Woman: The most evolved species? - (Mar/14/2007 )

. . . I see . .there's where I lack the most other than all the other paramaters

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Most of the studies were conducted by male researchers....this means the results may be biased towards male....

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Yes, may be biased towards male.

I dunno on what basis evolution is measured - smartness or prettiness. Does evolution make organism more beautiful or smart?

Shall we compare human with other so called lower organisms considering human as more evolved species. Compare what then - slugs and animals or flowers and animals? So, I think beuaty should not be a parameter as humans are more beautful than some while some surpass humans in beauty.

So, we are left with smartness or cleverness. So, may be cleverness is the criteria.

So, the studies say men are smarter (on average, I will agree I have come across many many smart women)

Bias towards male - may be. But, why were these studies done by men? Does that mean men are out there thinking? I am not sure.

In the article, it writes there are far more male Nobel lauret than females. Hmm, may be bias there too.

Evolution and smartness - question will always be who is evolved more - men or women? If I hear my conscience, it would say 'women' but these studies don't say that.

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There could be so many reasons justifying why there are more male Nobel laureates than woman which include very recent advent of woman into al fields of society, research, medicine, arts and technology. If given a thought with respect to how physiologically womans' body and emotions are DESIGNED it seems she is better evolved. It is known that even though males are more stronger physically it is female who is more resistant and stable. women are more flexible in adapting to different varying physical and emotional situations. Another example is definitely woman excels men in COMMUNICATION (voice, vocab, articulation etc),

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Calvin I agree with Communication Skills. It is really hard for men to understand many things.

In the discussion in the news article I have cited above, it says that women have more verbal ability while men have better spatial ability. Even in color perception, women excel men. There are many more finer things that women have upper hand on men. I need not list all those.

But, when the question of evolution comes, my knowledge is very less and I still wonder what nature is trying to come up with - better organism measured in terms of smartness or beauty.

U have come up with so many parameters till now - body physiology, emotional ability, communication skills, speed of thinking, presence of mind, adaptability, etc. Can U give us some citations? I totally agree with U that women are better in all these but we cannot generalise on what we have seen.

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putting someone on a pedistal is also a form of discrimination.
men and women will only be truely equal when neither is considered to be superior or inferior.
by the way when is world men's day

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When talking about cleverness - did you remember that the IQ is also a construct? And it mainly tests 'male' abilities like math, visouconstruction, etc...
Is evolutional biology the right field for this discussion? I don't believe that nature has much to do with the number of female nobel laureates but culture goes a long way there. If you exclude women from the universities, don't be surprised that they don't win the nobel prize. And the first theses by women are not dating back more than 100 years. More examples? Google Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn - she made the discovery - he made the prize... so much more examples for that.
BTW, if this was all about evolution, does the fact that allmost exclusively european and american researchers have been laureates mean they are more evolved??? We had this kind of discussion only 70years ago, shall we really start it again?
Mankind has left the path of genetic evolution and replaced it by a much faster cultural evolution (which can also be described by the same mechanisms - refer to the chapter on "memes" in Dawkins egoistic genes).
The use of biology to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of women and men is in many cases used by men to show why women should go back to kitchen and children... not very scientific, though.

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there are some points which differeniate between men and women and these points can specialize each one...so it becomes difficult for one of them to get that special characteristic of the other...therefore, in my opinion it's better not to have comparision here..
but for other general points, as i said, it can be "social life-dependent", education and other criteria can play a role here, therefore it's not fair to compare an individual living in a poor illiterate village in Africa with another got many educational resources..
and in case of providing all the standards equally for both, i think even if one of them get superior over the other, he/she has something missed in return..in other words, both men and women complete each other..

agree with you, krümelmonster

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I think best answer will be - both are equally evolved.

I think no laws of evolution will agree that a single organism can give birth to a more evolved offspring and less evolved. In other words, brother and sister cannot be more evolved and less evolved, can they?

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I really could not go through in detail but I got some links/citations/books talking in the same direction:
http://www.jstor.org/view/02767783/sp050001/05x0049w/0
http://human-nature.com/books/geary1.html
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr...avior+men+women
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr...n+women#PPA5,M1
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin...=1&SRETRY=0
http://www.jstor.org/view/00846570/di980525/98p0173o/0
http://cogprints.org/2263/00/skoytarget.htm
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr...tion++men+women
http://www.jstor.org/view/00979740/sp040003/04x1483a/0
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr...tion++men+women

I need to check these in detail...

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