#FridayAfternoonThought
I've been reading Outliers by Malcom Gladwell (2008), basically looking into why some people are not among the average.
While his research and theories on this topic are clever and have truth behind them (could be summarised as "it takes a village") I am SHOUTING at the book!
In the endless examples and comparison tables to find what common factor has prompted some individuals to perform better than others - hint: it's not their IQ score, AT NO POINT (by page 123) has he said that "being born a boy" is the obvious one.
Months of birth due to selection dates, yes; a random sequence of opportunities, yes; being born at the right time to be the right age for a particular development, yes; etc.;
Being born a girl is clearly one big barrier that is so glaringly obvious he can't even see it.
In a list of 75 of the richest people of their time from the ancient Egyptians onwards, THREE are female. And yet the conclusion he draws is that "an astonishing" 14 are American born within a short timespan, "meaning 20% come from a single generation in a single country".
My conclusion is that ONLY 4% over 4 thousand years have been women and 2 of those 3 women were monarchs with inherited titles. What does that tell us?
Girls are every bit as able, clever and entrepreneurial as boys, women as men.
Girls have not had the same random opportunities over the millenia. Not even now - as this book demonstrates, they are not even considered.
Don't get me wrong, I think Gladwell (and other authors) has made a significant contribution to human understanding. He's not the only one either: Stephen Covey's famous habits book did not have a single female example before I gave up on it.
Just because a book contains truth, it does not follow that it is a true account. What do you think?
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