> However, if it is simply a fact that males are generally more variable than are females on many traits, why is this true?
> Since a male can have more offspring than a female--but also has a greater chance of being childless... natural selection favors a slightly more conservative and reliable baby-building process for females and a slightly more ambitious and error-prone process for males.
This is on the money. Women are generally the choosers when it comes to sex, since eggs are expensive, and sperm is cheap. Nature therefore needs to try many different "keys" to see which ones are good at fitting into the "lock", to draw a crude analogy.
Men may seem more "privileged" as they dominate the top of most fields. But one must also realize that many men are nature's failed experiments, and live lives of despair, filled with homelessness, crime, and drug abuse, as well as downright social failure. Problems occur when policy makers selectively see the former, and disregard the latter.
> Since a male can have more offspring than a female--but also has a greater chance of being childless... natural selection favors a slightly more conservative and reliable baby-building process for females and a slightly more ambitious and error-prone process for males.
This is on the money. Women are generally the choosers when it comes to sex, since eggs are expensive, and sperm is cheap. Nature therefore needs to try many different "keys" to see which ones are good at fitting into the "lock", to draw a crude analogy.
Men may seem more "privileged" as they dominate the top of most fields. But one must also realize that many men are nature's failed experiments, and live lives of despair, filled with homelessness, crime, and drug abuse, as well as downright social failure. Problems occur when policy makers selectively see the former, and disregard the latter.