Is it true that men are more creative than women?
Yesterday we had philosophy class. I remember that at one point my teacher said something like: “Women are generally not as creative as men”. That saying has been bothering me. Yeah, it’s true that more creative ideas come from men than women, but women do prove very creative in many aspects. Take literature, for example, they say women are more emotional and have more imagination than men, so the world they create are more imaginary. And from my experience, girls seem to be more imaginative than boys, girls’ games are more various than boys. Girls have a better inner life than boys. Something seem to be contradictory here.
So, is my teacher right?
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No… you can’t generalize without testing a theory. It’s like saying that our group is superior to yours.
I would argue that. I know more stellar female artists than men. My ceramics class has 14 people in it and only 3 of us are men. The only rational explanation for anything related to this premise is women more so than men have their lives more directly interrupted by bringing children into the world thus putting their creative streaks on hold.
I don’t necessarily believe this is true, I think there are just as many of both men and women who are very creative equally. I would suggest to both you and your teacher to take a physiological psychology class sometime. In this type of class you will learn the workings of the brain and how testerone plays a part in the formation of the male brain and which side of the brain you use for what. It is a known fact that men are better in Math because they primarily use the right side of their brain and women are better in communication because they use more of the left side of their brain. However I also feel that what hand you use can play a part in tapping into the uses of the other side of the brain that you tend to use less of because of gender.
I don’t remember any discussion as to which side of the brain creativity is responsible for and I have met creative people who use their left hand and others who use their right. I also see both men and women equally creative. I personally think creativity is more of a genetic trait more anything else but we are still exploring both genes and the brain so who knows maybe one day we will see where creativity actually comes from as they get to know more of the workings of the human brain and genetic make a human being.
I doubt it.
However, traditionally many of our societies are male dominated, so men have likely more opportunity to express their creativity and are likely raised to have a higher need for achievement.
Have a hard time believing that. Perhaps it could be put down to the paternaisticl nature of society; perhaps it has to do with a culture that minimalizes the contributions of women in order to lionize those of the male; perhaps it is just a BS statistic after all 94% of all statistics are made up on the spur of the moment.
Generalizations are usually wrong.
Here’s a non-generalization: Your teacher is a fool.
Peer-reviewed data, or it didn’t happen. Can your teacher cite studies?
of course many women are just as creative as many men. To say otherwise would simply be foolish.
The area where women may be most underrepresented is philosophy, but this probably has much more to do with the entrenchment of philosophy by white males than anything having to do with creativity. Maybe the professor is generalizing from personal experience.
Men and women are alike and different in many ways. We can’t say Men are more creative than women. In a discussion the males would say men are more creative and the females would say women. Truth is, they both can be equally creative. I cannot agree with the idea that any gender is more dominant in any area than the other gender. It really depends on how good a person is at something and not about man vs. woman diffrenciation. It’s just what they perceive in the industry as professionals.Gender has little or nothing to do with anything these days.
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No way do I agree with that!.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
How do you measure creativity?
I think women are as creative as men. It is simply that women haven’t had the means to further their education until the last 150 years or so. And even with that, there are, still plenty of women who are not allowed to be educated in todays male society. Not to mention the bigoted teachers who still think that a woman mind cannot rival a mans. I think. Right there he is saying that he does not believe any of his female student can ever match a mans mind. So he won’t waste any extra time on them. I would be concern to be in his class.
Is your teacher right? Maybe for a close minded, middle age throw back.
I beleve if women where treated equal to men since the beginning of time, there may have been many female artist or even Einsteins that would’ve existed. But after years of being wedded off and sold like cattle and not allowed to be educated, women had little need to experiment and expand their minds. Obviously he doesn’t read science magazines. Young women are growing in the field of science and engineering and making new discoveries everyday because of their creative and educated minds. He is counting women out before they had a fair shake at the table.
Even Bill Gates would disagree with him. I heard that he went to some middle eastern country as a guest speaker. When someone asked if he, he thought it possible for their country to be competitive, Bill said no. He said for them to be competitive they would have to use all their resources and they were not. He said they would have to educate their women. Only then could they compete with other nations in technology.
__Jerk must listen to Pat Robertson__.
Some stuff “invented” by women
The paper bag
Windshield/screen wipers
Disposable nappies/diapers
Monopoly
Circular saw
Dishwasher
As the traveller said on returning from his trip, “I rest my case”
@ucme I remember Monopoly was invented by a man…
Easy to justify when you get your information from Rush Limbaugh or one of his clones.
It’s a proven fact men are much more creative.
Well… Men create life, while women merely carry it.
@Mimishu1995 Creative is as creative does. It doesn’t reside in any sex. Although creative sex sounds like fun.
The Grey might be okay, the gay doesn’t do much for me. :)
@creative1 ” It is a known fact that men are better in Math because they primarily use the right side of their brain and women are better in communication because they use more of the left side of their brain.”
Unfortunately, this just isn’t true, and here.
And here for the mathematics gap myth.
”“Women are generally not as creative as men”. That saying has been bothering me. Yeah, it’s true that more creative ideas come from men than women, but women do prove very creative in many aspects.”
It bothers you, and then you immediately agree with your teacher’s statement. If it’s true that more creative ideas come from men than women; then men are generally more creative than women.
“Take literature, for example, they say women are more emotional and have more imagination than men, so the world they create are more imaginary.”
Who are “they”? This is an example of weasel word
“And from my experience, girls seem to be more imaginative than boys, girls’ games are more various than boys. Girls have a better inner life than boys. Something seem to be contradictory here.”
This isn’t evidence either. It’s at best a hypothesis based on your personal experience and bias.
I actually think the teacher’s comment is trivially correct. Men are generally more creative. What seems to be getting everyone’s goat (and your eagerness to give socially desirable replies) is the idea that men are intrinsically, or naturally more creative—except this inference cannot be made, since the teacher’s quote is out of context and with no qualifying explanation.
I could read the comment in many ways:
“Women are generally not as creative as men (because there is a cultural bias against women in creative endeavours)”
“Women are generally not as creative as men (because the social opportunities for creativity are more limited for women.)”
“Women are generally not as creative as men (because their gender role offers fewer incentives for creative thinking.)”
Or a more bigoted version:
“Women are generally not as creative as men (because they’re more suited to simple tasks like washing and ironing.)
Your philosophy teacher made the statement. You could have asked him to qualify it—which may have prompted a philosophically relevant discussion on the matter.
In the most general sense, it is true.
Women may indeed be more expressive.
But in my opinion men are, generally speaking, more creative.
I doubt it. Throughout history men have been able to follow their creative path more easily then women. They also were raised to be more fearless, and to feel power over their own lives. If for some reason we can objectively look at creative accomplishments and history and see men have been more creative that women, then I would argue times are a changing as women gain more power.
I don’t know why jellies say generalization are usually or always false, they are often true. The generalizations usually come from somewhere, once in a while it is from thin air and started by what I would call a rumour. Even when the rumour winds up being true, there might be an explanation behind the generalization that needs looking at to break apart misconceptions.
Why discuss this at any length at all? Does it really matter which sex is more creative? No, it doesn’t.
Gah, I can’t believe there’s even a debate over this. I can’t believe a teacher would say that. That teacher is a fucking idiot.
One gender isn’t more creative than the other. If men have made more things, it’s because through history they’ve had more opportunities for education.
In the past, many women had to use male pen-names if they wanted to get their works published (see Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell, AKA the Bronte sisters). That’s still somewhat going on today, where female authors publish under names that don’t sound overtly female. For instance, JK Rowling’s first name is Joanne. She went with JK so that Harry Potter would be published “without any hype or expectation.” Yeahhh.
When teachers say stuff like this, it’s so harmful, because it discourages girls from going after creative pursuits. Teachers have been discouraging students based on their own biases for ages. If it happens enough times, eventually students will give up on their dreams and go after the more conventional path everyone is pushing them toward. That’s such a sad waste of potential, for the student and for all of us.
I wish you could print out my answer and give it to your teacher, maybe anonymously. Someone needs to tell him/her what kind of damage they are doing. And, you know, I’m totally baffled at the many responses in this thread who seem to be going along with it. WTF, people?
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