Question The more we learn about genetic determinants to human behaviour, the more, I suspect, we will learn that men and women are intrinsically different in their tendencies and capacities. Could discoveries of this sort ever justify any sort of sexism, or differential treatment of men and women, or is it incumbent upon us to treat men and women equally in a strict sense in any case?

Accepted:
September 9, 2006

Comments

Whether your empirical speculation is correct, it is of course not for philosophers to say. So let's focus on the question. Let's suppose it turns out that women are intrinsically more intelligent than men. Should women then be accorded special treatment as regards education?

To suppose it would be just to accord women special treatment in this situation, one must suppose that it would be just to treat me a certain way simply on the ground that I was a member of a group that, as a whole, had certain characteristics I may or may not myself share. For note that it is consistent with the supposition that women, as a group, are intrinsically more intelligent that men, as a group, that I am the most brilliant person in the world. Why I should suffer some educational disadvantage in this case is very unclear. In short: Unless the differences between the groups are so large as to be essentially exclusive, then differential treatment is unjust, because it results in differential treatment of individuals.

For this reason, I myself find the question whether there are intrinsic differences of the sort you mention of no great interest. There is really no prospect of our discovering that there are differences in intrinsic aptitude for, say, mathematics that are as great as would be required for any policy decision justifiably to take them into account.