Opposite Sexes or Neighboring Sexes? An agenda for Gender Reconciliation

Workshop: Opposite Sexes or Neighboring Sexes? An agenda for Gender Reconciliation
Presenter: Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Ph.D.

Men and women are more like neighboring sexes than opposite sexes. We can only achieve a more just and healthy model for gender and family relations if personal and structural changes are made. The health and happiness of everyone depends considerably on the attitudinal and behavioral change of men.

“Statistically significant” means that something occurs by chance 5 percent of the time. The differences between women or men (within a group) are greater than the differences between women and men (between groups). Women self report themselves as more empathetic than they are actually observed as being (in comparison with men). Neither the Bible nor natural sciences can support role differentiation.

It is assumed that men prefer women who have youth and beauty, and that women prefer men who have ambition and money, but when societal variables are controlled, these differences disappear. Actually, kindness, dependability and pleasant personality are the top three qualities that both men and women look for in a mate.

The locus of authority in marriage should be in the relationship, not a person. Nurturing fathers are essential to creating better functioning children. There’s a marriage education movement in Modesto, CA resulting in a 50% decrease in divorce. (See .)

See the presenter’s My Brother’s Keeper: What the Social Sciences Do & Don’t Tell Us About Masculinity.

– Carolyn