I thought of an important example that I left out. Driving. I’m dead sure that men drive more than women - when there’s a chance for either to drive, though I don’t know the numbers. But is it work? Or is sitting in the passenger seat less pleasant - and so more like work?

If anyone knows the numbers I’d be interested to hear.

And I think of cooking like this too. I’d rather cook than just eat. Unfortunately my wife is pretty fastidious and there’s lots of things I cook that she won’t eat. She also fears finding a hair in the food - something that there’s probably a slightly higher chance of finding if I cook than she cooks. So she cooks. And she enjoys it less than I would. Not very easy to subject that to a ‘feminist analysis’!

There’s more discussion of the hard-wired stuff on the parallel thread over at LP.

But to be fair on Nicholas, after he said “Boys and girls start with hard-wired cognitive biases. Habits then form from repeated individual choices.” he did say “And no-one would deny that those choices themselves occur within a culture which thinks differently about men and women.”

What we are talking about here is the “culture which thinks differently about men and women”. And I think what I tried to say was I’d put a lot more emphasis on this culture than the “hard-wired congnitive biases”.

One thing I noticed by its absence is the idea that women do more housework because the negative ramifications for them if they don’t do at least 50% but typically *over* 50% of the housework. As a woman, I see and hear evidence all around me that female slobs are thought of with much more disdain than male slobs. I’m pretty convinced that this is what would be the difference between my own “decision” to do a certain amount of domestic chores and the “decision” of my male counterparts to do less.

Good one! The lion’s share of work is something of a misnomer. The female lions in the pride do all the smart lead-up work in hunting as well, the lion just turns up for the end game and the tucker.