Editor’s Note: Frans de Waal’s new book, Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist, has generated some controversy and misunderstanding. He will address these issues in a series of short essays which will be published at 3QD and can all be seen in one place here. More comments on these essays can also be seen at Frans de Waal’s Facebook page.
by Frans de Waal

No one can deny the traditional (and ongoing) gender inequality in human society, which disadvantages girls and women. It’s a huge injustice that we need to fight.
But who says that elimination of gender differences is the solution? Or that we need to promote gender-neutrality?
Of the two words in “gender inequality,” only one is a problem, and it isn’t “gender.”
A fully gender-neutral upbringing of children may not even be feasible. Human biology isn’t blind to sex. The breastmilk of mothers, for example, varies dependent on whether she’s nursing a boy or a girl. Milk for male babies has a greater energy content. Milk of monkey mothers shows the same difference.
Young male primates are more energetic and rambunctious than same-aged females. When hundreds of children in different nations were outfitted with accelerometers to measure body movements, boys showed far more bursts of vigorous locomotion than girls. That boys are also three times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) reflects the same difference. Read more »