Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!osu-cis!att!cbnews!cblpn!jd@cis.ohio-state.edu From: osu-cis!att!cbnews!cblpn!jd@cis.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Women and Logic Message-ID: <6041@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Date: 5 Dec 88 01:16:56 GMT Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu Lines: 34 Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu I was very, very interested in the article by Sue McPherson which described a test-based conclusion that females were more logical and males were more intuitive. This matches my personal observations. I have consistently found that males tend towards an intuitive approach in their activities. They quite often seem to regard interim steps as tedious and unnecessary, and to base their procedure on "hunches". Overall, they seem to operate in a more 'instinctive' mode. Females, on the other hand, seem to operate in a step-progression mode, in which each item is regarded as a logical dependency. They tend to patternize an activity, and to integrate conclusions prior to determining the next action. Overall, a more 'logical' mode. This is, of course, only a personal observation. Most of the lore and literature that surrounds me takes the opposite view. I do not know whether my observations are narrow and invalid, or whether the socialization of the words "logical=superior, intuitive=inferior" may have caused us to apply these words in a non-scientific manner. Since this forum addresses the particular subset of humanity who are involved in computers, and computers are uniquely logical in nature, I would be interested in reading the views of the other computer-folks on this topic. Jo Duston