Science revealed why men need women.
There's little doubt that women tend to be more focused on
the well-being of others compared with men.
On average, women feel more responsible for how others are
doing and are more likely to strive for equality.
But now there's evidence of how women pass these values on
to men.
Recent studies show how the presence of women, even female
infants, pushes men in the direction of being more generous and more likely to
strive for equality.
A1.
Wages
A striking study of male CEOs of 10,655 Dutch firms is the
latest study to show this fascinating phenomenon.
Dahl et al. (2012) looked at the effect of having a child on
how much CEOs paid their employees.
What they found was that when the CEO had his first child,
the gender influenced how much he paid himself, and those who worked for him:
1. If he had a son, he paid himself more and the men who
worked for him less (women, though, got more).
2. If he had a daughter, he tended to pay all his employees
more.
This study suggests that having a daughter activates men's
generosity more than having a son, which by contrast seems to make them more
selfish, towards other men at least.
A2.
Voting
You can also see the subtle influence of women's more
egalitarian nature in how people vote.
There are a couple of studies that have looked at how
daughters affect the types of political decisions their parents make:
1. A study of US congressmen found that daughters were more
likely to make them vote liberally. And, the more daughters they had, the more
liberally they voted (Washington, 2008).
2. A study of UK citizens found that people with daughters
were more likely to vote for left-wing parties, whereas those with sons were
more likely to vote for right-wing parties (Oswald & Powdthavee, 2010).
Once again, women's concern for others seems to be reflected
in how their parents chose to vote. Boys, however, were associated with more
selfishness in their parents.
A3.
Family
There's further evidence for this beneficial effect of
females on males in the family.
People who have more sisters are more likely to adopt
pro-social behaviours, like helping and looking after those who are closest to
them. (Van Lange et al., 1997). This is suggesting that women are also
influencing their sisters as well as their brothers.
Those who had brothers were more likely to be selfish and
adopt more competitive mindsets.
Cooperation
So, across all these studies, females seemed to be
transmitting their cooperative ideals to men, and even other women.
They made men more likely to think of others with a more
cooperative mindset and are more likely to work out how to maximize outcomes
for both themselves and for other people.
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