Divided Labours: An Evolutionary View of Women at Work (Darwinism Today series)

by Kingsley Browne

"The "glass ceiling" metaphor describes an invisible barrier that prevents women from reaching the top levels of management. It assumes that the causes for this are within the organization and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300080263
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.3" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

first rate

I enjoyed this original and highly readable work enormously. Through its reliance on facts and logic, it makes a compelling case against the victim mentality of radical feminism. The author shows females to be as capable as males of making the choices most consistent with their interests and values--and that these often (though not always) differ between the sexes for reasons best explained by the science of evolutionary psychology.I share the concern echoed by other reviewers regarding the bizarre comment submitted by a "reader from Northeast USA." Any reasonable person who has read one of Kingsley Browne's many papers or heard him speak at conferences on evolutionary law will realize that his only agenda is to call the facts and their policy implications as he sees them. This is a scholarly agenda--unlike anonymous ad hominem attacks, a classic tactic of those whose agenda is truly political in nature.

science, not politics

Over the past three decades, western societies have been spectacularly successful in eliminating many forms of discrimination against women. In some important areas of the workplace, however, women as a group have not enjoyed a high level of success. For example, there are relatively few female firefighters, female fighter jet pilots, and, more importantly, relatively few female top executives. In Divided Labours, Kingsley Browne suggests that the under-representation of women in certain risky professions is consistent with evolutionary theory and should not be assumed without serious proof to be the result of social or individual discrimination. Professor Browne is an excellent writer and provocative thinker. Over the past decade, he has written extensively on law and biology issues and has presented his research at many academic conferences in the United States and abroad. This book presents that research in understandable terms to a larger audience.I note with some astonishment that an anonymous reviewer on this website has characterized Professor Browne as a marginal academic who has written little and who does not separate his science from his politics. These claims are worse then nonsense - they constitute libel, pure and simple. The topic on which Browne writes is a sensitive one. Some people seem to believe, falsely in my opinion, that an evolutionary explanation of temperamental differences between men and women will lead to a letdown in the political drive to eliminate discrimination against women in the workplace. The anonymous reviewer may be libeling Browne in the hope of discrediting the scientific theories presented in Browne's book. This individual is spitting into the wind.

A Different Point of View

If you're interested in a different point of view on this subject, this books offers much to think about. Today, it's very difficult to find readily available information on this subject that is not politically correct. So, if you'd like to see what might be on the other side of the "Glass Ceiling," I'd read this very short book. The best argument I can make for reading this book is to read the ad hominem arguments made by the other reviewers; that's what made me buy it and I'm glad I did. Don't you just hate being told NOT to read something?