So how is the quest to find a robust, reliable link between digit ratio and financial risk taking progressing? A recent review politely describes the results as “equivocal.”58 There are positive findings here and there; but as the review authors explain, because of the number of different ways there are to look for links between digit ratio and behaviour, researchers have several “shots” at finding a statistically significant result. For example, researchers can use the measurements for the left or right hand, or an average of the two, and results can be looked at for the sexes separately or together. These various options, with just one measure of risk taking, yield no fewer than nine possible correlations to put to the test.
What about studies looking for correlations between circulating testosterone levels (in the blood or saliva) and financial risk taking? “Equivocal” is probably a pretty good one-word summary here too. For instance, depending on which study you look at, higher risk taking in lottery tasks is associated with higher T (in men; women weren’t tested), with high or low T in both women and men, with higher T in men only (but only for risks taken to win money, not to avoid losing it), or with higher T in women, and men in the lower ranges of testosterone, or doesn’t correlate with T at all in either women or men.59 People with higher T do play more risky cards in the Iowa Gambling Task, and men with higher T (women weren’t tested) play a riskier game in the Balloon task, but only if their cortisol (a stress hormone) level is low.60 Meanwhile, a recent study that used a trading simulation found no relations between testosterone levels and risky trading behaviour in either sex.61 As for real-world financial risk taking, one study found that male MBA students with considerable experience in the risky business endeavour of new venture creation had significantly higher testosterone levels than other students (there weren’t enough women to include in the analyses).62 But another study of MBA students found only a very small positive correlation between circulating testosterone levels and the choice of a risky career in finance, which disappeared when the researchers took account of the sex of the participants.63 (If men both have higher levels of testosterone and, for possibly completely unrelated reasons, are more likely to be interested in a career in finance, then you will find a correlation between testosterone and the choice of a finance career even if the two are actually unrelated within either sex.)
How do you get from this weak mishmash of results to the idea that there’s “too much testosterone”64 on Wall Street? It probably helps that this is a story that fits perfectly with the T-Rex view of sex differences. But media reports also often refer to the research of Cambridge University’s John Coates, a former trader turned neuroscientist, and Joe Herbert, whose work links higher circulating testosterone levels in male traders to higher profits on the trading floor.65 At first glance, Coates’s and Herbert’s findings seem to indicate a need for more testosterone on Wall Street, not less, since men with more T do better. But Coates argues that the effects of testosterone can become detrimental in certain contexts. In a bull market in which share prices are rising, traders’ testosterone levels get higher and higher as they make more and more money (known as the “winner effect” in animal research that finds testosterone increases in animals following a win in a competitive interaction). At a certain point though, “testosterone shifts traders’ risk profiles to become overly aggressive.”66
In line with Coates’s account, a recent study did indeed find that men’s testosterone levels rise after winning a game, and that this increase in testosterone is positively correlated with greater financial risk taking.67 (Women weren’t tested.) But this point—that a person’s experiences influence their testosterone level—is critical to bear in mind when thinking about the results with the traders. As we saw in the previous chapter, T isn’t a pure biological measure, but is entangled with the individual’s history and current social context. This makes it impossible to say from the trading floor study that higher T levels directly cause greater financial risk taking. By way of a mundane alternative explanation, young men’s testosterone levels are reduced by interrupted sleep,68 and a poor night’s sleep could plausibly interfere with the complex and time-pressured financial decision making of the trading floor. Or perhaps on certain days the traders learned useful information in their morning briefing that both boosted testosterone and increased their chances of successful trading. To show that higher T levels cause greater financial risk taking, you need to manipulate people’s T levels, then look at the effects on behaviour. To date, only a handful of studies have done this. So far the picture is pretty mixed and mostly negative.69 However, the recent study that used the trading simulation to measure risk taking found that although T levels were unrelated to financial risk taking (in either men or women), testosterone administration did increase men’s investment in high variance (that is, more risky) stocks. (Women weren’t included in this part of the study.)70 What we seem to be left with, then, is little evidence that absolute testosterone level per se is related to financial risk taking, but the tentative possibility that it’s change in T that’s important.
If so, then what is the relevance of men’s higher absolute levels? Unfortunately for the “Lehman Sisters hypothesis,” it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about women, testosterone, and trading tendencies from data collected solely from men. Coates realizes this, of course, but suggests that because of their lower T levels, female traders don’t show the same hormonal reactivity to market activity: for instance, he argues that they are less susceptible to the “winner effect.”71 Yet this seems to be simply speculation, perhaps inspired by a “rutting stag” model of sexual selection that, as we saw in the first part of the book, applies poorly to humans. As we saw in the previous chapter, women’s T levels are also sometimes responsive to competition, that level is just one part of a complex system, and in both sexes, T reactivity is inconsistent and conditioned by history, context, and norms.
The myth of the low-testosterone Lehman Sisters relegates women to the “mothering” roles of curtailing the excessive risk taking of male colleagues, and mopping up organizations’ messes (a well-documented bias dubbed the “glass cliff” effect by Michelle Ryan).72 As three leading business school academics point out in a letter to the Financial Times, while being “the first to argue for greater inclusiveness and a more diverse leadership to lead us out of this mess,” claims that women are inherently more risk averse
have little or no empirical support in a business context. These speculations also come with dangerous implications. Are men therefore better suited to managing growth or leading businesses through healthier economic times?73
That certainly seems to be the conclusion drawn by some. When asked by a journalist to “imagine what a world might be like maybe with no testosterone or if everyone had the same kind of levels as women?” Herbert replied, “Testosterone has got a bad press, but actually, it’s responsible for a huge amount of get-up and go, of innovation, of drive, of motivation, of excitement.” But only in men, apparently. “The suspicion,” says Herbert, is that testosterone, “doesn’t necessarily have the same effect” in women. After all, they “have a female brain, whereas a male brain is substantially different.”74
WE’RE UNLIKELY TO FIND OUT any time soon how a “Lehman Sisters,” or even a “Lehman Sister and Brother,”75 would operate. One scholar describes the financial sector as “one of the few bastions of virtually uncontested masculine privilege remaining in the aftermath of feminism.”76 More equal representation of women at higher levels of the finance industry most likely would be beneficial. Lack of diversity is usually an alarm bell that people are being drawn from a limited talent pool that flatteringly reflects the image of those in charge. The “white male” effect described in Chapter 5 also provides a good object lesson in the importance of diverse backgrounds and identities for robust risk assessment. And as Nelson suggests, in a speculation that evokes the dismal “failure-as-an-asset” effect, greater senior female representation might go hand in hand
with a much needed destigmatizing of positive “feminine” qualities:
Were Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies such that they welcomed women and men as equal participants, this might indicate that societal gender stereotypes were breaking down. It might also be likely, then, that certain valuable characteristics and behaviours commonly stereotyped as feminine (such as carefulness) would be encouraged industry-wide, and inappropriate male-locker-room and cowboy-type behaviours frowned upon, to the benefit of the industry and society.77
However, there’s currently little compelling evidence to suggest that this would be because women make financial decisions in a fundamentally different way from men, or because they would lower the average level of testosterone in those shiny, expensive buildings.
Last time I looked, it was largely taxpayers and society that, via “financial socialism,”78 covered the costs of the decisions that brought about the global financial crisis. And, to my knowledge, there are currently no data investigating links between sex differences in testosterone and the taking of “risks” where benefits are reaped for oneself, but losses are underwritten by others.
PART THREE
FUTURE
It’s such a chauvinistic sport. I know some of the owners were keen to kick me off Prince, and John Richards and Darren stuck strongly with me… I just can’t say how grateful I am to them. I just want to say to everyone else to get stuffed because they think women aren’t strong enough but we just beat the world.
— MICHELLE PAYNE, first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup1
CHAPTER 8
VALE REX
Deeds Not Words
— Motto adopted by Emmeline Pankhurst1
A LITTLE WHILE AGO, BUYING FLOWERS AT A LOCAL SCHOOL MARKET, I overheard a conversation taking place at a nearby stall. The woman there was selling plastic knives for kids that, according to the marketing material on display, were guaranteed to keep little fingers 100 per cent safe. Having secured a two-knife deal with a family, the booth seller asked the daughter if she’d like a pink knife, and then asked her brother if he’d like a red knife or a blue one. “I’d like a pink one too,” he said. As I enjoyed the moment, surprisingly, my eldest son ambled into the scene.
“If I manage to cut off a finger with one of your knives, can I have it for free?” he asked the booth seller. In reply, the woman irritably told him to leave her alone as she had work to do. Yes, indeed, I thought. A busy schedule buttressing the gender divide with your pointless plastic crap.
Anyone who has bought children’s toys in the last few decades will not be surprised to learn that it is deemed necessary by some for children’s knives to come colour-coded for sex. So are many toys, as apparently there are two kinds of children. Sometimes, the kind of child a toy is for is bluntly stated: particular aisles or product Web pages are explicitly designated as for boys or for girls. Other times, there are hints that are no less readable. A toy in bold, dark colours, featuring exclusively male figurines, packaged showing only boys having immense fun with it, surrounded by a wall of similarly masculine-coded products geared towards action, competition, dominance, and construction does not send the inclusive message that this is a toy for anyone, regardless of genitalia. Likewise, the notorious “pink aisle” is not the brainchild of marketing minds at pains to ensure that no child gets the sense that this toy isn’t intended for the likes of him.2
Unsurprisingly, sex-segmented toy marketing has incited plenty of campaigns, and harsh criticism from parents, politicians, scientists, marketing professionals, and even children themselves.3 But some dismiss this as misguided political correctness. For instance, in an Atlantic commentary sparked by a toy catalogue with photos of children playing in both traditional and counter-stereotypical ways (like a boy playing with a baby doll), Christina Hoff Sommers writes that “[Boys and girls] are different, and nothing short of radical and sustained behavior modification could significantly change their elemental play preferences.”4 Speaking from a marketer’s perspective, Tom Knox, as chairman of DLKW Lowe, argues that “expecting marketers to ignore basic and profound differences in their audience seems ill-conceived and impractical.” (Unconventionally, what’s meant by “audience” here is presumably “people we hope will buy our stuff.”) Knox suggests that “there will always be a place for gender-specific toys, gender-specifically marketed, in a way that celebrates gender diversity without undermining equality.”5 Similarly, in the same article, Helenor Gilmour, then head of consumer insight and brand development at DC Thomson, argues that “by failing to acknowledge these differences as marketers we would fail to understand our audiences effectively and deliver the services and products they want.”
Some academics, meanwhile, bring an evolutionary flavour into the mix, suggesting that marketers are working from an instinctive grasp of our evolutionarily honed differences. In an article titled “Intuitive Evolutionary Perspectives in Marketing Practices,” for instance, the authors observe that “some people may want little boys to be less competitive,” but then rhetorically ask:
But who is going to have more success in the marketplace, firms that appeal to young males’ propensity to behave competitively with one another or those that appeal to males as nurturers…? 6
Likewise, in his book The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption, Concordia University Evolutionary Psychologist Gad Saad argues that “given their desire to maximize profits, [toy companies] develop products that are successful in exactly the same sex-specific manner across innumerable cultures.”7 This sentiment is echoed in the Sunday Express by journalist James Delingpole, who writes that “a toy business’s job is to make profit not engage in social engineering.” Some thoughtful readers might wonder why the laissez-faire philosophy of gender-neutral marketing is “social engineering,” while toy aisles that dictate which toys are for whom are considered to be leaving things to take their natural course. But Delingpole has a further complaint. Gender-neutral marketing is futile, he says, because “those XX and XY chromosomes will out in the end.”8 In short, calls for gender-neutral toy marketing are seen by some as tantamount to demands that toy companies put themselves out of business by disrespecting boys’ and girls’ true natures.
A few years ago, in the frenzied lead-up to Christmas, the Australian Greens senator Larissa Waters catapulted herself into the heart of this debate by endorsing a campaign against gendered toy marketing.9 Waters went further than the usual complaint that “no child’s imagination should be limited by old-fashioned stereotypes.” These “outdated stereotypes,” she argued, “perpetuate gender inequality, which feeds into very serious problems such as domestic violence and the gender pay gap.”10
The reaction was a timely reminder that to refer to gender debates as “spirited” can be like describing the surface of the sun as “warm.” Waters was disparaged from the front page of the news to highest political office. The Australian’s Daily Telegraph’s cover headline announced a “Greens war on Barbie,” in which the subheading’s claim of evidence of political party insanity—“Now they’re really off their dolly claiming kids’ toys lead to domestic violence”—was accompanied by an image of Waters and a male Greens MP photoshopped onto the bodies of Barbie and GI Joe.11 Well-known Australian child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg commented that “these gender differences are hard wired,” adding that “to argue that toys in any way relate to domestic violence is, I think, too far a stretch. It’s a nail in the coffin of common sense.”12 One liberal senator suggested that Waters must have “consumed too much Christmas eggnog to come up with an idea like this.”13 And judging from the commentary on talk radio, it seemed that the prime minister of Australia at the time, Tony Abbott, spoke for many when he said that he didn’t believe in “that kind of political correctness.” His advice: “Let boys be boys, let girls be girls—that’s always been my philosophy.”14
The phrases used to defend gendered toy marketing are telling: “elemental play preferences”; “basic and profound di
fferences”; “hard wired”; “those XX and XY chromosomes”; “sex-specific”; “celebrates gender diversity”; “let boys be boys, let girls be girls.” The assumption is that boys are naturally, universally, and immutably drawn to “boy toys” because it is their evolved, timeless, biologically rooted nature to be risk taking, competitive, dominant, and to master the world. For the same reasons, girls are inexorably drawn to “girl toys,” because it is in their nature to nurture others and to want to look attractive. So what is the problem with marketing that simply reflects and responds to those different natures, and what on Earth is the point of politically correct marketing that ignores them? What next? Ads trying to sell hockey sticks to cats?
From the Testosterone Rex perspective—sex as a powerful, potent, polarizing developmental force—this view makes perfect sense. But as we’ve seen, in the evolution of the science of sex and society, Testosterone Rex has not survived. As we saw in the first part of the book, both across and within species, biological sex doesn’t have straightforward consequences for male and female roles. Sperm provisioning turns out not to be as biologically cheap as people still sometimes assume, nor competition and social dominance as irrelevant to females. Bateman’s principles aren’t obsolete, but nor are they omnipotent and omnipresent. Many different social, physiological, and ecological factors enter the mix, making sex roles dynamic, and even reversible.
This is especially clear when it comes to our own species: in the course of our evolutionary history, we’ve conspicuously failed to reach a species-wide consensus on “the” way to pair and raise children. Of course, every evolutionary account of humans acknowledges the major influence of the physical, social, and cultural environment on sexuality. But perhaps less recognized is that it has somehow come to pass that our sexual behaviour is uniquely uneconomical—we enjoy an unparalleled amount of non-reproductive sex. If humanity were a factory for producing babies, everyone would be fired. The considerable time and energy costs of our often unproductively nonreproductive sex points to its primary purpose no longer being reproduction, as we saw in Chapter 3. Understanding sexuality therefore requires us “to reconnect the genitals to the person,” as Carol Tavris puts it.15 For us, sex is not the means by which two well-matched reproductive potentials get together: we desire sexual activity as a person, in all our own unique, culturally crafted individuality, with a person, within our own particular cultural, social, and economic context. Presumably, that’s why other cultures’, and even acquaintances’, pairings and preferences can be so mysterious.
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