Woman Between Islam and Western Society
3. Western Woman
~ 143 ~
There are personality differences between the sexes
too. Some distinctions turn up remarkably early.
At New York University, for example, researchers
found that a female infant stops sucking a bottle
and looks up when someone comes into the room;
a male pays no attention to the visitor. Another
experiment showed that girls of twelve months
who become frightened in a strange room drift
toward their mothers, while boys look for
something interesting to do. At four months, twice
as many girls as boys cry when frightened in a
strange laboratory. And, according to Jerome
Kagan, since similar differences can be seen in
monkeys and baboons we are forced to consider
the possibility that some of the psychological
differences between men and women may not be
the product of experience alone but of subtle
biological differences.
Many researchers have found greater dependence
and docility in very young girls, greater autonomy
and activity in boys. When a barrier is set up to
separate youngsters from their mothers, boys try to
knock it down; girls cry helplessly.
