gender inequalities

There are many inequalities between the genders. Males for instance experience greater variation in many traits. Whatever you measure, top and bottom percentiles always end up being male dominated. (e.g. Smartest as well as dumbest people - as measured by IQ - tend to be male.) Nature is taking greater risk with males who - as a population - pay for this greater variance in the form a lower average lifespan. (Generally speaking, in complex systems, there is a correlation between experience of stress and generation of variance.)

Here is another interesting inequality pattern that has got to do with desirability rankings:

Desirability of women is mostly biological and keeps declining. Desirability of men on the other hand is socio-biological and peaks around 45. Whereas reproductivity declines after a certain age, status accumulation has no theoretical limit.

Here are some further observations:

  • Societies compensate the drop in biological desirability by providing a status boost for entering motherhood which is considered as a holy institution in many cultures.

  • No wonder why grooming for women is such a huge industry. Anything that helps to prolong the perception of a biological downfall is appreciated. But what is the corresponding industry for men? It is get-rich-quick schemes, promising to provide quick sociological boosts. Men are much more susceptible to spam emails, gambling of all sorts etc. (Tragically, this susceptibility increases with age. Generally speaking, everyone should be de-risking their financial portfolios as they get older.) Status consciousness for men is like beauty obsession for women.

  • Average marriage age happens to be around the time when the desirability of men is equal to the desirability of women. This is another indirect proof of the generally accepted fact that it is actually women who make the marriage choices. They wait until the last second, making unconscious estimations of the future status trends for their potential husbands. Males often feel duped afterwards, but do not really understand why. At some point some of them quit and return back to the marriage pool with much higher status points. (Of course, making such a return is harder for women. That is probably why they cheat less although they feel an equal amount of temptation.)

  • Majority of germ line mutations come from sperms. (Men go through way too many sperm production cycles in their lifetimes.) In other words, the “quality” of a gene pool gets affected a lot by the older men deciding to have kids late in life. I put the word quality in quotation marks since evolution actually desires to create more variation and try out new things. It is just happens to be easier to do so through the male side. (As pointed out at the beginning of this post, most risk taking is conducted through the males.) Hence, if evolution is any guide, sexiness of older men will keep increasing over time. (Variation wants to increase and will exploit all mechanisms to do so.) Good news for the George Clooney’s of the world.