Recently I was engaging in one of my favorite activities while traveling, listening to the Podcast of Freakonomics, the Hidden Side of Everything, a spinoff from the books which created that unusual word (freak + economics = Freakonomics). And to my delight, the I came across an episode called "Women Are Not Men".
I never really had any doubts on this topic, but it was a treat to listen to how the Freakonomics team chose to present how the genders differ. I learned, for example, that:
- 57% of all US college students are women
- 3 of the last 5 US Secretaries of State were women
- Women file only 7.5% of all US patent applications
- Women represent only 15% of the persons killed by lightning in the US
- In the US, women file for 2/3 of the divorces
- Females outnumber males on Facebook and Twitter
Interesting as these facts are, things got really interesting when the program began to explore two big gender issues:
- Do women or men feel happier in their lives?
- And, is competitiveness a societal trait (learned more by one gender than the other) or is it actually in the genes of one gender more than the other.
The program lasts a half-hour and can be streamed on or downloaded from the Internet. I highly recommend it. Just click here (http://www.freakonomics.com/2013/02/24/women-are-not-men-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/) and you’ll be taken to their web page. The episode is 37 minutes long. Enjoy.
- Herb