Most women in the Western World are in the workforce, however, on the corporate level there is still almost no sign of them. Why? In her book Pinker turns the assumption that men and women are biologically equal upside down. Women choose to leave the work force, even if all possible things are done to help them stay. They believe that there are other valuable and more important things to do in life than concentrating on a career. The presence of oxytocin makes women more caring and nurturing.
It has been assumed that men and women have almost identical brains, and that they have been socialised into taking on different roles in life. According to Pinker the hormone oxytocin, sometimes referred to as "the elixir of contentment" provides a different explanation to differences between the sexes. This hormone increases during breastfeeding, childbirth, sex, cuddling and nurturing. A hormone is a chemical messenger that carries a signal from one cell, or a group of cells, to another via the blood. A hormone regulates and balances how cells and organs work. The effects of hormones vary widely, and the action or the effect of hormones is determined by a number of factors, for example its pattern of secretion.
Oxytocin is used in a similar way to explain a behaviour as the hormone testosterone has been used as an explanation to aggressive and competitive behaviour. This is the hard-wired biological argument for differences between the sexes.
Oxytocin is produced naturally in an area of the brain which regulates a range of physiological process such as emotion. The hormone also influences other regions in the brain associated with emotional and social behaviours, including the amygdala. The presence of the hormone oxytocin helps women guess what is going on inside the heads of other people, and it makes them trust people. Women on average perceive, and experience emotional events more intensely than men do. However, the cause-and affect role of testosterone and oxytocin are not simple, and even if the connections between hormones and behaviour deserve research and attention, the way the connections work is far from simple and easy to entangle and understand.
There are, for example problems with correlating a specific behaviour with a single hormonal state. Our bodies have a number of different hormonal systems which interact with each other. To attribute a change in behaviour to a change in a single hormone misrepresents what is happening in out bodies. Different hormones rise and fall simultaneously. An intricate and complex interaction between the biological being and the social environment takes place.
The level of oxytocin and other hormones that are released at childbirth and during nursing may trigger behaviour and emotions, and the effects may not simply vanish after a couple of weeks. However, the question is whether you can explain all sorts of behaviour by simply referring to a hormone level. Behaviour is also seldom the same all the time. Women may indeed be less ambitious for various reason at work, but watch those mothers when the roles to the school play is being announced, the leader of the school orchestra is being pick, or when the swimming carnival is held. Talk about being competitive, and how can this be explained by the level of oxytocin? And maybe women are even more ambitious than men; they want to have it all. Women and men just need to realize that maybe it is better not to want it all at the same time.
Simple explanations to behaviour do not exist. Maybe that is the reason why life is so beautiful and fascinating, and why despite everything we know about a person predicting their behaviour is never easy.
