An interesting experiment - I decided to test Vox's idea that women working was bad for society and gender relations in general. I can get away with little sociological experiments occasionally as I am a [REDACTED] teacher in China. I teach high school boys and girls. The sample size here was about 12 girls and 9 boys. Recently we had "women's day" here in the PRC and on this day at about 10am I brought in a bunch of snacks and drinks for the class. Teenagers are always hungry so when I busted these out I got their full attention. Since it was women's day I assembled the snacks and drinks out on the main table and let the girls choose first. The foodstuffs here were packs of spiced meat, chicken feet (a favorite here), and various and sundry other things. Girls picked first - one bag each and one drink. They naturally took the best stuff on the first cut and the boys got what was left. An interesting thing happened.
The girls refused to share anything *except* with the two most popular boys in the class. Those two were pretty much free to travel between the desks eating as they wanted from whatever bag the girls had on their desks. The less popular boys either didn't try or were flatly refused in a not very nice way. The best food here went to the two boys (and one in particular) who dominated the social scene while the remaining seven sat with their bag of lesser desirable foodstuffs.
Two days later with the same class I declared a boy's day and broke out snacks again, approximately the same mix as before. This time however I allowed the boys to choose first and same as before, the first crew took the best things leaving the dregs for the rest. However, after everything was distributed the girls, all of them, visited and stuck near the boys with the best snacks. As the boys coming first were random, it wasn't the two most popular that got to pick first. Overall though there was a far greater amount of mixing, the social scene was much more evenly distributed boys and girls, and moreover, everyone got to eat some of the best food. Even the gamma/delta/omega boys got female attention and begun to act a little more confident. They had something the girls *wanted* which inverted the power structure and made the girls nicer as compared to the observed harpy bitchiness encountered two days prior. There was a lot less snapping (which the girls engaged in on womens day when they had the food and a less popular boy wanted something) and what snapping existed was playful rather than malicious. Even the ugly girls got a share of the good stuff, exactly the reverse of the boys experience. I can easily state the overall happiness of the class was greater on this day then when the girls had first pick. In other words when the girls have the power - they don't use it well and the whole class suffered. Nothing was even close to fair, and a super majority of the boys are left out doing nothing productive unless you consider sitting alone being resentful productive.
While I realize this is hardly on par with a real actual experiment with controls, white lab coats, etc. it was quite interesting to watch this play out on a micro basis. I don't think it is a stretch to imagine that something akin to this is occurring in the outside world continuously. Let the boys pick first and they naturally and happily provide for the girls. This requires no coaxing or incentives. Let the girls have the power and they naturally shut out all but the most popular boys, leaving the rest to solitude. Everyone was a lot less happy also.
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