Do you think men or women are smarter?

The 7 smartest people I know are women.

Both men and women are equally intelligent in their individual ways, obviously. There are also donkeys that are more intelligent than some humans of either gender. A lot of Hamster brains out there sporting both penises and vaginas.

Yes.

I don’t know how to answer this other than my own experience in life…women in some instances can be smarter and in other instances men can be wiser and visa versa. Life is a fucking crap shoot no matter what sex you are. Place your bets….

If you go by the kids in my daughter’ 8th-grade class, girls — by a mile. But, I suspect maturity is playing a big role there.

We’re all idiots.

There are people who voted for Trump and those who didn’t ( both men and women). Now it’s up to you to decide..))

In my life I’ve encountered many more women smarter than me or other men I know.

That said, I totally agree with @Coloma about equal gender intelligence. She is a very smart woman.

This is not something that is on the whole gender defined. I do think that if we studied it very closely there will be things that one gender does better than the other and vice versa. Completely irrelevent at a personal level though.

Controlling for socialization, I do not think gender is an indicator of intelligence or proficiency at any mental task.

I think women in general are better wired for social interaction. I saw this as a nurse while working geriatrics. Their spouses would die and children would move away to start their own lives, or they would move to a retirement community in Florida, and they would build new social lives and thrive. Most of the men would languish alone in the same communities after their spouses would die and live out their lives watching TV and never go out, even though they were surrounded by women interested in establishing a relationship with them. Same with mid-life divorcees. The woman would be more likely to build a social life, whereas about half the men would end up alone married to ESPN.

As for men, I can only speak for myself. I’m different from both most men and women and have known it all my life, so I’m probably not a good test model for the average. Generally, I think I’m pretty smart in a lot of things, but not really adept when it comes to social interaction. So, I’ve developed a charm that gets me through and out of social things with some grace. I prefer solitude and one-on-one situations more than large complicated gatherings, or organizing the same. I’ve relied on women partners to handle those things.

Metaphorically and otherwise, I’m a good, protective skipper, but I use my first mate to handle the intricacies and petty arguments among the crew and guests. I’m judicious and fair, but impatient with individual foolishness that have nothing to do with running the boat safely. I prefer female first mates because of this. They seem to have an innate patience and understanding for these things that I don’t have, especially with guests on board. I’m not sure if this is a typical male characteristic, but I see this division of labor in the family unit as well wherever I’ve been.

Socialization
Plays a role but we are hard wired differently. This needs to be recognized and accepted so people are not pressured into behaving in ways that are not natural for them. There are real reasons that men and women choose different fields, socialize differently, play differently… individually you cannot make distinctions but on the whole you certainly can.

Smarter than what?

I know some dogs that are smarter than some men.

LOL. Back in the early seventies, there was a program in the engineering department at Chico State that turned into a foreign aid program. At the time, passive bicycle technology was the rave and engineering students were working on all sorts of bicycle tech to save labor and generate energy. For example, the bicycle powered TV was the answer to widespread cardiac problems among couch potatoes. LOL.

Anyway, someone came up with a bicycle apparatus that included a bin and spouts on both sides at the bottom. You could throw a bunch of raw corn right from the stalk into the top and the cobs and leaves would shoot out one side and the corn kernels on the other. So, they found a tribe in Africa and gave two of the machines to them. The idea was, if they could save all the time they put into shucking corn, they could be doing other things to improve the tribal economy and living standard.

They went back to check on them a year later. The tribe was in total chaos, violence and vendetta everywhere. The whole social structure had been interrupted.

This is what happened: the women of the tribe would sit around all day in a big circle, chat, gossip and shuck corn while the men were out working the land and hunting in organized packs. What the women were actually doing was social engineering—settling arguments, arranging marriages, dispersing wealth among families after the death of a family head, all in a mutually agreeable, democratic way.

When they brought in the machines, it only took four people in two shifts to shuck the tribal corn. And the group of women dispersed into their own personal pursuits.

And the tribe nearly fell apart.

How do you define smart?
People generally learn from experiences.
Some went to university or started working right out of highschool or got pregnant or joined the military or grew up on the streets etc.
These are all experiences and each of these people know different things based on what they’ve experienced.
Some had families with money others were poor and some people might have been abused.
My point is it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman or highly educated or not.
Smart to me is a person’s ability to adapt and learn from their experiences so it’s less about your gender and more about inner strength.

@Danebiggs Well said!

Yes, resiliency and adaptability are high on the list of emotional intelligence, another form of intelligence aside from ones cerebral leanings.
Intelligence is also, not so much what you know but how you think. Those that tend to go their own way apart from the herd may be persecuted but also demonstrate a form of intelligence that encompasses creativity, resourcefulness and a certain spark that eludes many. There are many forms of intelligence not just academic smarts.

I also tend to agree with @Espiritus_Corvus women often display a higher social intelligence in many instances.

No. There are many sorts of intelligence, and few of them can be objectively quantified.

I find it very odd that anyone would ask this kind of question today. Prior to the 50’s I guess I could understand it, and we’d have had a rousing fight.

I think individuals are individual. But I think ON average, men and women are better at different kinds of mental tasks. Women tend to do better with language and verbal tasks. Men tend to do better at logic and spatial reasoning. But those are just averages. It’s not like if you took any two random people that the woman and man would fit these averages.