ARE WOMEN MORE STUPID?

A list with the ten smartest people of the world was recently published. In it –it is published each year- only one woman appears. And this has made us consider that: Are men more intelligent than women?

http://www.superscholar.org/smartest-people

Let’s analyze it:

The education system –as many other aspects- in our culture, has a masculine approach.

The only woman in the list had an education, given by her father specifically focused to make her “intelligent”. This education, we guess, was strictly “rational”.

In the introduction of the article, they warn us that determining the intelligence is very subjective. How is the IQ of a person measured? What kind of questions do they ask? Maybe they only take into account rational aspects and not emotional aspects, which we know, today, they are a very important part of intelligence.

Recent studies on emotional intelligence specify that, if only the rational intelligence is developed, the being becomes defenseless in the environment, clumsy and lacking of social abilities.

The right hemisphere of the female brain is more developed than the left one. In the same way, the corpus callosum (structure that unites both hemispheres) is thicker. This could be why women have less capacity of separating their emotional and rational behavior. Another advantage of the female brain is that it has different abilities: More flexibility to adapt to new situations, more sensitivity, and a global intelligence.

To have emotional intelligence is to have capacity of recognizing our own feelings and the feelings of others; to face circumstances that life gives us, and to control our impulses; to regulate our mood and experience empathy, among other characteristics that influence significantly on the well being of others.

Women seem stupid in relation with men because we consider that events go further than reason, we live and see things with other parameters, which men do not consider as signs of intelligence.

Nevertheless, statistics –made by men- tell us that school dropouts happen more among boys than girls: women have better grades in high school and college… So, we can also think in a rational way.

We think there are two reasons why women are not in the “intelligent lists”:

-First: We are less interested in bragging. Our work has always been done more anonymously and in-group.

-Second: Men make the lists, and they do not see us. For example, when they gave Watson and Crick the Nobel Prize for discovering DNA, they didn’t mention the other investigation group member: Rosalind Elsie Franklin. How many women have been left out? 

We will keep insisting, from Feminine Inspiration, women have to study so they do not become dependent beings, so they are able to think for themselves and take their own decisions; to become women who are able of managing their own resources. And they have to incorporate their emotional intelligence as well –because we have not developed it properly- so our emotions become our allies instead of obstacles. 

It is true our emotions sometimes lead us into making a lot of mistakes. Reason and emotion are not antagonists, we just have to use them properly and let each one take it place. Without doubt, this aspect must be introduced in children’s education. We teach them how to add and subtract, but we don’t teach them how to react when things that can alter their mood happen.

We have to be “resourceful” women, without loosing our feminine identity, and we have to teach –as mothers and educators- children in this way.