of their government’s handling of the pandemic. As we [in the UK] haggle over local lockdowns and new proposals for a ‘national circuit-breaker’, Sweden continues its outlier policy of permitting most Swedes to get on with their lives.

For one thing, Swedes should be grateful to live under leaders who speak candidly about their own policy failures. [...] The self-criticism of Anders Tegnell’s team stands in stark contrast with the relative silence of our ministers on the Covid blitzkrieg in the UK’s care homes.

Anyhow, the Swedes would be the first to admit they do not emerge from this crisis as the world’s public-health superpower. Still, they comfortably avoided the doom-laden prophecies of Professor Neil Ferguson, whose Imperial College model, when applied to Sweden by researchers at Uppsala University, predicted a punishing 85,000 deaths as a result of its non-lockdown policy. So far, Sweden has had just under 6,000 deaths. This is despite Ferguson’s insistence, a full week after Sweden’s daily deaths actually peaked, that fatalities would continue to ‘increase day by day’.

Critics of Sweden point out that it still trails neighbours like Norway and Finland in terms of Covid deaths per million. However, we should not be lured into thinking that Sweden sacrificed lives while its Scandinavian neighbours saved them with prudent, humane lockdown measures. Peru and Belgium, both of which top the coronavirus death charts, also imposed some of the most stringent lockdowns in the world.

The significance of government policy is the natural starting point of journalists and politicians in Whitehall. But a global perspective forces us to reconsider the importance of state interventions in favour of more enlightening factors, like each country’s age profile, underlying state of health and population density. This is consistent with research conducted by Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government back in May. Following the peak of the first wave in Europe, it found no correlation between the stringency of government measures and deaths from the virus.

In the case of Sweden, biochemical engineer Ivor Cummins has highlighted its lower than typical mortality rate throughout 2019 compared to its neighbours. Otherwise an undoubted blessing, this presented a problem as soon as the pandemic struck in 2020. It meant Sweden was home to a larger proportion of seriously frail elderly citizens than Norway and Finland, which, experiencing higher rates of mortality among the vulnerable in 2019, had fewer to lose through Covid.

This goes some way to explaining why Sweden trails its neighbours. However, it cannot completely absolve the Swedish approach. [...] Today, Sweden does not live in perpetual fear of a second national shutdown, because its leaders never opted for a first. Swedes may even have reached an ‘endemic equilibrium’ – the point at which a disease ceases to spread through a population exponentially and simply becomes one of the many background risks to which individuals adapt. Belgium, Spain and the UK, on the other hand, after lifting their enforced lockdowns, have subsequently seen a sharp rise in cases since late July (though increased testing played a role here), along with a slower but visible rise in deaths.

Meanwhile, Sweden’s infection rate is stable and its seven-day rolling death average has not climbed higher than three since late August. So while we ponder another lockdown, ostensibly to kill the endless cycle of restrictions and re-openings, Sweden gives every impression of having foreclosed that same vicious cycle by avoiding lockdown in the first place... (MORE - details)
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#2
Syne Offline
In the most egalitarian societies, the sexes display the most stereotypical sex differences. That alone disproves the social origin of sex differences. Anything else is just trying to argue with those who deny actual science in favor of their own sociopolitical beliefs.


When it's all said and done, Sweden will have been the smartest country during Covid. History will eventually look very poorly on all other responses.
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