I tried that: it was a super strong effort, didn't work, and was a disaster.
Too much in this thread is "dance 'round and 'round and suppose while the secret sits in the middle, and knows.". Since I've been there, tried that, "Oh he suffered terrible. Got the scars to prove it", I discovered much of the secret and will let you know some of the main points.
So, here's Girls and Women 101 for Dummies, That Is, Men. Hackers, listen up. Girls, not just like boys but softer!
Here are three simple explanations:
(1) Just what is it about motherhood people are finding so difficult to understand?
(2) It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.
(3) The strong parts of the tree are from the strong limbs, not the weak, sick, or dead limbs.
I know; I know; now it goes:
"Women, not just for babies anymore.".
Believe much of that, and I've got a great bargain on a bridge over the East River you'd really be interested in.
Warning: The ways Mother Nature has to fight back are intricate, strong, and deep beyond belief, well hidden, and very poorly understood. Why? Sure, now we want women to do men's work for more in economic productivity. A woman wants a nice paycheck as a source of financial security; her husband might also like the extra income.
I suggest that essentially just this desire for economic productivity goes WAY back, to whatever men and women did day by day over the past few hundred thousand years at least. The result was nearly always the same and remains so:
Women who did much on men's work were weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree.
Or, for many thousands of years humans have tried to find, and occasionally have found, ways women could do men's work and for each way found Mother Nature quickly pruned out that part of the tree. By now Mother Nature has a huge catalog of well proven, fully effective, long never seriously overcome means to keep women from doing men's work. So, now for a woman to be good at men's work, the work essentially must be quite different from anything Mother Nature pruned out over the past few hundred thousand years. Lot's of luck finding such work now!
So just why don't women like real-time, object-oriented, multi-threaded, multi-processing software technology, with a dynamic inheritance hierarchy, active objects, transactional integrity, with an extensible hashing symbol table? Don't ask, but be sure Mother Nature knows!
"But, but, but, she has great grades in school, has a very high IQ, is very determined ...! She's AWASH in ability." Still, for nearly anything in men's work, better bet that Mother Nature long since found a way so that she couldn't do it. Do I have any strong, real world examples? Unfortunately, yes, some VERY strong examples.
Like we said back in Tennessee, "That dog won't hunt.". That's a fact, Jack, and that we don't have a detailed explanation for why doesn't change the fact.
The subject of sex differences is MUCH deeper than we know, so deep that for nearly anything new it as if Mother Nature was there long before we were. If you look like a really good candidate for being a good father and want her to be a good mommy, then likely you have something promising; for anything else very good for her, f'get about it. If she's not a mommy and soccer mom in an SUV, etc., then she can be a nurse, school teacher, HR staffer, customer service representative, retail clerk, pediatrician, OB/GYN, CPA, and a few more. How do we know? Just observe facts. Beginning to understand?
In this case, for that old theme of "The Great Natural Order", take it seriously.
Men: If you see your way clear to striking out in new directions on an adventure to do new things, then by all means go for it. When you get back with your fortune, then by all means sweep her off her feet with flowers, etc, and marry her and make her a mommy (maybe not in this order!), with a nice house with a white picket fence, her own SUV, etc. But if you bring her along on your adventure before you have your fortune, then far too soon she will be terrified and crying in her sleep. Remember the scene in the 1939 'Drums Along the Mohawk' with Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert when as newly married they reached their frontier log cabin, an Indian friend dropped by to pay a visit, and she went all hysterical; movie audiences understood right away, and so should hackers.
Candidate reason: For nearly anything we might try having women do what men now do, long ago there were things sufficiently similar and for those Mother Nature had her way: Mother Nature pruned weak, sick, and dead limbs on the tree. So, for anything we want women to do that is very different from the patterns of strong limbs on the tree, long ago women who did such things just are not our ancestors.
Try hard enough to go against those patterns of strong limbs on the tree, and Mother Nature will open a Pandora's box of monsters. I've seen some of those monsters; you can't win against them; don't open that box; don't go against those patterns; don't try to fool Mother Nature. You can learn this lesson quickly, easily from me now or with great pain as you throw much of your life away later.
I have to insert one crucial point so far omitted: Women are MUCH more emotional than men. So, whenever a man looks at some subject in ways that are rational, if the subject has to do with her own life mostly what will really concern her is what is emotional. Sorry about all that rationality guys: For her own life, her emotions overwhelm. It's not that she has no ability at rationality; she can be brilliant at rationality. It's just that for her own life her emotions overwhelm. The rationality is still there, and for subjects far from her own life can be fully meaningful and effective, but for her own life her emotions can and nearly always will overwhelm.
Chalk up this mechanism to Mother Nature. What fraction of men really understood that Mother Nature could have such a rationality blocking mechanism, that is, have her be brilliant at rationality and carry around that brilliance but in crucial ways not be able to use it? What fraction, guys? Getting an idea of what you are up against, how strong are Mother Nature's defenses?
Or, the Henry Fonda character, with his rationality, that he was comfortable with, saw his way clear to a good life starting with just that log cabin, but for the Claudette Colbert character, for that situation so close to her own life, his rationality was meaningless and her emotions overwhelmed.
One more big, huge point so far omitted here: I want to be short and clear and don't want to be crude, but in simple terms human females are herd animals. They are desperate to join groups, mostly of other females, and to be in the center of those groups, receiving approval. Then they feel MUCH more secure. If they can be the leader of such a group, then they can feel even more secure; so, they are social climbers. Yes, they are very cooperative within their groups and very competitive outside their groups: One of their main means for both is gossip. As in D. Tannen, gossip, especially expressing emotions, is how they form group bonds. Cell phones? Social media? Gossip -- female bonding. Hackers form bonds by sharing work (ever hear of open source?); women, sharing emotions!
For little girls and pink dresses, big skirts, puffy sleeves, flimsy and, thus, delicate cloth, pastel colors, tied up with ribbons and bows, a standard explanation is: Children are just desperate for adult competence, that is, want to grow up. Little girls quickly realize that they are little versions of Mommy, and boys, Daddy.
Ever look at pictures of girls and young women, just the faces, without clues to age from hairstyle and makeup, and try to guess the age? Tough to do, ain't it? E.g., Elizabeth Taylor was born in 1932; if just look at her face, JUST her face, in the 1943 'Lassie Come Home' and in the 1951 'A Place in the Sun', darned tough to say how many years are between them. Why? Mother Nature has arranged, the way her face is endearing at age 7-10 is much the same as at age 17. Net, Mother Nature wants her to be endearing and to have her husband care for her much (but not exactly!) like her father did.
The Claudette Colbert character had been very carefully cared for by her very strong father; then she expected the same from her new husband, the Henry Fonda character. To her that log cabin didn't look much the same, and that Indian friend was the last straw! Her emotions had her sense that she wasn't being cared for, and she went hysterical. Rationally Fonda knew that that Indian friend was GOOD to have; emotionally Colbert went hysterical. Actually, what she did was self-destructive; the level 102 course goes into that, but I omit it here (hint: It can create dependency and, thus, have reproductive advantage).
Remember the Dr. Carol Nadelson, "Traditional marriage is about offspring, security, and caretaking". A human female is supposed to be CARED FOR, first by her father and then by her husband. In particular, she is not supposed to be out there, on rationality and little more, facing dangers, taking big risks, being the first in something very new and different in information technology entrepreneurship. Mother Nature was there LONG before Silicon Valley. Sorry 'bout that.
Or, we shouldn't forget the old psychology experiment of the wire mother and the cloth mother. Well, a mother in lots of soft, flowing cloth is much closer to the cloth mother; a mother dressed up in a navy suit and carrying a leather brief case into a tall glass and aluminum office building is much closer to the wire mother. Guess which one will be the stronger limb on the tree, what good mommies will be more like, and, thus, what little girls will want to be like.
So, how does a girl of 3-4 get interested in pretty, pink dresses? A woman who is a mommy has likely strongly followed at least some of the standard patterns. So, a little girl sees from Mommy and other mothers and other little girls what little girls should look like and, thus, wants pretty, pink dresses.
I tried that: it was a super strong effort, didn't work, and was a disaster.
Too much in this thread is "dance 'round and 'round and suppose while the secret sits in the middle, and knows.". Since I've been there, tried that, "Oh he suffered terrible. Got the scars to prove it", I discovered much of the secret and will let you know some of the main points.
So, here's Girls and Women 101 for Dummies, That Is, Men. Hackers, listen up. Girls, not just like boys but softer!
Here are three simple explanations:
(1) Just what is it about motherhood people are finding so difficult to understand?
(2) It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.
(3) The strong parts of the tree are from the strong limbs, not the weak, sick, or dead limbs.
I know; I know; now it goes:
"Women, not just for babies anymore.".
Believe much of that, and I've got a great bargain on a bridge over the East River you'd really be interested in.
Warning: The ways Mother Nature has to fight back are intricate, strong, and deep beyond belief, well hidden, and very poorly understood. Why? Sure, now we want women to do men's work for more in economic productivity. A woman wants a nice paycheck as a source of financial security; her husband might also like the extra income.
I suggest that essentially just this desire for economic productivity goes WAY back, to whatever men and women did day by day over the past few hundred thousand years at least. The result was nearly always the same and remains so:
Women who did much on men's work were weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree.
Or, for many thousands of years humans have tried to find, and occasionally have found, ways women could do men's work and for each way found Mother Nature quickly pruned out that part of the tree. By now Mother Nature has a huge catalog of well proven, fully effective, long never seriously overcome means to keep women from doing men's work. So, now for a woman to be good at men's work, the work essentially must be quite different from anything Mother Nature pruned out over the past few hundred thousand years. Lot's of luck finding such work now!
So just why don't women like real-time, object-oriented, multi-threaded, multi-processing software technology, with a dynamic inheritance hierarchy, active objects, transactional integrity, with an extensible hashing symbol table? Don't ask, but be sure Mother Nature knows!
"But, but, but, she has great grades in school, has a very high IQ, is very determined ...! She's AWASH in ability." Still, for nearly anything in men's work, better bet that Mother Nature long since found a way so that she couldn't do it. Do I have any strong, real world examples? Unfortunately, yes, some VERY strong examples.
Like we said back in Tennessee, "That dog won't hunt.". That's a fact, Jack, and that we don't have a detailed explanation for why doesn't change the fact.