We live in a world that is doing everything it can to deny the gifts that God has given to man. And I don’t mean mankind, but male human beings. Men are not superior to women, yet they have many superior abilities when compared to women. For several decades it was politically incorrect even to discuss these differences between men and women. But we do not need a scientific study to show what has always been right before our very eyes.
It is great though that with new MRI technology we can now verify differences in how men’s brains work from women’s. Not only can we see and observe the differences from the outside, but now we can see them on the inside as well in the most complex organ of the human body, the brain.
There are many non-Christian scientists and psychologists today that can no longer follow the politically correct agenda of feminists and egalitarians. More and more scientists and studies are verifying the vastly different physiological and psychological differences between the sexes.
Men are different from women. They are equal only in their common membership in the same species, humankind. To maintain that they are the same in aptitude, skill or behavior is to build a society based on a biological and scientific lie.
– Anne Moir and David Jessel (pg. 30 “Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women”)
As Christians we applaud and agree with the finding of these differences. Our only disagreements come when we talk about the source of these differences, evolution versus the intelligent design of our God and creator.
Superior, inferior or just different?
Before I go further into this I want to say a few more things about what has become a controversial topic – mainly the FACT that men have some superior abilities to women in many areas.
If you give this blog a fair reading, you will see I do not hate women. I do hate, and I believe God also hates, the ideology of feminism. It seems today like every time some study comes out that women are better at this or that than men – everybody is applauding it from the rooftops.
But in our society we are not allowed to say men are better than women at anything and anytime it is brought up excuses are made and it is simply a “cultural” thing, otherwise women will always be equal to or excel past men – or so we are told. On the rare occasion that women can’t deny a male advantage in something, then they just say “so what” and want you to shut up.
This site will make no apologies for giving glory to God’s marvelous design of man (and I mean males). There is a difference in saying “men are awesome, and women stink” and saying “men are superior to women in certain ways”. The fact is, in many ways women are inferior to men, but so too men are also inferior to women in some ways. To say so is not rude, or mean, it is simply a Biblical fact that is backed up by science.
There are some things about men and women that aren’t an issue of being superior or inferior to the other – they are just about differences. An example of this would be the different ways men and women approach sexuality. One is not superior to the other, but they are different, and complementary.
But I don’t think we are being fully truthful when we say that a man having 50% more strength than a woman is just a “difference”. No way! It’s a superior capability. When I talk about how woman is superior to man I will gladly acknowledge that women have superior hearing and color-perception to men; again, it is not a difference, it is a superiority!
With all that said as an introduction, I will begin our discussion of how God made man superior to woman with this verse:
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
– Psalm 139:14 (NIV)
Men are superior to women in strength, endurance and athletics
God made man taller and stronger than woman. In the United States men are typically 6 inches taller than women. Men on average have 40% more upper body strength and 33% more lower body strength than women. Men are much leaner than women with typically 50% less body fat than the average woman carries in her body. Of course there are exceptions where a man may have very little muscle mass and a woman has more muscle mass, but these are just that – exceptions. Both science and general observation show that men are typically larger and more muscular than women without working out or doing anything artificially to change their bodies.
There is a popular misconception that women have a higher tolerance to pain than men because of the horrendous pain they endure before, during and sometimes even after childbirth. But that is actually a myth.
“This study has serious implications about how we treat women after surgery as well as women who experience chronic pain…. Because women have more nerve receptors, they may experience pain more powerfully than men, requiring different surgical techniques, treatments or medicine dosages to help manage their pain and make them feel comfortable.”
– Dr. Bradon Wilhelmi, a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons
Not only do men have less nerve receptors in their skin (so they feel less pain), but their skin is also up to 25% thicker than women’s. Men not only have thicker skin, but they also have better clotting ability which makes their wounds heal faster. Men also have stronger bones, tendons and ligaments.
Men are more aggressive and competitive than women
A male’s major sex hormone, testosterone, impacts his behavior…testosterone is the hormone most associated with male aggressiveness, competitiveness, and assertiveness…. Furthermore competitiont raises testosterone levels and rivalry fuels aggression. For example, the testosterone levels among athletes are actually highest at the end of a competition rather than at the beginning…
Testosterone also helps a man focus on a project, competition, mission or venture…. Researchers at Georgia State University found that the “high performers” tested in each field (business leaders, politicians, sportsmen, and the like) had higher levels of testosterone.
– Dr. Walt Larimore, MD (pg. 42 “His Brain, Her Brain”)
When we take into account that men have superior strength, stamina and sensory motor skills along with a built-in desire to compete and be aggressive, it is no surprise that the vast majority of the best athletes in the world are men.
Professional sports is an area in which we want to see nothing but the best. The WNBA gets a tiny fraction of the audience that the NBA does. And no, it’s not cultural! Common sense, and a general observation of the world around us tells us it’s more fun to watch men play sports than women, men are the best athletes – period.
Men’s aggressive and competitive natures, along with their tendency to take more risks makes men highly suited to starting up new businesses or managing businesses. Again, this is the primary reason why even today, generations after the rise of feminism, men still heavily dominate the entrepreneurial and management aspects of the business world.
The state of our military today is a sad story. We have allowed the politicians to force the military commanders to allow women in combat. I don’t care about what the liberal mouth-piece generals say when they put them on TV. A man’s body is vastly superior when it comes to combat. You put that woman on the front lines in battle and you are going to get a lot of men killed when they go out of their way to protect her, or she is just going to get killed. This is yet another common sense thing, which any person, educated or otherwise can see with their own eyes. It would be funny if it were not so sad and pathetic.
In summing up this section, we can see the fact that God has designed man larger, stronger and tougher than woman to naturally equip him for the protection and provision roles he has assigned to man. If only our world would regain some of the common sense it used to have and acknowledge what is right in front of their very eyes.
The denial of God’s unique design of man and woman is not just some disagreement. It is a fundamental doctrine taught all throughout the Scriptures, and it is wickedness and foolishness to deny the creator’s design and plan when he made man and woman.
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them….
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…
– Romans 1:18-19 & 21b-22 (NIV)
Men are superior to women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
Psychological tests also reveal patterns of sex difference. On average, males finish faster and score higher than females on a test that requires the taker to visualize an object’s appearance after it is rotated in three dimensions. The same is true for map-reading tests, and for embedded-figures tests, which ask subjects to find a component shape hidden within a larger design. Males are over-represented in the top percentiles on college-level math tests and tend to score higher on mechanics tests than females do.
…males on average have a stronger drive to systemize, and females to empathize. Systemizing involves identifying the laws that govern how a system works….
– Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, Cambridge University
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08baron-cohen.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
A man’s brain is made to systemize things, to analyze, construct and explore. When we accept that God gave men some superior abilities to women in these areas then it will come as no shock that 73% of computer scientists are men. We won’t cry “discrimination” when we hear that six out of seven engineers are men.
I have worked in software development for about 15 years. I would agree that probably 1 in 4 software developers are women. The honest truth is though, most of the female developers I have worked with (even with them representing about 1 in 4 developers) were not always as good at problem-solving as the men. That is not to say there are not some very sharp female developers. I have one in mind who I worked with several years ago who was a great problem-solver. And anyone in the hacker area knows there are some genius-level hackers that are female. So my point is not to say that no woman can compete with a man in the area of computer technology, or any other STEM field. The point is there are far, far fewer women that can compete with men in this area; it is not a matter of discrimination, it is just a matter of how God distributes his gifts.
I would bet though, that the women who are great at programming or other technology use different parts of their brain to do what they do than what men do. So I would still agree that a man’s brain is naturally wired for these STEM fields, and a woman’s brain if she is good at them will be sort of “hotwired”, uniquely wired differently than the average woman and it allows her to do these types of technical jobs.
A man’s drive to systemize will manifest itself in many different ways depending on the man. Some men have a need to systemize mechanical things and that’s why they love working on cars or fixing things around the house. Other men love to systemize things by exploring their world whether in traveling to exotic lands or mountain-climbing or other dangerous endeavors. Still other men utilize their systemizing abilities in a much less physical way, and a more cerebral one. Some men want to explore and systemize the world around them through religion, politics, philosophy, science, and technology. One cross-over area that men of many different backgrounds like is video games. Video games allow men to systemize, compete and conquer. It is no wonder that the vast majority of video gamers are men.
There are more highly intelligent men than highly intelligent women
While men and women have about the same average IQ (according to intelligence testing), men vary much more than women do. What that means is there are more men at each spectrum of intelligence than women (below average and above average). However, after crossing the average intelligence threshold the amount of men who have above average IQs begins to dominate the women, bringing us to the point where there are eight genius-level IQ men to every one woman genius.
When we accept the strengths that God has given man in his brain, then we are not shocked to discover that there are eight male geniuses to every one female genius. We don’t say “the survey must be wrong”, or “it’s just a cultural thing” – NO! We accept it is how God made man.
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/sexdifferences.aspx
Men are built for conquest and leadership
These biological differences are critical for women to understand because boys, and the men they grow up to be, have brains that are built to be more aggressive, more impulsive, and more assertive–their design is to earn their self-worth. They are compelled to discover their calling and meaning in life. They are made to conquer the world around them, and they begin their conquests at a surprisingly early age… By six months of age, boys are far less fearful than girls, and “fearlessness” is associated with levels of testosterone (the higher level of testosterone, the higher the level of “fearlessness”); by thirteen months, boys are demonstrably more aggressive and assertive than girls; and by thirty-six months, boys dominate mixed-gender groups of children.
– Dr. Walt Larimore, MD (pg. 116 “His Brain, Her Brain”)
The first question a man usually asks another man when they meet for the first time is, “What do you do?” …most men identify themselves by their work. God created men to “do” something in the field. Watch young boys as they pick up sticks and turn them into imaginary guns or tools. Recently a mother told us she had prevented her son from having any toy guns or using sticks as pretend rifles, but when he made his cheese sandwich into the form of a pistol and was shooting a friend, she cried out in exasperation, “I give up!”
Mothers should never give up because this is simply part of a boy’s nature. He is called to be a hunter, a worker, a doer. He wants to make his conquest in the field of life. The academic term for this is the “instrumentality of the male.” From childhood there is something in a male that makes him like adventure and conquest. He wants to go into the field to hunt or to work some way.
– Dr. Emerson Eggerichs (pg. 168 “Love and Respect”)
Men are built to conquer the world around them. They are built to lead, and boys follow boys and stop following girls at a very young age. Men find their value in what they do, in what they accomplish. As we previously established, men are systemizers, and the best place for they to systemize is out in the world. I believe it is Biblical that a woman’s place is in the home: not saying she can never go out, but that caring for the needs of her husband, her children and her home should be the focus of her life.
However, it would be Biblically, and even biologically correct to say that a man is the polar opposite in this area. A man’s place is outside the home – hunting, working, achieving, exploring, building and yes, even fighting. Some men are built to be warriors, whether on the athletic field or on the battlefield.
Mothers need to respect and help channel their boys’ God-given need for conquest and not try to make their sons more like their daughters. Wives need to respect their husbands’ need for achievement, to work, and to make his mark on the world.
So mom, when you see your little boys playing cops and robbers – let them! When you see them wrestling, let them! When your boy wants a toy gun for his birthday, get it for him? When he wants a shooter video game, let him! With some of the violent shootings in the last decade parents have been paranoid about letting their little boys play with guns and shooter video games.
Let me help you with something – those people who did those shootings did not do what they did because of playing with toy guns or video games as a child. There is one of two reasons mass shootings occur. One is because of parental neglect, or verbal or physical abuse that warped the child’s mind. The other reason is one we don’t like to accept in this day and age. Some children are raised with two loving parents, and maybe even a mom who took care of them when they were little. They are simply born evil and sadistic and psychotic, plain and simple.
If men are wired for conquest and leadership, should men also be involved in the home and with their family? Absolutely! Are there times when a man is called to sacrifice his job because it is hurting his family? Yes. But while men need to be good husbands and fathers, they also have a drive and need to make their mark on the world, and the woman who ignores this, or tries to downplay this as selfishness, does so to her own peril.
Men have a deep need for respect
A man’s need for conquest, to work and to achieve is also directly related to his need for respect. I really appreciated when Dr. Emerson Eggerichs came out with his book “Love and Respect”. He may not have been the first author in recent decades to talk about a man’s need for respect, but the fact that he focused basically half a book to it was great.
Men and women both need love and respect, but God has wired man so that respect is his first need and the emotional side of love is secondary to that. If a man feels disrespected by his colleagues or especially his wife and children, this will cause him a great deal of pain and he will most likely react in very negative ways towards disrespect.
When a woman accepts and appreciates her husband’s need for respect, she will most likely see a transformation in her marriage. Women who take the attitude that “I will respect him when I think he has earned it” will never experience the full happiness in marriage that is possible if they would just show him the respect that he needs.
Men are wired to be the primary provider for the home
God has made man with a built-in desire to be the primary provider for his family. If his wife has a more successful career than him, in many marriages it eventually destroys the marriage. His self-respect, as well as his wife’s self-respect is tied to his ability to be the primary provider (the one who makes the most money). It is not uncommon for men who become disabled (and their wives are forced to support the family) to become very depressed; it violates the man’s nature down to his very core.
This is not some simple pride thing as some feminists have tried to say, but a built-in desire given by God in men. It would be the same as woman’s built-in desire to have children (often times called her “biological clock”).
Well into feminism’s second generation, there are finally a significant number of women reaching parity with the men in their fields–not to mention surpassing them–and winning the salary, bonuses, and perks that signify their arrival… Yet this proud professional achievement often seems to have unhappy consequences at home.
…
Neither the newly liberated alpha women nor their shell-shocked beta spouses seem comfortable with the role reversal.
…
According to psychologists (and divorce lawyers) who see couples struggling with such changes, many relationships follow the same patter. First, the wife starts to lose respect for her husband, then he begins to feel emasculated, and then sex dwindles to a full stop.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9495/
Suppose that both men and women are happier – all else being equal – the more money their spouse makes. In such a world, couples wouldn’t care whether the man or woman earns more, so the population of couples would have what we call a “normal distribution,” and would be captured in a bell-shaped curve. But that’s not what we see in the real-world data.
Instead, there is a sharp drop in the number of male-female couples at exactly the point where the woman starts to earn more than half of household income.
This finding supports earlier research from speed-dating sessions, which found that while women prefer men to be intelligent and ambitious, men have these preferences for women only to the point where women threaten to earn more than they do.
Aversion to wives earning more than husbands could be leading to fewer weddings and more divorces, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper released this month by Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica, University of Chicago Booth School of Business economists, and Jessica Pan at the National University of Singapore.
Compiling results from surveys taken by the U.S. Census Bureau and by the Labor Department, the reserachers came to several conclusions. One was that marriage rates decline as the probability that a woman earns more than a man increases.
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-05-15/higher-paid-women-less-married-more-divorced/
Even people that are in favor of feminist changes in our society see the problems. We just disagree about the causes and the solution. Both sides agree that men are generally not attracted to women who are smarter or make more money than them, and when they do get with a woman who becomes more successful it usually takes a terrible toll on the marriage.
Feminist advocates just argue it’s caused by a culture that says men need to be the primary breadwinner. In their view it is just about changing hearts and minds and then men and women will all live together in a wonderful utopia. Those of us who oppose these feminist changes will maintain that it is something that is wired biologically into men, and if it is biological, no amount of social brain-washing of men will change this.
Marriage rates are declining, while divorce rates stay close to 50 percent. Divorce rates have slightly declined from their high in the 1980s. But what is not mentioned is that one of the contributing factors to the divorce-rate decline is that people are just not marrying as much as they used to. Couples are just cohabitng much more. I would argue that if we could get good studies on the breakup rate of long-term cohabiting couples and then combine that with divorce rates, we would go well beyond the 50-percent divorce rate we had in the 1980s.
Either way you slice it, most relationships between men and women do not work well when the wife is more intelligent and makes more money than the husband. In the rare instances where it does work, I guarantee you will find a feminine man who is low on testosterone, or a man who had a domineering and aggressive mother who beat his father down. Even in relationships where a man is forced to stay home because he is disabled, if he is honest he will tell you it drives him nuts that his wife has to support the family. It does not just go against our cultural values, but it goes against male biology itself.
Men are built to compartmentalize
None of us will ever agree with everything in a marriage book. But the book “Men Are Like Waffles – Women Are Like Spaghetti” is still a great book and I highly recommend it. The very title of the book, as well as their other descriptions in the book, gives a great picture of the different ways a man’s brain works from a woman’s brain.
If you look down at a waffle, you see a collection of boxes separated by walls. The boxes are all separate from each other and make convenient holding places. That is typically how a man processes life. Our thinking is divided up into boxes that have room for one issue and one issue only…. The typical man lives in one box at a time and one box only. When a man is at work, he is at work. When he is in the garage tinkering around, he is in the garage tinkering. When he is watching TV, he is simply watching TV. That is why he looks as though he is in a trance and can ignore everything else going on around him. Social scientists call this “compartmentalizing”–that is, putting life and responsibilities into different compartments.
As a result, men are problem solvers by nature. They enter a box, size up the “problem,” and formulate a solution….
In contrast to men’s waffle-like approach, women process life more like a plate of pasta. If you look at a plate of spaghetti, you notice that there are lots of individual noodles that all touch one another. If you attempted to follow one noodle around the plate, you would intersect a lot of other noodles, and you might even switch to another noodle seamlessly. That is how women face life. Every thought and issue is connected to every other thought and issue in some way. Life is much more of a process for women than it is for men.
This is why women are typically better at multitasking than men. She can talk on the phone, prepare a meal, make a shopping list, work on the agenda for tomorrow’s business meeting, give instructions to her children as they are going out to play, and close the door with her foot without skipping a beat. Because all her thoughts, emotions, and convictions are connected, she is able to process more information and keep track of more activites.
– Bill & Pam Farrel (pg. 11, 13 “Men Are Like Waffles–Women Are Life Spaghetti”)
http://www.amazon.com/Men-Like-Waffles-Women-Spaghetti-Understanding/dp/0736919619
Bill and Pam Farrel did an amazing job with this illustration of how men and women process life differently. Are there exceptions where some men may be great at multitasking? Of course there are. But the vast majority (I would safely say 90%) of men are exactly as Bill and Pam describe. We will cover God’s design for women in a separate paper, but their description of how women process the world is spot on as well.
Conclusion and Application
Whether you are a Christian reading this, or a non-Christian I invite you to examine the evidence both from biology as well as your own general observations of human behavior. Will there be exceptions? Yes. There are some men who have behaviors and abilities that more mimic the typical woman, and there are some women who have behaviors and abilities that more mirror the typical man. But these are rare.
As believers we have a source of truth that not only confirms the differences we see in biology and typical gender behaviors, but it also gives a reason for the differences. It gives us a purpose, if we will only believe and accept it.
To the men I say, will you accept how God has made you? Will you accept the purpose for your differences and use them in accordance with his plan? Will you lead your families, protect your families and provide for your families even if your abilities are not as strong as other men in various areas? Will you pray to God to strengthen your weaknesses?
To the women I say, will you accept how God has made men?
Moms – will you accept that it is ok that your boys are more aggressive than your girls? Will you accept your little boy’s need to compete, his need to conquer the world around him? Will you resist the ungodly world’s call to feminize him, to soften him or to emasculate him?
Wives – will you accept your husband’s God-given need to lead you, protect you and provide for you? Will you stop trying to compete with him, and just complete him with the unique gifts God has given you as a woman?
We must all accept that God has built man to systemize, to compartmentalize, to conquer and to compete. Accept that a man needs to be respected, even before his need for love. Accept the differences God has made, and do not try to minimize them or ignore them. Our world is doing that now, to our own destruction.
You may have noticed I left out a huge area of God’s design of man, and that is his sexuality. I have opted to cover that in a completely separate paper because I really don’t believe I can do it justice in just a few paragraphs. Look for a separate post on human sexuality coming soon.
Other sources:
http://drjamesdobson.org/Solid-Answers/Answers?a=ff773023-2693-410d-b9e1-662f6985be4e
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201207/the-battle-the-sexes
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08baron-cohen.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Biblical Gender Roles 
I’m a woman and I do agree with article. I live in a liberal environment – Southern California. I’ve always taken care of myself financially, emotionally and physically. I come from parents who have been happily married for over 40 years, my father always worked (now retired) and my mother always stayed home. She respected, loved and obeyed him as the man and he always loved and respected her as his wife. I firmly believe that if more wives stayed home and cooked, cleaned, and held the home together – we’d have much happier and lasting marriages. Mind you, my mother didn’t just cook and clean. She held our home together, she negotiated so many life-related situations and she took great care of us. She’s the glue that held our family together and always acknowledged how much we should honor and respect our father, her husband.
There’s a huge problem with angry feminists that want to be in charge BUT let’s also not forget that many men nowadays (especially the men under age 40) want the women to work out of greed or laziness. They don’t want to provide for the woman and they want to be “partners”, to me – that’s a roommate, not your wife. She won’t respect you “as the man of the house”.
We definitely need to go back to the way God intended marriage to be.
Mia,
I say AMEN(may it be so) to your comment. You are absolutely right that we need to honor women who choose to do what your mom did and be “the keeper” of her home and you are so right that what she did was much more than cleaning and cooking. Mom should be there to take care of kids when they are sick, to be there to comfort them when they come home and have had a bad day at school. Especially for those early years of our lives when we were babies, toddlers and just starting school moms are supposed to be such a huge part of that.
But today mom’s are pushing off their God given responsibilities on day care workers and other family members including the father. Yes a father has his role to play and later in life as the child ages and needs to be taught in their teen years the father may even play a bigger role than the mom. But those early years are so critical.
You are also right that men bare responsibility in the collapse of the moms being at home with their children where they belong. You are absolutely right that men are greedy or take on careers they know will not be enough to support a family and they just reason – “well my wife can work too and its good to have two incomes”. What a load of garbage! It is one thing if a wife has to work not because she planned it that way but because of circumstances beyond her and her husband’s control. But when women plan from a young age as teens that they are going to have a career and then leave their children with others while they chase that dream this is a violation of God’s will for their lives and his will for families in general.
Thanks for sharing.
Please don’t get mad because I believe in male dominance. It is just the way we are made, like above. If women believe they are just as good as stuff men usually do then they better prove it. I respect my mother and wife and there are things they can do that men can’t. But in the long run, men are born to be leaders.
I 100% agree with your site.I am from India 25 year old and ready to give whatever help I can.
Please read Raising Boys by Design, followed by The Wonder of Girls. You have taken a great many facts out of context to support your idea of “Superior”. And this is coming from a Conservative Christian mother of boys, who believes in the familial design as created by God. I celebrate boys as growing leaders and protectors, as men of God who have important roles to fill in the times to come, that only men can fulfill. However, you are a bit bias in your writing. I can see you are trying to be fair, but at the same time you are presenting a very one-sided arguement that does not nearly touch on the compliments of females scientifically by comparisom, this creating a false image of men as “superior”. Yes, men are better at some things than women and vice-versa, but I would never share this article with anyone as it is too plagued with biases.
Elizabeth,
I hear your concerns and I am curious as to whether you read the companion article to this one(written around the same time) about areas where women are superior to men:
https://biblicalgenderroles.com/2014/04/12/how-god-made-woman-superior-to-man/
I believe in that article I have done exactly what you are asking about in touching on “on the compliments of females scientifically by comparison”.
Today Feminism has destroyed the dating scene for many of us single men seriously looking for love today, that is nowhere to be found.