Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    The version of the article I read also quoted the researchers as
    presuming similar changes might be found in men due to varying levels
    of male sex hormones, but that they had not studied this.
    
    				Steve

    How big was the sample population in that study, Mike?  The majority of
    the research I've read says that the means for women and men are about
    1 sd apart, which while a significant difference is nothing like the
    magnitude (3 sd) you're reporting. 
                     
    						=maggie

    re: .2
    
    I don't suppose they said what test they used, or anything like
    that. . . nah, not in a news media report of research . . .
    
    I ask because as part of our high-school preparation testing, they
    gave our class an aptitude test -- we all took the boys' test
    because our guidance counsellor felt that the girls' version of
    the same test made some unwarrented assumptions about girls'
    skills -- and this in 1966.  Anyway, I was the second highest in
    my class on the spatial-reasoning problems.  That's why they
    steered me into writing. 
    
    When they interpreted those test scores to me, they said that such
    tests indicated an abstract quality, not a measure of "real-world"
    skills and abilities, and while we should explore the information
    in the light of our interests, but we shouldn't take it as an
    indication that we had career-level skills in any of the measured
    areas.  Probably a reasonable caveat, but it left me thinking that
    an ability to turn a box around in my mind and look at it from the
    other side is a nice but rather useless thing to be able to do.
    Nobody ever suggested that with 99th-percentile scores in math
    and spatial reasoning, I might want to look into engineering
    or something like that. 
    
    --bonnie 

All those drawers of back issues of tech magazines finally might be used!

In the February '88 issue of Human Factors is a study called: "Hand Steadiness:
Effects of Sex, Menstrual Phase, Oral Contraceptives, Practice, and Handgun
Weight". One of the co-authors is Pat Billingsley, who worked for DEC for a
while. This was not a DEC study :-).

The abstract reads:

Two experiments were conducted in which men, normally cycling women, and women
on menstrual cycles generated by the regular ingestion of oral contraceptives
were compared for hand steadiness. In Experiment 1 subjects were tested on a
standard laboratory hand-steadiness task. In Experiment 2 subjects were
similarly tested while holding handguns of varying weights. In both experiments
normally cycling women were steadies, women on oral contraceptives were least
steady, and men were intermediate. The relative differences lasted at least
eight sessions. In addition, normally cycling women were found to experience a
large decrement in performance during the premenstrual phase of their cycles.
It was concluded that the men and women differ in hand steadiness and that the
difference is repeatable, persistent, and at least somewhat generalizable. Oral
contraceptive use and menstrual events must be taken into account in
considering steadiness in women and should be considered more generally in
performance assessment by psychological and human factors researchers.

Copies available on request. I can also answer questions, though a quick look
at the results section shows me that the word 'significant' is used for several
comparison, but the actual statistics leave me in the dust.
	Mez

    What level of significance do they report, Mez?  (it's the "p" value)

Thanx for the pattern to match Maggie!

Significant effects for the groups variable (the three groups mentioned):
Sessions 1 - 4, p < 0.02, Sessions 5 - 8, p < 0.03.


Sessions 1 - 4, normally cycling women steadier than men (p < 0.04) and women
or oral contraceptives (p < 0.02). The latter two groups didn't differ
significantly (p > 0.20). Similar results for sessions 5 - 8.

	Mez

    <--(.8)
    
    Ok, thanks Mike.
    
    <--(.7)
    
    Well, .02 and .03 are indeed pretty significant ("p" refers to the
    probability that whatever happened really was just the result of
    chance; normally .05 is considered reliable and .01 or less a dead
    cert).
     
                     				=maggie
    

    
    Should I take this all to mean I should make sure my woman doctor
    doesn't operate on me the week before her period?

    <--(.11)                                             
    
�   Kimura's observations were based on averages, and that only 15%
�   of the difference in spatial skills  between men and women is due
�   to bodily distinctions.
    
    Okay, now that's closer to the research I know about.
                                                               
    						=maggie

    It might be kinda' hard to take that "mixed biscuit" test seriously
    and put my best effort into it!
    
    I was told (at some time in my childhood) that girls' elbows bend
    differently that boys' and that's why boys throw better and girls
    hold babies better.....  After consciousness-raising I automatically
    dismissed that as garbage -- but I never checked it out in biology!
    
    Nancy
    

     

    Nancy,
    
    It is true than men's and women's arms articulate differently
    at the elbow (and legs at the knee as well). This one way
    that a skeleton can be identified as being male or female.
    Other clues are the presence or absence of brow ridges and
    the width of the pelvic bones.
    
    The leg articulation does mean that the natural throwing and
    running movements are less efficient in females. If you ever
    watch a girl/woman running you will see that the leg tends to
    flip out to the side as she runs rather than moving straight
    up and down as a boy/man's leg does.
    
    The bend in the arm for a girl/woman does mean that they
    find it easier to touch the middle of their back between the
    shoulder blades (although I have no idea what evolutionary significance
    this has :-) ).
    
    Bonnie

>    Should I take this all to mean I should make sure my woman doctor
>    doesn't operate on me the week before her period?

Tough to say. Will a statistically significant difference make a pragmatic
difference? And what are your options? And is this something you _realy_ want
to spend time worrying about? :-)
	Mez

    re .14
    
    Thanks, Bonnie.  That's interesting to know, though I don't like
    the way the info gets _used_ in our society....  What about elbows
    and holding babies??  
    
    My over-all impression was that this argument was used to keep girls
    off the ball teams and keep boys from having to participate in child
    (baby) care!

    Nancy,
    
    The elbow bend does make it easier for women/girls to hold
    things across their chest (think of the differences in how girls
    and boys hold school books - this isn't entirely cultural).
    
    The arm/leg difference I think would mean that it is harder for
    the average girl to throw or run as well as a boy, and could
    mean that she might need a different kind of coaching to do well.
    I would be interested in hearing from women who have had more recent
    involvement in women/girls sports as I am only conjecturing here.
    
     I recall that the different way that girls ran was an object
    of ridicule when I was young...remarks like 'girls run funny' or
    telling a boy that he ran 'like a girl'. 
    
    Bonnie
    
    Bonnie

    Here all this time I just figured that __I__ was a lousy thrower
    and that some guys look awkward holding an infant because they're
    not used to it...
    
    Now what should I way (if anything) to my 17- and 21-year-old sons????
    
    Nancy
    

    My archaeology professor was married to another archaeologist
    whose expertise in reconstructing skeletons often led him to be
    called in as an expert in identifying skeletal remains and so on
    for the police; during the class, he came in to talk to us about
    skeletal identification.  Most of what he said was related to this
    topic, so I'll include it here as best I can remember even though
    it's kind of long. 
    
    He started with a story of one of the first skeletons he was
    called in to identify -- a construction crew dug it up in the
    riverbank where they were putting in a new bridge.  His
    preliminary conclusion was that the victim was a young male,
    probably caucasian, about 5'7" and muscular.  Other evidence
    indicated that the person had been a telephone lineman. 
    
    Well, there aren't usually that many telephone linemen missing in
    any given area, and the phone company did happen to have lost one
    of the right size at dead about the right time. The only thing
    was, she was a woman, washed away during a flood associated with a
    tornado.  The identification was confirmed by dental records; Bob
    learned a major lesson of cultural sexism -- that it takes the
    statistical norm and makes it a rule, and then converts it to a
    predictor. 
    
    Then he wrote on the board in big letters, underlined twice: 
    
    YOU CANNOT TELL A MALE SKELETON FROM A FEMALE SKELETON!!
    
    It's more probable that a skeleton with a wide pelvis and the kind
    of elbow and knee articulation that Bonnie describes is female,
    that a tall robust skeleton with a narrow tilted pelvis is male,
    but it is by no means certain, and the farther you get from the
    urban samples on which most standard measurements are based, the
    less certain you can be. 

    Statistically, average woman is smaller than the average man, and
    she has a differently shaped pelvis. But not all men are taller
    than all women, not all men are more robust than all women, and
    not all women have pelvises suitable for childbearing.  But sexism
    says "This is what a woman looks like, this is what a man looks
    like, and there aren't any overlaps." 
    
    And then it says, "Since you're a woman, or a man, you will
    look like this."
    
    We tend to think of skeletons as fixed, immutable things that are
    programmed by our genetics and, barring malnutrition, will grow up
    to fit a certain pattern.  If we have a skeleton of a certain
    shape, we're limited to certain kinds of action for efficiency.
    
    But that's only partly true.  The things we do and the way we walk
    will change the shapes of our bones.  The way we carry books will
    change the shapes of our elbow joints until it's not possible to
    carry them the other way.  If we grow up being restricted from
    heavy work and exercise, our bones will be smaller and less robust
    than if we work hard.  So the bones of a hard-working farm woman
    may well be much larger and stronger than those of a city
    musician. 

    Women who have worn corsets all their lives have pinched-in lower
    ribs that will not expand; even when they're not wearing their
    corsets, they have trouble getting enough air to perform strenuous
    exercise. 
    
    Women who have worn dress shoes, particularly high heels, since
    before their bones had a chance to solidify have scrunched-up feet
    and swing their legs out to the side much more than do women who
    grow up without shoes. [Study group:  high school juniors and
    seniors in Mississippi, both races.]  
    
    This man strongly felt, based on his experience and studies,
    that differences in skeletal structure between men and women
    were culturally programmed, rather than determining culture
    or ability.  I think Shulamith Firestone makes the same argument
    in some places.  
    
    I'll save my comments and thoughts for a different note.
    
    --bonnie

    Bonnie,
    
    That was really interesting. I am aware that muscle use does change
    bone structure. One example of this is the need for women to keep
    active to prevent loss of bone as they get older, another would
    be the fact that archaeologists can tell that a man was probably
    a sword fighter or black smith based on the size of his arm bones.
    I wasn't aware that exercise could make that much of a difference
    in skeletal structure. Most of the anatomy/archaeology articles
    and books just referred to the differences in the 'average' skeleton
    (as determined in the 19th and 20th centuries, natch). This makes
    me wonder if the number of women's skeletons discovered in
    archelolgical digs could be under represented. They are able to
    indentify both male and female individuals using these methods
    in sites as different as Pompay and the American desert.
    
    Bonnie

    re: .20
    
    Bonnie, 
    
    The way Bob (the archaeologist I'm quoting) explained
    archaeological identification is that you work from within the
    given population.  You don't compare Pompeii bones to the bones of
    desert Indians, you gather each group and compare it against the
    charts independently.  This is an important difference because a
    young woman in one culture may be taller and more robust than a
    grown man in another. A 5'7" skeleton in Minnesota in 1975 had
    something like a 60% chance of being female based on height alone;
    if the same skeleton were from NYC, it would have an almost 50%
    chance of being male because the men in NYC are significantly
    shorter than the men in Minnesota. 
    
    Once you've grouped your skeletons from the same area, you
    identify the women who have given birth.  That's generally fairly
    straightforward because the pelvis of such a woman has been
    stretched and scarred by delivery.  The stretched ligaments leave
    characteristic marks.  Then you can use known principles from the
    tables to classify the remaining skeletons: the likelihood is that
    the larger skeletons are men, the adult skeletons with smaller
    bones are younger women, and so on. 
   
    The standard table of measurements was made from 1880-1920 mostly
    in London, Dublin, and NYC using the skeletons of paupers who were
    buried by those cities.  So what they really measure is the size
    of the average impoverished, malnourished, late Victorian city
    dweller.  But while the exact numbers are off, the general trends
    and statistics hold good, and it's too useful a tool to throw
    away.  All the important physical anthropology of the past 100
    years is measured against the same numbers. 
    
    The problem isn't so much that the numbers may not be descriptive
    of the present population, but that too many people take a
    description of a body or a bone and turn it around to mean "That's
    how it has to be" or "that's how it should be."

    Your mention of sword fighting and blacksmithing is interesting --
    Bob told us it's easier to tell a skeleton's age, profession,
    economic level, general health, and probable cause of death than
    it is to tell its sex. And race is even harder. 
    
    --bonnie 

       I agree with the Bonnies that the problem here is not that there
       are differences between men and women but how the information
       about those differences is used. My fear (and I feel it's well
       founded) is that groups of individuals will make judgements about
       how I "should" turn out and by that mold me in their vision.

       I've seen several studies in my communications courses that show
       how teachers will grade papers according to the name of the
       student (popular names seem to get higher grades) or that the
       same paper will be graded higher with a boy's name rather than a
       girl's name. Perception can indeed become reality.

       In regard to the raging hormone issue, I'd like to see a study
       with mem to see what occurs. I'm convinced they have biological
       cycles too. liesl

    re: .22  Male cycles
    
        I've heard that there is a 24 hour male cycle, does anyone know
    of any others which have been identified?
    
    ASP

    re: .23
    
    I don't know if this is the cycle you mean, but both men and women
    have a daily (circadian) cycle of rising and falling energy
    levels. The "average" person is mentally most alert around 10:00
    and physically most alert around 16:00, with the low for both
    occurring in the wee hours.  Turns out there's a medical basis to
    the darkest hour being just before dawn! 
    
    The implications for complicated tasks such as surgery are
    obvious, but studies indicate that the mental component is by far
    the most important.  Neither cycle is a good predictor of the
    quality of performance, though subjectively a person on a mental
    high often feels they performed better or more easily. 
    
    There are also the old physical (17-day), intellectual (33-day),
    and emotional (28?-day) long-term cycles, discovered in the 70's.
    The existence of these cycles has been firmly established; their
    meaning is less clear.  The National Football League has been
    participating in a major, ten-year study of how these cycles are
    related to performance and the results are so far inconclusive. As
    with the daily cycles, though the physical cycle is the most
    clearly measurable, it has the least impact on performance. The
    cycles appear to have little predictive value, individually or
    collectively, except that truly bad or truly outstanding
    performances tend to fall not at the tops and bottoms of the
    curves but at the so-called "crisis points" where the cycle is
    changing from down to up. 
    
    None of these cycles is directly related to any of the hormonal
    cycles for either sex.  The 28-day emotional cycle in a woman is
    NOT the same as her menstrual cycle; some scientists speculate
    that PMS occurs when these cycles get out of synch.  Some informal
    research on my part indicated that for me there's some validity to
    this -- I don't have symptoms every month, but the months when I
    do are often months in which my emotional cycle is at a crisis
    point at the time of ovulation. 
    
    Unfortunately I don't know too much about cycles that are unique
    to one sex or the other.  
    
    --bonnie

    re: .24
    
    Sorry Bonnie, in trying to be brief I cut out too much.  The show
    that I saw stated that males have a one day testosterone cycle with
    the highest level being in the morning.
    
    I wonder whether they really mean it's highest after the main sleep
    period, or if its highest in the morning no matter what a man's
    day to day routine is like.
    
    ASP

    re: .25
    
    I never heard of that one before, though I can't say I'm surprised
    either.  I'll see what I can find out about it.
    
    I know sex therapists often recommend not making love at night. I
    wonder if that's related to the hormone cycles, too?
    
    --bonnie 

    Re: .26
    
    Bonnie, I believe the show that Tony was referring to in .25
    was "Inside The Sexes". This was broadcast nationally by CBS
    on 21 November (but blacked-out by the local affiliate as being
    "inappropriate"). The only other TV station to take this stance
    was in Utah. 
    
    So, to be fair, we'll now have to say: "Banned in Boston *and*
    Salt Lake City".
    
    Anyway, as Max Shulman used to say, "I digress". :-)
    
    The narrator of "ITS" stated that the testosterone level in males was 
    highest in the morning. This would tend to confirm the somewhat
    empirical evidence that many couples may have already observed
    first-hand, upon arising in the morning. :-)                   
    
    It was not made clear, though, whether the increased levels were
    a result of a man's having had a good (or even bad's) night sleep,
    or just because it was "morning".
    
      Alan 

    re: 305.10:                                                    
        Should I take this all to mean I should make sure my woman doctor
            doesn't operate on me the week before her period?          
                                                                   
                   
      OF  COURSE!!  Better than a male.  :')                       
                   
    Why take a chance on a male doctor whan a woman is scientifically
    proved to be "better"?   :')  :')                                          
                   
    Anyone else notice how all the attention is focused upon the fact
    that a womans "steadiness" and thus "goodness" decreases as her
    periode approaches, and yet all ignore the other "fact" that these same
    women are, for 75% of the time, "better" than their male counterparts.   
                                                                   
    Now, I don't necessarily accept these conclusions, but it is
    interesting which facts are ignored when making generalizations.     
                                                                   
                   

    re: 305.2
            The researchers also found that the average male was better
    in solving spatial problems than the average female.  In fact
    the best female was only marginally better than the average male
    in this category.                                             
            
    
    Mike, 
    I was going to let this pass as being so obviously wrong as to be
    laughable, but.....
    
    That is how sterotypes as spread.!!
    
    I also took the test in HS, and was also in the 99percentile in
    spatial problems. So, one of 3 things have happened,  The research
    was wrong, the reporter was wrong,  or only 1 percentile of the
    population that took the test was male!!!
    
    Be carefull what you report as facts....they might come back to
    haunt all of us.
    

    re: .28
    
    At least we could (_IF_ we want to) check and avoid a female surgeon's
    so-called back times.  With a male surgeon, it's pure grab-bag!!
    Who knows when _HIS_ bad time may hit???
    
    Tongue-in-cheek,
    Nancy
    

Re:< Note 305.13 by TUT::SMITH "Is Fifty Fun?" >
    
>    I was told (at some time in my childhood) that girls' elbows bend
>    differently that boys' and that's why boys throw better and girls
>    hold babies better.....  After consciousness-raising I automatically
>    dismissed that as garbage -- but I never checked it out in biology!

     I have a better one. In my ninth grade general science class,
during our biology unit, no less, we were told that men have a bone in their
elbows that women don't have.     

     It seems that when men bend their elbows a lot, the bone starts
chipping away, causing pain. This, according to our teacher, is why
men get tennis elbow, and women don't!!!!! 

     (And I always wondered in high school why I had a feeling I
knew more than some of my teachers...)  :-)

    RE: .30, .31
    
    Ridiculous. Men and women have the same number of bones.
    The skeletal difference is that the female pelvis is wider,
    and the opening between the pubic bone and the ischial
    tuberosities (sitting bones) is larger.
    
    This is easy to see in people wearing bathing suits, assuming
    they are thin enough. The male's hipbones (Anterior Superior
    Iliac Spine) are higher - come almost to the waist. In a woman,
    they are lower - there's more distance between them and the waist.
    
    "Tennis elbow" is tendonitis of the elbow. You get it from overuse
    (common in racquet sports) - the tendon become inflammed from rubbing
    on the bony structures that everyone has. Women get tennis elbow,
    too.
    
    Boys throw better and girls hold babies better? Gaaak! Bleah! Gruk!
    {urp}...'scuse me while I get something to clean this up....
    
    Boys throw better because they're *taught* to throw at an early
    age. Girls who are taught to throw at an early age throw just as
    well. And as for babies? Well, who gets the dolls to play with,
    and who gets told how you hold them? 
    
    I mean, really.
    
    --DE
    

    In my high school gym class, the girl who could throw the
    farthest and straightest was *not* physically inclined.  In fact,
    she was one of those who stand with their forearms out a little
    and their hands dangling down limply at the wrists, y'know
    the kind?
    
    Why did she throw best?  She came from a school system in
    California where *the* sport was baseball.  That's what everybody
    did, so that's what she had to do, and so she learned to do it
    well.
    
    							Ann B.

Re: .32
  I hope you didn't get the opinion _I_ believed that stuff about
males having a bone in their elbows that women don't---I was
making fun of it, not asserting it!!

(Just a little too worried about what you people might think...)

    <Note 305.5  ULTRA::ZURKO "UI:Where the rubber meets the road">

>    In the February '88 issue of Human Factors is a study called: 
>    "Hand Steadiness: Effects of Sex, Menstrual Phase, Oral 
>    Contraceptives, Practice, and Handgun Weight". 

>    It was concluded that the men and women differ in hand steadiness 
>    and that the difference is repeatable, persistent, and at least 
>    somewhat generalizable. 

    <Note 305.10  HPSRAD::LINDSEY>
>    Should I take this all to mean I should make sure my woman doctor
>    doesn't operate on me the week before her period?

    <Note 305.28  CYRUS::DRISKELL>
>      OF  COURSE!!  Better than a male.  :')                       
                   
    Personally, I think you're *all* missing the point.
    
    Notice that it said "handgun," not "scalpel."  My interpretation
    of this is that if a woman is shooting at me, I should sure hope
    she's at her "worst" time...  :^)
    
    Bill

    ...I would worry more about how much sleep she got before the
    operation than about where in her cycle she was.
    
    --- jerry