I thought this was an interesting bit of unsettled science. Gina Rippon discusses sex roles, nurture, and nature in the pages of NewScientist (2 September 2017):
And the relevance of social and cultural context was demonstrated by a paper showing that differences in cognitive abilities between men and women in 26 countries varied as a function of attitudes to gender roles.
Now comes a timely paper by researchers in Australia, Israel and the UK suggesting that the roles of biology and environment as sources of stability and variability might be reversed when it comes to the evolutionary processes shaping sex/gender differences. …
The authors propose a model emphasising biology as a source of variability and environment as a source of stability, suggesting that biological variability is in fact being “suppressed” or masked by highly stable cultural forces and socio-environmental conditions.
Why might this matter? The authors, admirably cautious in discussing the balance between biology and environment, do note that the long, intense socialisation of infants is full of emphasis on differences between the sexes, via toys, clothing, names, role models and expectations.
They talk of this influence as creating stability, of holding the phenotype steady. But it could equally be described as repressing the benefits of variability.
And the idea that gender is accompanied by a collection of genetically preset preferences is actually fairly risible in the context of evolution. After all, flexibility is one of the hallmarks of human survival, the flexibility to live in the heat of Africa or the barren tundra of Scandinavia. Why should we expect certain parts of ourselves be described in such a cast-iron manner?
