Susan Pinker

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Susan Pinker

Susan Pinker (* 1957 in Montréal ) is a Canadian psychologist , journalist and columnist .

Life

Susan Pinker was born to Canadian parents. Her brother is the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker .

She graduated from McGill University and the University of Waterloo .

As a psychologist, Pinker works with children with behavioral problems. She lectured in educational psychology at McGill University in Montreal. She writes as a journalist on social science topics. Pinker has a particular interest in the question of how the differences between the sexes develop in the course of a lifetime and change in different phases of life.

Pinker lives in Montreal with her husband and three children.

The gender paradox

In her book The Sexual Paradox , Pinker - based on recent studies - rejects common claims of feminism . It is not the men who are to blame for the position of women in the professional world, but the vast majority of women do not even want to get into the executive suite, says Pinker. And most women were simply not interested in technology and instead strived to continue working in traditional women's professions: education, communication, helping jobs.

Two explanations are in the foreground: The male sex hormone testosterone causes boys and men to enjoy rivalry and competition. Since they have a natural urge to constantly have to prove themselves, they learn to use their weaknesses and convert them into strengths. In women, on the other hand, the brain is geared towards empathy and harmony. They therefore shy away from competition and exhausting careers. Pinker concludes that women and men are significantly different based on their biological makeup. Women don't want the same thing as men, either in their job or in life. Pinker says it is wasted effort to urge women to follow suit with men and to want to measure equality by the number of female leaders. Following this, Pinker calls for the gender-specific differences to be finally accepted.

"Many of us are still not aware that the man is anchored as the standard in our heads," says Pinker. “We see women as a variant of the basic model with a few additional properties. But basically we expect that there are no fundamental differences between the two sexes. In the process, science is increasingly destroying the notion that male and female are interchangeable, symmetrical or even the same. "

In an international comparison, Pinker found that the divergence between female and male career choices is greater, the greater the prosperity of a country. After completing their studies, female physicists and engineers can expect a salary that is on average 30 to 50 percent above the starting salary for graduates in other disciplines. Nevertheless, in richer countries, only just under 5% of women study physics, as has been proven for 2005, while in poorer countries the proportion of women physics students is over 30%.

About 60% of working women, says Susan Pinker, decline promotions or take a lower-paying job in order to be able to live more fully.

Consequences

Susan Pinker describes herself as a feminist. In the 1970s she was a radical equality feminist, so she was convinced that there were only biological-physical, but no psychological-ethological differences between the sexes, and that the differences between the sexes were mainly due to social power structures and the socialization of people. She moved from this position after several years of research.

At the same time, however, she wants to adhere to gender equality . They believe that recognizing that there are gender differences is beneficial and not a hindrance. Several feminists who believe in gender equality conclude that jobs that are done by men may as well be done by women. In order to compensate for a clear surplus of men in some professions, they are calling for quota regulations, better compatibility of children and work, parental leave also for fathers, and advertising campaigns in which female pupils are introduced to male-dominated professions. Pinker believes that these attempts will fail or have little success due to the biological differences between the sexes.

Furthermore, Pinker claims that a higher proportion of women in executive floors (executive boards, supervisory boards, etc.) could be more profitable for companies in the long term. Statistics show that an increased proportion of women at management level increases a company's sales. Pinker suspects that women mediate conflicts and improve communication in the company.

Works

  • The Sexual Paradox. Extreme Men, Gifted Women and the Real Gender Gap.
    • French Translator: Le sexe fort n'est pas celui qu'on croit. Ed. Transcontinental
    • The gender paradox. About gifted girls, difficult boys, and the real difference between men and women . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-421-04361-0 (English: The Sexual Paradox. Extreme Men, Gifted Women and the Real Gender Gap . New York 2008. Translated by Maren Klostermann, limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ sexes. They could, but they don't want Focus, April 7, 2008
  2. ↑ Gifted girls, difficult boys Deutschlandradio Kultur, December 16, 2008
  3. ↑ A Question of Hormones , Die Weltwoche 12, 2008
personal data
SURNAME Pinker, Susan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian psychologist, journalist and columnist
DATE OF BIRTH 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Montréal