Do women really make men better?

Article here. Excerpt:

'The December issue of the Atlantic features a grand roundup of studies on "How Women Change Men." The results presented will probably not explode your brain with wonder. Most of the studies basically confirm that our interactions with specific people shape our beliefs about the categories - ethnic, gender, etc. - those people belong to.

So men with lots of female colleagues tend to pick up more housework at home, likely because they view women as equal partners rather than Windex-powered service robots. Men with daughters subscribe less frequently to traditional gender roles and disagree more often with the statement, "A woman's place is in the home." (Yet men with sisters are more attracted to the old norms, perhaps because they've used macho/feminine orthodoxy in the past to differentiate themselves from their siblings.)
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But what about how having sons might affect the business practices of female CEOs? Might being observed by a guy make a woman run faster, take greater risks or donate more money? Information about whether, for instance, girls speak up less in co-ed classrooms is out there, but it doesn't get nearly as much play in the press - and the framing is almost always "this is how women react to their own awareness of a man's presence."

So what does this mean? Is it somehow troubling that we rarely encounter studies that use ladies as experimental subjects, and guys as inputs? Or should we embrace our status as independent variables (which sounds exciting, like a mix between a Beyonce song and a spy mission)? Does our independent variable-ness speak to our girl power, or to ongoing male power? Someone should do a study.'