Gender roles and conformity exist only because of societal pressures

Well, yes, I believe you're arguing that our gender roles are based off of biological differences, and I'm arguing for that it's based off of cultural stigma and pressures. I only meant that gender roles themselves are not biology, but you can argue that it is based on biology(that's something different), which you are. I have no qualms with your second paragraph, these are what I consider to be biological differences between women and men. As a psychology major, I know about all this very well. What I'm asserting is that gender roles are reinforced and exist primarily due to cultural pressures. The only way that these biological differences that you are listing would matter is if you linked them to why women and men choose the interests they have, and that these biological differences cause women to be interested in womanly things, and causes men to be interested in manly things. You haven't sufficiently proven that these biological differences drive men and women to those interests, you've merely stated that the biological differences exist. I suppose you will have another argument left to link these biological differences to gender roles and gendered interests, so use that wisely. I'll address each of your problems with the study over children: 1. I'd have to challenge you on this. I had a pretty good grasp of what gender was, even when I was 6 years old, and I imagine most kids do too. They understand conformity, while they may not necessarily be able to define the word, they know what it means to act like everyone else does instead of acting how you want to. After all, children are taught rules at a very young age, and etiquette. All of this is conformity, so they would in fact have had a lot of experience already with conforming. Also, it should be noted from the study: "The average age of the participants was M = 10.8, with a range of 10 to 13 years of age." [1, pg. 839] So, it wasn't children 6-12 years old, but rather 10-13. I imagine that makes a difference with whether they would have a better understanding of gender conformity and roles. 2. These are the questions asked: " What did you learn about yourself from this activity? What did you learn about how to treat other people from this activity? Before this program, did you ever think about this topic? What made you think about this? What do you think now? Have you had any experiences where you were treated differently or badly because you were a boy or girl? Do you think there are things boys can do that girls should not do? Do you think there are things girls can do that boys should not do? If you had an audience of kids your age, what would you tell them about what you learned today?" [1. pgs 840-841] 3. I'm not finding anywhere in the study which states the number of toys that were involved in the study, so this may or may not be a problem 4. The study suggests that the children were interested in both kinds of toys(both "blue" and "pink" toys) yes, it fails to mention which one each child played with first, but I don't think this is all that relevant since they played with toys traditionally associated with both genders anyways 5. The study says that they played with the toys in the appropriate way they are to be played with when alone, but played with the toy associated with their own gender in a gender stereotypical way when peers were in the room[1, pg 838] 6. In statistics, a sample of 86 would have a confidence interval of plus or minus 18%. Since all of the 86 children played with toys of both genders, this means there is a 95% chance that 82-100% of all children in Colorado will play with toys associated with both genders if they believe they are alone. 7. That's possible, but what exactly makes Colorado that different in this specific case? I suppose gender stereotypes may not be promoted as much in Colorado as they are in strictly conservative states, and they would be more promoted than in very liberal states like California or New York. 8. There is more in the study than just toys, that was just one thing I focused on personally. The questions above were asked of the children, and many children offered up ways on their very own on how they felt different for having interests that were not traditionally part of their gender. They offered up examples where people were surprised when they acted differently or how they were bullied [1, pg 842] 9. The age and race of the children are listed in the study. It was mostly a random sample of kids in Colorado. So, we can say, at least, that it would be in generally representative of kids in Colorado, perhaps not everywhere, but I fail to see how these independent variables would change a whole lot. I'll address both of these comments from you: A: "So your saying that women don"t go into most of the science field because they feel they shouldn"t and not because men actually take up most of the population with higher than average IQ." B: So your saying that more men end up operating heavy machinery because they feel they have to and not just because they actually would rather be doing something else but it turns out they didn"t graduate with a high GPA because men also take up most of the population with a lower than average IQ. Yes, there is no difference in general IQ between women and men, and many studies have confirmed this [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] "So your saying that women don"t have jobs that involve operating heavy machinery because we tell them not to and not just because we actually tell everyone not to because those kinds of jobs tend to not have very good pay." If you've ever had a job at a warehouse, both men and women are employed there some times. In my experiences with warehouses, it's always the men who are asked to operate heavy machinery, and the women are asked to do other, less physically intensive tasks. "So your saying that it is our fault that we don"t have more women in the sciences and it"s not just a because LESS women WANT to be in the sciences." I'm saying it's society's fault that less women want to be in the sciences. Less women want to be in the sciences because of the fact there is pressure not to be. They give up on it and think they shouldn't go into such careers. Society conditions women to NOT want to go into the sciences. That is what I'm arguing and I believe a lot of this has to do with the belief that women are incompetent in "masculine" fields. For example, "...researchers found that when success in a male-type job was ambiguous, a woman was rated as less competent than an identically described man, although she was rated equally likable. When individuals working in a male-type job were clearly successful, however, women and men were rated as equally competent, but women were rated as less likable and more interpersonally hostile (for example, cold, pushy, conniving). This was not found to be true in fields that were "female" or gender-neutral."[7, pg 82] This indicates there is clear bias against women in STEM fields, and in addition to this there is implicit bias against women, as the implicit association test (IAT) with Anthony Greenwald shows. This test has been taken by over half a million people, and 70% of them were able to more readily associate male with science and female with arts than the reverse.[7, pg 76] And finally, the work of Shelley Correl shows that girls tend to rate themselves lower in math skills than boys rate themselves, even when both are equally performing excellently in math, and this belief lead them to deciding against going into a math field. [7, pg 44] As for your final paragraph, there is no such profession because of the last point I showed above. I could use engineering as an example. Women don't WANT to go into that career because they perceive themselves as not as good as males, even when they are as good as a male in that subject. If you don't think you will be successful in something, you usually don't go after that. So, I would argue that MANY more women would want to go into engineering, math, and science careers if they weren't pressured into believing men are better at those areas than women. In conclusion, due to the many gender stereotypes and roles presented to us at a young age, boys and girls are predestined to go into certain interests. Girls will think they are not as good at math, science, and engineering, while boys will have an inflated opinion of themselves. This is a study I didn't cite because I can't find it now, but there is also indication that parents will praise their male children more for math achievements than they will for female children. And the reverse is true in English and arts. At any rate, these biases cause men and women to WANT to go into different areas, because no one wants to go into an area they think they would do poorly in. Finally, because my opponent has yet to create a link between biology and gender roles, and I have shown indication that boys and girls boyish and girly, respectively because they are pressured to, it should be concluded by the voters that gender roles are a result of societal pressures. I'll end it here since I'm actually running out of characters. Somehow I've nearly used 10,000. It was a good debate, and thank you to con for debating with me. Sources: [1] http://yas.sagepub.com.byui.idm.oclc.org... [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com... [3] http://www.sciencedirect.com... [4] http://www.sciencedirect.com... [5] https://www.researchgate.net... [6] http://www.sciencedirect.com... [7] http://files.eric.ed.gov...