Women in the Senate Explain Why They Do it Better

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2013-01-05 09:15

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yesterday, a record 20 women were sworn in to the U.S. Senate. To mark the occasion ABC’s World News With Diane Sawyer had all of the female senators on for a group interview. One of the major topics of the discussion was the belief of many of the senators that they achieve better results than their male colleagues on a variety of issues including the budget, immigration reform and climate change. Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow got the ball rolling when she suggested women are more inclined to get results by working in a bipartisan manner.
...
Maine Senator Susan Collins took the argument a step further by saying if women were in charge of the Senate and in the White House there would be a solution to the budget debate that has gripped Washington.

“I think if we were in charge of the Senate and of the administration that we would have a budget deal by now,” Ms. Collins said.
...
Later on in the interview, Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski said she believes women bring a “sense of timeliness” to the Senate that is not shared by their male colleagues.
...
California Senator Dianne Feinstein chimed in to say that having less testosterone makes female politicians more effective.'

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Really, need I comment?

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2013-01-05 15:37

Here we go again with this nonsense. Time to bring some real data into this discussion...

The best and most comprehensive review done regarding sex differences in cooperative behavior (that I know of) was conducted by Balliet, et al (2011), published by the APA's Psychological Bulletin. It is a quantitative meta-analysis of 272 studies on the issue spanning 18 countries and consisting of about 31,642 subjects. Essentially the results suggest that there are no sex differences in cooperation overall but that such behavior depends on the context of the situation. Additionally, and probably most important to this discussion, is that male-male groups are more cooperative than female-female ones. So the best psychological data on this very issue stands in direct contradiction to these asinine claims being made by these senators (and lots of people these days).

Citation:
Balliet, D., Li, N. P., Macfarlan, S. J., & Van Vugt, M. (2011). Sex differences in cooperation: a meta-analytic review of social dilemmas. Psychological Bulletin, 137(6), 881–909.

Abstract (emphasis mine):
"Although it is commonly believed that women are kinder and more cooperative than men, there is conflicting evidence for this assertion. Current theories of sex differences in social behavior suggest that it may be useful to examine in what situations men and women are likely to differ in cooperation. Here, we derive predictions from both sociocultural and evolutionary perspectives on context-specific sex differences in cooperation, and we conduct a unique meta-analytic study of 272 effect sizes—sampled across 50 years of research—on social dilemmas to examine several potential moderators. The overall average effect size is not statistically different from zero (d = –0.05), suggesting that men and women do not differ in their overall amounts of cooperation. However, the association between sex and cooperation is moderated by several key features of the social context: Male–male interactions are more cooperative than female–female interactions (d = 0.16), yet women cooperate more than men in mixed-sex interactions (d = –0.22). In repeated interactions, men are more cooperative than women. Women were more cooperative than men in larger groups and in more recent studies, but these differences disappeared after statistically controlling for several study characteristics. We discuss these results in the context of both sociocultural and evolutionary theories of sex differences, stress the need for an integrated biosocial approach, and outline directions for future research."

And:

"Our quantitative review extends this literature by examining sex differences in social dilemmas. We started by asking the question: Are women or men more cooperative? Our answer: It depends. Women are not more cooperative than men, in general. However, several factors moderate the sex– cooperation relationship, including the sex of partner and the duration of the interaction."

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Submitted by PatriciaR on Sun, 2013-01-06 06:37