I've been interested to read the discussion on height comparisons between
women and men, not merely because it coincides with a university course i'm
doing on representation and gender.
In her essay "Sexual Difference and Sexual Equality" Alison Jaggar says:
"... the ubiquitious context of sexual inequality has shaped not only our
sex-differentiated genetic potential and the sex-differentiated ways is
which we express that potential, but continues to influence our perception
and interpretation of existing sexual differences, disposing us, for
instance, to perceive a greater disparity between the sexes than exists.
One example is the common perception that men are generally taller than
women, a perception reinforeced by the norms of heterosexual coupling, even
though the mean difference in height between women and men is only a few
inches, whereas the normal distribution of height within each sex is over
two feet."
which is to say that there is a grreater discrepancy in height within the
sexes than between the sexes. It isn't surprising that this misinformation
gets re-represented in sf.
Ciao
Sian
ruralrep@medeserv.com.au
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