Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, head of the Patriarchal Commission on Family, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, said on the air of Radio Radonezh that men in general are smarter than women. The priest's statement caused a mixed reaction in society.
Journalist, publicist, TV presenter Anatoly Wasserman, in a conversation with News.ru, expressed the opinion that a woman's mind is not weaker than a man's - it is simply focused on other things. Women and men have a purely biologically different spectrum of tasks, hence the different orientation of reasoning, he explained.
Anatoly Wasserman, journalist, TV presenter
In life, representatives of the two sexes are faced with a different spectrum of tasks from each other, not to mention everything else. Men cannot bear children, but that is why they are obliged to provide women with various things that are useful both for women themselves and for children. And it really turns out that from the male point of view, the female mind is weaker, and from the female point of view, the male mind is weaker, simply because they are aimed at different things. If measured in some objective units, then, probably, the results will be the same. The trouble, however, is that such units are hard to come up with.
Public activist, feminist Anna Dovgalyuk, in turn, said that first of all she focuses on the fact that Dmitry Smirnov is a clergyman and he cannot make such statements due to his status. She called the archpriest's statement very offensive and noted that a normal man would never say this to any girl or woman. The feminist suggested that Smirnov treats his wife and children in a similar way. At the same time, Anna Dovgalyuk emphasized that a person's mental abilities do not depend on what gender he is, and noted that all healthy and "normal" people understand this.
Psychologist Olga Tvardovskaya, commenting on the priest's statement, said that everyone can declare what he wants.
Olga Tvardovskaya, psychologist
An archpriest can state one thing, a baker can state another. If there is some scientific evidence that a woman is weaker in mind, you can reason, and so, you know, everyone can say whatever he wants.
At the same time, Olga Tvardovskaya said there was no reason to believe that men are smarter than women. When asked whether there is reliable research on this subject, the psychologist said that trying to determine who is smarter - men or women - is like measuring the average temperature in a hospital. According to the expert, the fact is that there are women with a very high IQ, which is measured by the IQ test. There are also men with low IQs.
This is all very piecemeal. It's like talking about a nation or a country. This is just idle speculation, in my opinion. Intelligence is measured by the IQ test and can be tested. As for women, that for men, on average, I think, there will be approximately the same indicators, - said Olga Tvardovskaya.
As News.ru previously wrote, the statement of the head of the patriarchal commission of the Russian Orthodox Church on family issues, Archpriest Dimitri Smirnov, was commented on by the Orthodox publicist and theologian Andrei Kuraev. He stated that at the beginning of the life cycle, boys are inferior to girls in mental abilities, and later the situation evens out.
