Who are you asking, the man or the woman. The men think they are. Guess what the women think?
Many books have been written on the subject and the topic has been debated for decades if not centuries. My most favourite book on this topic is Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps
We have evolved from when we used to live in caves where men were hunters and women were gatherers. All our life skills have developed from there. This does not cover any single aspect but the entirety with which we function. We were integrated into the animal kingdom and functioned as such. With the aid of modern science, we have evolved into the society we live in today. That does not however change our roots. And the roots are reflected in everything we do. From something simple to function in life like driving, navigation and shopping to social skills in ability to communicate and get on with one another! Then there is the desire to reproduce that drives our sex lives to the point of obsession in many cases. Are our skills that different from the hunter and gatherer skills displayed by the male and female lions? Do our mating rituals not mimic those of the peacocks and many other animals?
There are charachterstics that make us different and make us do different things. For example men generally are overconfident. Women on the other hand are less confident and tend to get on with the task. You have to ask yourself, how is it that men could go hunting if they did not have the confidence of winning. Bringing home the kill was then demonstrative of the need to feed the ego to maintain the confidence. In its time, it was a valuable asset but now it is considered a liability and an ego driven need to show masculinity. Women on the other hand had to protect the young ones and all their skills were targeted towards safe guarding the infants. Watch the lioness look after its cubs. The senses are on full alert and they are in tune with everything that goes on around them. To better protect and serve the needs of the cubs, the lionesses move in groups. Is that so different from the mothers who take their children to school today?
So really the question is not who is superior but more about the different roles we play. An experiment has yet to prove the superiority of one sex over the other in the gender war. But there is no doubt that our brains have evolved to cope with the pressures of generations and if you are a follower of the Darwin school of thought on evolution then this one definitely fits the bill.
Have you read Men are from Venus and Men are from mars because they talk about similar things to the book you have mentioned.
Good article nonetheless.