Women and Men - Equally Creative?

[patswin]

Women are much better than men at cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, ironing, and taking care of children. These are not unimportant and takes a lot of creativity. Then there is knitting, sewing, and crocheting.. I couldn't do that.
Is this what we are talking about?

I knew this thread had potential

 

[patswin]

The problem with this statistically is the time frame.

Since were looking back to a period (really prior to say the 1960's) where women were rarely educated or developed professionally in most areas, there are going to be a disproportionate share of men.

If you were to look at say socio-economic status, you'd find few "creative" people of any type who were not born into some level of comfortable wealth prior to the last 50 years or so. My own grandfather was a talented painter, but it was never more than a hobby because it didn't put food on the table.

The opportunity has to be available for one to make a mark.

This was going to be my response as well.. +1

 

[Muse]

Are men & women equally creative?

A prima facie analysis would say no. Let's consider the evidence:

Arts

• Literature - verse/theater/prose (novels/novellas/short-stores, children's books)
  • There are giants here among the men with respect to the "classics": Homer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, Melville, Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss).
  • There are a few women that have made their mark with international reputations: Dickenson, Alcott, Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Madeline L'Engle. Not nearly as many women as there are men.
  • However, if you consider more recent times and look at the best seller lists, you'll find that women authors are listed at least as often as their male counterparts.
• Visual - painting/drawing/sculpture/photography/film/commercial art/hybrid (comics & comic books)
  • Lots of men here: Michelangelo, DaVinci, Renoir, Monet, Ansel Adams, Stanley Kubrick. It's an almost endless list.
  • A few women of repute: Georgia O'Keeffe, Mary Cassatt, Annie Liebovitz.
  • I'm probably leaving off some well-known female visual artists that I'll be embarrassed to have overlooked when someone mentions them in a reply to this thread.
• Music - classical/opera/folk/jazz/rock&roll/country&western/rap/hip-hop/world
  • The discussion here focuses on composers/songwriters, not performers.
  • The classical ranks are dominated by the men: Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Verdi. The same is true, I think, for most of the other genres.
  • There have been some classical women composers of note: Clara Shumann (wife of Robert) and Fanny Mendelssohn (sister of Felix).
  • In the folk and rock&roll fields, there have been some women who rank among the top men: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and several others.
• Artisanry- knitting&crotchet/quilting/weaving/mosaics/stained glass/glassblowing/woodworking/metalworking/jewelry making/fashion/cooking/leatherwork/ikebana/formal gardens/musical instrument building
  • I can only provide a few well-known names here: Christofori (inventor of the piano) and Amati and Stradivari (violin makers).
  • I have seen some elegant work done both both sexes at numerous craft fairs, and in my opinion this kind of creation is every bit as worthy and as enjoyable to experience as anything in the three fields listed above this one.

STEM, etc.

• Science: physics/chemistry/biology/computer science/others
  • Some really well-known males here: Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Darwin, von Neumann.
  • There are a few women of note here, including Mileva Marić, Einsten's first wife. Also Dr. Rosalind Franklin, who likely would have shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA, if not for her untimely passing at age 37.
  • If we look at more recent times, more and more women are becoming professors and researchers in the STEM fields, and I expect that as time passes we'll see that the creativity in these fields will be coming in equal measure from both sexes.
• Technology: transportation/communications/lots of other fields
  • Some really beautiful designs for cars and motorcycles and boats have been developed over the centuries. And in the communications field, we have the Internet (a group effort) and the World Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee).
• Engineering: electrical/chemical/mechanical/civil/marine
  • While the design of an electrical or chemical plant or aircraft carrier may not be considered beautiful, there's little doubt in my mind that it takes an act of creation to come up with a good one.
• Math: too many branches to even consider a list
  • Euclid, Gauss, Euler, LaPlace (and many, many others, including Ingrid Daubechies, who I have previously mentioned in the STEM thread). But until recently a field very much dominated by men.
• Architecture
  • A marvelous field requiring a mastery of both engineering and design.
  • The most famous architects to the layperson (such as me) are men: Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry. But there are some women who are very accomplished and well-known (to other architects). And this too is a field where I think there be a leveling out as time passes.

So I think the record to date is that men have a lot more to point at in the fields where creativity is needed, but I don't think it's necessarily because men are more creative than women. It's likely due mostly to social position, and the fact that for many years and in many cultures women were not afforded eduction and opportunity. When the playing field is even, both sexes have been shown to be capable of creating works of wonder.

And I'm sure I've left off some fields of human endeavor (e.g. choreography, the social sciences) that rank equally with the ones I've mentioned - please let me know where I've fallen short (and TL;DR is also a valid response, but if you've gotten this far it's probably not one you'll use ).

I started to reread and noticed quickly you left out Madame Curie. But also Katherine Johnson who calculated the trajectory for the first man in space. Jessica Meir and Christina Koch performed the first all-female spacewalk in NASA history. And absolutely the amazing Dorothy Vaughan who was first African American manager at NASA. The movie Hidden Figures had a few of the amazing women.

Theoretical physicist Dr. Shirly Jackson was the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. from MIT.


Ann Tsukamoto who worked on stem cell isolation just to name a few. Still thinking on this. If I renamed someone it was an accident.

Joan of Arc

And while we need two normally to create, women carry and deliver life.

 

[foobahl]

The problem with this statistically is the time frame.

Since were looking back to a period (really prior to say the 1960's) where women were rarely educated or developed professionally in most areas, there are going to be a disproportionate share of men.

If you were to look at say socio-economic status, you'd find few "creative" people of any type who were not born into some level of comfortable wealth prior to the last 50 years or so. My own grandfather was a talented painter, but it was never more than a hobby because it didn't put food on the table.

The opportunity has to be available for one to make a mark.

I fall squarely into the opportunity side of this. My mother has regaled me with stories of having to go before a judge in Florida in order to execute a mortgage for her own house after my parents divorced. And she still has raw emotions about it to this day. By the way she says she was one of the first telephone pole climbers for Ma Bell in the 60's. And yes I did go back and add the word telephone to the last sentence. Been here a while.

 

[rivshark86]

There are always exceptions, but I think if you take a wide view of the bell curve of intelligence or creativity you’ll find more men on the extreme ends with more women in the middle.
Like many things it’s probably expressed differently between the sexes. I don’t know many men who enjoy decorating, but I’ve known many women who’s creativity comes out doing that type of thing.
Man or woman though, if you are a creative person it WILL find a way out.

 

[deec77]

I started to reread and noticed quickly you left out Madame Curie. But also Katherine Johnson who calculated the trajectory for the first man in space. Jessica Meir and Christina Koch performed the first all-female spacewalk in NASA history. And absolutely the amazing Dorothy Vaughan who was first African American manager at NASA. The movie Hidden Figures had a few of the amazing women.

Theoretical physicist Dr. Shirly Jackson was the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. from MIT.


Ann Tsukamoto who worked on stem cell isolation just to name a few. Still thinking on this. If I renamed someone it was an accident.

Joan of Arc

And while we need two normally to create, women carry and deliver life.

View attachment 14130

And more lol! Even in my time as a HS student we weren’t allowed scholarships and even into some stem programs unfortunately but apparently only we get trampled on. Trans women are getting attention and money for whatever reason.... sorry this really needs to be in the political forum ... but I digress. My last comment on this thread.

~Dee~

 

[ParanoidPatriot]

And more lol! Even in my time as a HS student we weren’t allowed scholarships and even into some stem programs unfortunately but apparently only we get trampled on. Trans women are getting attention and money for whatever reason.... sorry this really needs to be in the political forum ... but I digress. My last comment on this thread.

~Dee~

Agree about moving it to the Political Forum.

 

[TipRoast]

Agree about moving it to the Political Forum.

I specifically did not create the thread in the P&R Forum because:

a. The topic is creativity, not politics or religion
b. There are members of the board that don't go into the P&R forum and thus would never see the thread.

 

[patsRmyboys]

Men and women are SUPPOSED to be better at certain things that's why they complement each other and are better as a team. Boys are fascinated with things and girls are more interested in people, in general. That's why more men are engineers and builders and there are more women who are social workers and in fields that primarily are dealing with taking care of people. Sure there are many of each sex that do both but we're supposed to be different and that's a good thing. Creativity comes in many forms and I don't believe that one particular sex is more creative than the other.

 

[HSanders]

i would actually frame these types of abilities as as "intelligences"...we all have form(s) of them.

 

[foobahl]

i would actually frame these types of abilities as as "intelligences"...we all have form(s) of them.

Or even a proclivity.

 

[HSanders]

Or even a proclivity.

ehhhhh the English major in me does not find that word to be sufficiently synonymous...😄

 

[Hawg73]

Here's a couple of creative types weighing in on the topic. I tend to agree.

View: https://youtu.be/SBW-51xzZNE

 

[AkPatsFan]

This is a good topic and should stay in this forum, politics has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

 

[TipRoast]

There's been some discussion in this thread about creativity and intelligence. Multiple studies have been done on that and there's some disagreement about how linked those two traits are.

I don't know where Katelyn Ohashi falls on the intelligence scale - but there's no doubt in my mind that she's a very creative person.

 

[O.Z.O.]

There have been only a handful of female musicians that I've liked over the course of my life, it's something I personally prefer men to do. Chick bands always came off as somewhat cheesy to me

 

[BostonTim]

There's been some discussion in this thread about creativity and intelligence. Multiple studies have been done on that and there's some disagreement about how linked those two traits are.

I don't know where Katelyn Ohashi falls on the intelligence scale - but there's no doubt in my mind that she's a very creative person.

That is a routine that stands alone in every one's mind, sensational and different and creative in ways never seen before..

BUT

Sadly, (Can't remember her coaches name at ucla) this beautiful women full of endless physical and creative energy has retired from competition because her coach and the lovely people on social media body shamed her so called "chunky" body relentlessly. Just horrible.

Cheers

 

[HSanders]

That is a routine that stands alone in every one's mind, sensational and different and creative in ways never seen before..

BUT

Sadly, (Can't remember her coaches name at ucla) this beautiful women full of endless physical and creative energy has retired from competition because her coach and the lovely people on social media body shamed her so called "chunky" body relentlessly. Just horrible.

Cheers

she gave up performing because of that? so sad. she's amazing. would love to see any of those morons do ONE of those moves.

 

[John Locke]

There have been only a handful of female musicians that I've liked over the course of my life, it's something I personally prefer men to do. Chick bands always came off as somewhat cheesy to me

View: https://youtu.be/SQNtGoM3FVU

 

[John Locke]

On the STEM thing.

The 2 most brilliant engineers that I personally know are my best friend growing up Mark who works in robotics at MIT and my stepdaughter Elaine who graduated graduated from MIT and did her postgrad work at Michigan. I mean this kid of the charts.

She is now my stepson, I guess, Elliot.

They were both clearly STEM oriented since they were young kids.

I've had things you brought up in the OP kicking around in the back of my mind for a while, this example here has me a bit intrigued.