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Fisher, Helen. The first sex: The natural talents of women and how they are changing the world. New York, Random House, 1999. xx + 378 pp. Bibliography, index. ISBN 0-679-44909-4.
Back in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir's book, The second sex, claimed that gender was not in any way innate and that new-born people became whatever it was that they were going to be. In The first sex, Fisher argues that a woman is born a woman: "For millions of years, men and women did different jobs, tasks that required different skills. As days turned into centuries and natural selection weeded out the less able workers, time carved subtle differences in the male and female brain." In other words: "Men and women emerge from the womb with some innate tendencies bred on the grasslands of Africa millennia ago. The sexes are not the same. Each has some natural talents. Each is a living archive of its distinctive past."...