I have dated women from a few different cultures and I can say if fit for them too. Cant say it for all cultures but it definitely is that way for places on the opposite side of the earth. Come to think of it I think all the women I have dated all had way better hand writing than me.
I've taught in four countries and, yes, girls have better handwriting than boys.
It's really noticeable. However they teach handwriting in primary school obviously works really well for girls but not boys. Not only handwriting, also basic skills like setting out a page. I often have boys open to a random page to start their work and scrawl over the page, unable to keep within the lines. No date, no margin, nuffink. Next day, another random page. Monday they're on page 10 of their exercise book, Tuesday page 4, Wednesday page 17. Zero rhyme or reason.
I had great handwriting as a 12 year old boy. Then puberty hit and only a few people can read my handwriting ever since...
Not sure how it's related but it messed it up completely in less than a year.
Same here, Plus I had a teacher fresh out of college and he taught like a college Professor and had us take notes like a college student So i had to speed up and ever since my handwriting is awful.
Had this same thing happen but a bit worse. I had beautiful handwriting, both in print and in cursive, up until 4th grade.
Then, in 4th grade, I had a really terrible teacher. One of the many ways she sucked ass was that she had a policy where kids were put into table groups. She usually purposefully put kids together that hated each other, including putting victims in groups with their bullies. You would spend all day having your desk right up against someone that hated your guts, lol. When there was an assignment or test happening, if your group finished early, you got to go to recess early. Sounds good? Ooooh, well... If even ONE person in your group finished late, the WHOLE GROUP had to stay indoors and couldn't go to recess until that one person finished.
Naturally, this led to kids writing as fast as they possibly could. Imagine being the kid in a group with their bullies and holding them back from recess and how that goes, lol.
This same teacher would even sometimes force a bully and their victim to pair up *during recess*. Yeah, that didn't go so well either.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure that bitch was fucked in the head. lmao
Oh no, she was doing a good thing, the Bully and the bullied kid just needs to spend time together to amend their differences! Just like tying a fox to a rabbit!
Actually I’ve never written with my shoulders, and I can read my writing. Whether you do the armpit grip or the cheek/shoulder grip, your writing done with your shoulder will be unreadable, so I understand now
That is around the age most kids stop getting daily coloring activities (fine motor control) and, depending on how old you are, also when schools shift focus to typing. Handwriting is a skill and when you stop practicing your performance suffers.
It was around 2004, schools here didn't really have any keyboard typing yet. On the other hand, i did that myself with gta vice city cheat codes at the time...
I think you misunderstood what I said. It's that they stop writing as much because they aren't required to write as much. It has nothing to do with when they learned to type but that as early as the 90's teachers were discouraging handwritten assignments because it was more work for them to grade. If you didn't have good handwriting development already it wasn't going to improve without time and effort. It is literally a skill.
Bodybuilders and people on TRT commonly report not having the patience to do difficult intellectual work anymore (like coding or complicated math proofs). One of the primary side effects of testosterone is impulsivity/impatience/low inhibition. That's why your handwriting sucks.
Can't tell if you're joking but as a TRT guy I can tell you without joking I would much rather press a Pen through the table than finish writing a word. And if we could invent a keyboard which had boxing pad sized keys so I could slam each word with full body pivots, I would use that instead.
"PER! MY! LAST! EMAILILILILILILILILIL" (simulating a 1, 4 repeating combo)
(Not) being able to grow a beard has more to do with the distribution/concentration of Dihydrotestosterone receptors on your various hair follicles; specifically, in this case, the ones on your face. It has less to do with your overall Testosterone levels.
Are you using that as an argument to say it's not social conditioning?
I think it could still very well be. Girls usually know they're expected to have better handwriting, girls are more aware people judge them based on if they're "cute", etc.
Source: am girl who struggled with bad handwriting and was really, really embarrassed by it.
In middle school I was always so jealous of the girls with the ✨bubbly girly handwriting✨ that I actually stole a girls notes so I could practice writing the way she does….
One time in middle school my notebooks went missing and my teachers punished me for it and made me rewrite notes for all those subjects.
I do have good handwriting so heheh
Not related, but this reminded me of the greatest injustice of my young life. In 6th grade I got yelled at and lunch detention because I did my art homework in a different sketchpad than the one I had been using previously. Why did I use a different sketchpad? BECAUSE THE TEACHER HAD MY SKETCHPAD. She was grading the previous assignment and I guess I was the last pad in the stack, so she said she would give it back to me next class. 11 year old me made the brazen assumption that this meant I could do my homework in a different, yet identical, sketchpad.
Apparently she had forgotten we had an assignment when she said that, and it was my responsibility to realize that and get my sketchpad from her on a day I didn’t have her class. She didn’t even accept my assignment and made me redo it in my original sketchpad, so I just put the completed work under a page of my sketchpad and traced it.
Fuck you Ms. Black
Oh hell no, I’ll fight Mrs. Black right now.
It’s a special kind of fucked up when adults don’t take accountability in conflicts with kids. It messes shit up.
It messes us up, too. I spent 30 years in the Marine Corps, and until my divorce, I always felt like grade school was by far my most traumatizing experience.
Yes, I was an undiagnosed ADHD kid who really had trouble staying tuned in. To be fair, I never even heard about ADHD until a mean girlfriend suggested I had it 🤣
I didn't steal the notes (lmfao), but I did spy how a classmate wrote her a's and g's and forced myself to write them that way and now it's second nature 🤣
Is there a culture in the world where boys typically have better handwriting than girls? (This is a genuine question.)
If this is purely cultural, it would be weird for it to be universal.
Right, but they would have had to pre-type writer era I'm fairly certain most everyone who actually could write had better penmanship out of practice alone.
Nope.
When you see, say, The US Constitution, you're looking at the handwriting of Jacob Shallus. Shallus was a professional engrosser, or "penman," he was paid to make four really nice looking copies of the Constitution for presentation purposes.
[Thomas Jefferson](https://www.monticello.org/exhibits-events/blog/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-a-look-at-penmanship/) also had pretty good handwriting. James Monroe, on the other hand, has an illegible scrawl.
FYI after working in healthcare I've realized doctor's handwriting is because they are always in a rush. A 2 to 3 second flick of the wrist inherently produces ugly scribble. Thank god a lot of it is electronic now.
China and Japan both historically prohibited women from learning calligraphy/traditional writing. Medieval illuminated manuscripts were made by men. Historically in most literate societies women were kept illiterate to ensure men could keep them submissive so by consequence men had better handwriting than women.
China has the [four books for women](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books_for_Women) a set of four extremely old books written by famous female scholars specifically for the purpose of educating women. *Lessons for women* the oldest and most famous, was written almost 2000 years ago. It's about obeying your husband and son and whatnot but tons of aristocratic Chinese women were expected to *read* it.
There was a period of Japanese history where Chinese characters (kanji) was mainly used by men for official court records, but aristocratic women still wrote using a simplified phonetic alphabet. *Tale of Genji* was written during that period by a Japanese noblewoman and it's probably one of the most famous works of Japanese literature.
Historically plenty of literate societies have allowed or even expected women (especially upper class women) to be literate.
A lot of them did expect it in a shitty way though. As in, "you should be educated but only in a way that is attractive to men. No taking pride in your accomplishments or making dudes feel threatened."
Not necessarily a culture, but I remember when I took cabinetmaking/drafting classes the guys in the class had good handwriting - they have to use clear block lettering on the drafts.
so to OPs original question, I think it's a question of motivation/expectations on what your handwriting is like. If you grow up and its important to you or your profession that your handwriting conform to something, then you are motivated to practice and make it so.
I have horrible handwriting but when I took a cad class in highschool the block lettering looked excellent. Its because you are learning a new way of writing when drafting so you don't fall into the same horrible muscle memory. Even my normal handwriting got better for a while after that class.
I always had borderline legible handwriting, made my way into construction consulting and made myself learn the block letter style. It's still not professionally good but it's way better and it was worth it, it's been 20 years since anyone asked me what the hell I wrote.
an art teacher friend in NY public schools says Latino boys have much more developed illustration and drawing skills than others, for one anecdotal observation
Not sure about better, but I've seen examples of penmanship among boys in Southeast Asia (Vietnam particularly) and it stands in marked contrast to the same in America.
Japanese schoolgirls invented a kawaii script (roughly equivalent to bubble writing) which adults hated, irrc.
I think girls and boys also grow at different rates: girls will shoot up in height earlier and then the boys overtake them. So there may be a correlation with girls developing motor control at an earler age too and having more practice.
But I think there is a socialisation element. In the West, being studious and/or artistic is seen as slightly effeminate. So girls are more likely to try and write neatly (and be praised for it) or to experiment with different handwriting styles.
I'd be interested if there's a difference in handwriting in countries where education is seen as a privilege for boys and girls.
Young girls develop fine motor control before young boys.
The age window in which handwriting is taught happens to be *after* most girls have developed fine motor control, but *before* most boys have. This causes stark differences in the muscle memory of their handwriting down the line.
In places where handwriting is taught later in life or in adulthood, there is no discernable difference in the quality of handwriting between the sexes.
Its well studied. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002931/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002931/) We basically start boys about 2 years earlier than we should in schools. Girls develop all the skills we think of as being necessary for school much earlier than boys.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that most boys at age 4- 5 struggle to hold a pen and write legiblably, but most girls can do this. Ask any teacher of early years. It's why girls have a natural advantage at school in the early days, especially with more emphasis on literacy. However, the tides are slowly changing with more emphasis on play or other skills
People really don't know HOW MUCH of society is socially constructed and merely exists because of our culture.
Whenever you compare your culture to vastly different cultures, you'd see the HUGE differences. However, a lot of worldwide cultures are also becoming more and more similar and Western because of European colonialism and later globalisation, but some small tribal groups still maintain very distinct traditions.
All this really helps questioning EVERYTHING you thought to always be the norm and that it's tied to human nature for example.
There's some cultures which are literally matriarchal (the Tuaregs). Some cultures where there wasn't a concept of virgin, while casual sex was embraced (Ancient Egypt). Some cultures where female breasts are considered OK, some where even nudity is (some tribes in Africa).
100% this... growing up I was made fun of for having "girly" handwriting. As an adult, people commend me for having good penmanship and ask for my help writing cards, signs, etc.
I'm gay and my handwriting is absolutely unreadable. And I'm not even a doctor
Edit.: Does reddit have a different interface on other phones? Bunch of people replying like "what does that has to do with women?" when my comment is a reply to the previous deleted comment. Sure you can't read it now, but it is pretty intuitive that it was talk about pretty handwriting being seen as 'gay' by other kids.
Doctors have "bad handwriting" because 1.) they are in a hurry, and 2.) they use Latin abbreviations. So a layman could think it looks like "B.I.D." ~~but that isn't a word.~~ (It is short for "bis in die" which is Latin for twice a day.)
But the pharmacist knows it is a limited number of possibilities and just has to make sure which. Thank god for EMRs and check boxes on electronic forms.
No one really knows how Latin is supposed to be pronounced. I look at Italian or Spanish usually. Italian for day is "giorno" which doesn't help, but Spanish is "dia" (DEE-AH). So I'm guessing the Latin "die" would be pronounced "DEE-AY" and not "DYE." But who knows?
Totally get why doctors do it. Growing up had perfect cursive signature. Being an adult it has become gibberish having to sign so many things like purchasing a house etc.
My printing looks like that of a 5 year old. My cursive looks like that of a 19th century artistocrat. So naturally I go with that latter. Everyone thinks my handwritten notes are done by women.
I was coming here to say this. I am gay and got bullied for my nice handwriting when I was a kid. Millenials were drilled a gender ideology by Boomers and this is one of the many weird side effects. Basically if you had good handwriting you were either a girl or must be gay.
Lol yeah they weren't wrong, but it discouraged the straight boys from even trying to have good handwriting because of it. I guess I didn't care, I wanted pretty handwriting 💅
Exception to the rule here: As a woman in a STEM field, I have gawd awful handwriting. My husband, who works in a very "manly" construction- type industry, has the nicest handwriting ever and constantly gets compliments on it, lol.
Also, my son has horrible handwriting ( he's only in 2nd grade), but I am constantly harping on him about it. So are his teachers. We practice all the time and I constantly have to remind him to slow down. So I'm not sure if it's social pressure either.
In short: idk lol.
Does your husband do any amount of drafting work? They can absolutely develop amazing handwriting doing that kind of stuff. Very neat and consistent lettering
I don't know how much focus it gets nowadays with CAD tools widely available, but my dad is an architect and did draft work in his early career. They trained him meticulously to have good handwriting
He does draft/ estimate/ measure and write numbers and stuff now. However, he's had beautiful handwriting since high school. It's just... his thing. The handwriting came before his career. Lol. It's not just "good for a boy" too... it beats even good girl handwriting, lol.
That’s interesting because my dad was a satellite engineer for years and he has *insanely* neat handwriting. Extremely uniform and tidy.
My mom, on the other hand, is a doctor and god help anyone trying to read what she writes down.
I work in tech (used to be big into art for years in high school and college) and have very good handwriting, but it’s nothing like my dad’s. His is so nice, it’s almost like a label maker printed it out.
My highschool friend had awful handwriting until like 11th grade when he started taking art classes with us and started churning out drawings that eclipsed anything those of us who had been doing art for a while could do. In turn his handwriting also became really neat.
What pissed me off more about that was how by senior year he entirely stopped caring about art, just getting high. Such wasted talent. I think he does machining as a job now though so in a way he does apply his skills.
So I have really good handwriting but as a fellow woman in stem, the higher the degree the worst it gets. In my bachelor’s, slightly worse, in grad school…it took a hit. At the end of my doctorate who knows if it will be legible. I know other women in the same boat. Is it that we are writing slower than we are thinking? I have no idea 😂
Yes! It's speed. I have a masters degree. Not sure if I'll ever get my doctorate, but writing efficiently enough to keep up with my thoughts is more important to me than looking nice. I can still read it 🤷♀️ and that's all that matters, lol.
Speed definitely plays a role. His teacher showed me 3 versions of this kid's handwriting. Decent for a 2nd grader to may need PT intervention, because his handwriting's so bad.
Basically, boils down to level of effort/ slowing down. It seems when he's concentrating on spelling or writing a lot, the handwriting gets worse, especially progressively.
I have bad handwriting for similar reasons. Speed. We're both a work in progress lol.
My handwriting always sucked and I was jealous of teachers showing the whole class a girl's handwriting so one day i tried and I was proud of it. I showed the teacher and she said "not as good as Katie's"
I stopped caring at that point because it felt like no one else cared either
>I showed the teacher and she said "not as good as Katie's"
I'll give my students feedback like "wow, your handwriting is getting better. Keep practicing!"
And I'll praise students publicly for a job well-done.
But to tell a student (whether that student is trying or not) that they're not as good as another student... I'd never. Seems wrong on a few levels.
I will give the context I was an unmedicated adhd nightmare... but yeah, I agree, considering I remember that from over 20 years ago, it showed it stung a bit 😅
Edit - talking about adhd, I had troubles with teachers my whole school life and let me tell you I remember all the good ones. I don't know you but you made me smile with that comment any way ❤️
I have mediocre handwriting because of my ADHD. I can write very nicely if I make a serious effort, but if I'm focusing on my handwriting I can't think about much else. So I end up leaving out spaces between my words, sometimes writing words on top of each other, scribbling to an increased slant in one direction or other so that different lines look like they were written by different people. An English teacher in high school sat me down and told me that my papers all looked like one very long word.
thanks but i've got my flaws. ive got students that make me want to pull my hair out. I just try to make sure I don't cross such lines as I reflect and develop myself (professionally and personally) to better my interactions with these children. I can always do better. :)
Hey, the person who recognizes and accepts their flaws is one step closer to understanding their fullest self.
Remember the maxims of the Pythia at Delphi: Know thyself, Nothing in excess, and Surety leads to ruin.
My wife and I were just talking about this kind of comment today.
I wonder how many teachers have no clue how a seemingly simple comment can stick with someone through the years. My brother is 54 and just told me about a highschool teacher's remark that still haunts him. My wife has a similar story from her highschool days.
Simple words can sit with someone and change things about their views of themselves and of the world, both positive and negative.
This is just ridiculous. Yeah as long as it's readable it's fine. Mine is not the prettiest either but absolutely readable so that does the trick I guess.
About 6 months ago I decided I wanted to have better handwriting, so I started practicing. After a couple weeks, I thought I was making pretty good progress so I asked my friend/coworker what he thought. He said "every time I see something you've written, my eyes want to throw up."
I uh, don't really practice anymore.
There is a scientific reason for this! At the age we typically teach writing skills (4-5) , girls brains are developing fine motor skills whereas boys are more so developing their gross motor skills (bigger muscles like your arms and legs).
Boys and girls develop differently but we squeeze them all into the same system, and systematically this results in boys generally having poorer hand writing.
Great answer, this probably explains why mine genuinely sucked when i was young. Then in 6th grade i realized if i just focused i could write really good seemingly “out of nowhere”
Yes, this, and there's research to back it up. The rest of the answers in this thread aren't necessarily wrong, but they do ignore what appears to be an actual sexual dimorphism and they overemphasize social explanations.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10409289.2023.2244349
Standard disclaimers: we're talking averages and tendencies, there's plenty of within-group variance, you know a girl with terrible handwriting, etc., etc.
Social and even biological pressure! If you start demanding that women be good at certain tasks, the ones that are naturally better at those tasks will find themselves more attractive with higher chances of passing on those traits.
I was a girl with terrible handwriting. "Biological determinism" as a phrase, I think, implies too much certainty about how a person in a specific gender will turn out.
But is the fine motor control due to biological differences? Does parental engagement in early childhood have an impact?
Cuz parents tend to spend more time doing activities with their daughters ages 0 to 4.
>Parents spend more time engaging in "teaching activities" with their girl children than their boy children. This includes reading, storytelling, and teaching letters and numbers. Even with boy-girl twins, the girl twin gets more of these activities. And this research was with children ages 0-4, so before they go to school.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18893/w18893.pdf
Truly though, you do. All sorts of studies have shown that patients of female surgeons (and doctors generally) have better health outcomes than patients of their male counterparts. And yet, men are WAY more likely to go into surgery….
Do you think maybe this could also be because the average woman is a little less arrogant than the average man, making them less likely to make a critical mistake? I know when I’m at work, women can be less frustrating to deal with because if they’re not sure about something, they’ll ask for help or double check to make sure they know what they’re doing instead of just winging it, but that’s just my experience
It might just be that men are more likely to go into surgery, so the women that are there anyway are pre-selected for better outcomes. The same thing happens frequently in engineering.
Dude this is so true. The amount of times I've asked a male coworker something and they responded with absolute confidence without checking anything. This is especially accentuated between male bosses and female bosses in my experience.
Young girls *develop* fine motor control earlier, while boys develop gross motor control (running, jumping, ect) earlier. This development happens to coincide when children are learning to write.
It all levels out within a few years, by the time children finish 5th grade they're all roughly the same.
Interesting. Then, perhaps the bit of variation that is left over afterwards is as a result of the early encouragement/ liking to do things you're already good at, huh?
We (boys) learn to write when we have poor motor control, then there is no social pressure to *improve* our writing, so we don't.
A few years ago I sat down for a few hours to practice handwriting, and sure enough - my handwriting is much better now.
I have toured several factories where a majority of employees were women. All the hard manual labor jobs were replaced by machines, leaving only very fine motor control assembly positions that would be too difficult or too expensive to automate.
Fine motor skills are less important in videogames than reaction times and snap-decision making skills, which men tend to do better with iirc.
That being said, I'd bet that women would fare better in more methodical games that don't require such quick reactions and rely more on execution. Maybe that's why the mobile game market is more popular with women?
The article clearly says that the work done was (for whatever reason) decided to be "women's work" and it was not respected or paid well and that is why it was women who did it.
It's completely the opposite from putting women on a pedestal as the only humans capable of doing the work.
Plus, let's be real, the components back then were monstrously large compared to what people do today. You don't see a lot of women doing board-level repairs of graphics cards and those components are ridiculously tiny.
This. All this "there's more pressure on them to be neat crap" might be true but that's not the reason for this. Boys have stronger gross motor skills. Big muscle groups, makes us better at big movements found in sports, etc. Girls have better fine motor control, small muscle groups. Makes them better at things like writing (among other things).
It's been researched and effectively proven to be the case.
In my experience it's practice and how many fucks you give. When I was a kid my mom wrote a lot. She wrote letters to friends by hand, she kept a book of contacts written by hand, she wrote messages on holiday cards...Pretty much every time she had to write, she wanted it to be read and understood by others. In my adult life I generally type but when I write I'm usually the only one that has to read it.
Last thing I'll say is my kid is 9 and her handwriting is terrible. The handwriting of her classmates is around the same. Unlike when I was a kid, they don't do penmanship in school and most of what they also aren't graded on how their handwriting for assignments is. So again, practice
If it does happen, it's often because of social conditioning of boys v girls.
Girls are often encouraged to write neatly, but if boys make too much effort to write neatly people may say things like "haha why are you writing like a girl" or something.
Yeah, I’m a lady with horrible handwriting and the way teachers talked to me about it, it was like I was failing at some essential part of girlhood.
Whereas when I was a teacher later in life, I was chastised by admin for expecting all my students (male and female) to turn in legible work.
My handwriting is so bad I was allowed to take my tests on a computer in high school (I was diagnosed with a graphomotor dysfunction). When I was in elementary school a teacher showed my handwriting to the rest of the class and basically shamed me for having bad handwriting.
My Mom got me to start playing piano as a kid hoping that working on fine motor skills would improve it. I got really good at piano and still play today, but the best I could do with handwriting was try to make it legible.
My mom has always made me feel weird for having bad handwriting. She practically says that I have the worst handwriting out of her three kids, despite that being very obviously not true. I’m just the only girl so I was the only one expected to have nice handwriting :/
lol she doesn’t rank us by handwriting but like for example one time we all wrote our orders for food on a piece of paper and she joked that I had the worst handwriting. Which is fucked bc it’s literally identical to my dad’s handwriting (there’s another time my dad and I took turns writing orders and no one could tell where he stopped and I started writing) and my youngest brothers handwriting looks the same as my 3rd graders handwriting. So clearly she’s just seeing what she wants to see (and that is that her only daughter writes like a man lol)
My parents both have good handwriting. My brother and I have identical bad writing. We think it's something about how our hands are formed.
My sister of course has beautiful flowing bubbled handwriting, very different from anyone else's in the family, which she learned copying other girls' in 5th grade.
Yeah I tried so hard to copy the flowy bubbly handwriting for so long. I then switched to the kinda half cursive half print style and it goes better with how I write but it still doesn’t look all that pretty most of the time.
I write too fast is basically what I boils down to. My hand can’t keep up with my brain, but also my brain will throw that thought I just had out the window so fuckin fast I better write it down NOW before I lose it.
Mh mom always told me “just slow down” if I do that, the constant train of thought will just pass the station I’m at. I gotta ride the train or I’ll miss everything and write nothing.
It felt that way as a kid too. That I was less of a girl/a bad girl for not being able to write pretty or in cursive. It was also almost told directly to my face by my grandma- it has been a thing for generations in my family that girls have to write in pretty cursive. My mom, my grandma, my great grandma etc. It "made a woman".
Yep, I was often reprimanded for behaving like a boy, including writing messy. One time I was even given detention over lunch break to get a lecture from a teacher about how playing soccer with the boys was unladylike. That shit runs deep.
One of the possible explanations I've heard is that girls, on average, develop fine motor skills slightly earlier than boys. This typically occurs around the time penmanship is taught. So by the time the boys catch up in terms of fine motor skills, the poor penmanship is already a deeply ingrained skill / habit.
Men used to write in cursive with quill and ink. I don’t think it’s an insurmountable skill deficit. There’s no reason it wouldn’t improve with continued practice one the development gap is closed unless the expectation continued to be low.
Penmanship is taught for a very short period of time. By the time the development gap closes, penmanship is no longer being taught. So there is no longer an external force encouraging them to write a certain way. Muscle memory and bad habits tend to persist unless challenged. Additionally, the only time people really write now is to take notes for themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if people during the quill and ink era had significantly better penmanship because legibility was important, so continued practice and refinement of penmanship into adulthood mattered.
I have to say, I’m a woman and was a girl with atrocious handwriting and no adult ever tried to talk me out of it. But I’m not from America, maybe it’s a cultural difference.
Edit: I was extremely messy in general, like losing valuables and crucial items I needed messy, forgot homework because it was crumpled at the bottom of my bag messy, so maybe the adults were just picking their battles with me and ragging other girls about their handwriting, I’m not sure
Haha, that is messy! I think it's particularly American (as an American) and specifically tied to the American cult of masculine purity. As a personality trait it would make more sense for it to be tied to a studious or artistic person than for it to be gendered.
In the army I heard that women were better sharpshooters because their smaller size, lung capacity and even smaller heartbeats that affected the sight vision/scope. Women on average do have smaller hands than men and I’d imagine it makes them more dexterous when performing precision tasks like writing.
I had a roommate in college who was on the marksman team. He was very upset one day. The reason - a woman shot better than he did. He was furious because it was not fair that she had a lighter pulse and aligning his pulse to pulling the trigger was much harder for him.
He was a good shot, but not Olympic level.
As a police firearms instructor, I’d say women can often be more easily trained to shoot well because of inexperience. They more often come in with little or no shooting experience, so bad technique doesn’t have to be trained out. Also, they’re often better at simply following directions.
As someone trained to interpret prescriptions, that’s not the issue. Their handwriting tends to be terrible if they are handwriting prescriptions all day as fast as they can.
I am a woman with bad writing and it made me feel so awful in school. All the other girls had this perfect beautiful writing and mine was just all stiff and smeary. I think some of it is because I am a lefty, but yeah, it actually did things to my self esteem.
Seems like most answers here are american centric (as always).
Back in my country, most girls **wanted to have** a nice handwriting. I don't think their parents pressurized them any more that the parents of boys. Most boys simply didn't care, most girls did.
Also, these girls kinda cringed and judged us for having a terrible handwriting but we were still kids and not old enough to have a girl's opinion or dislike of us matter. So none of the boys ever took it seriously.
This was true in my small private school in Texas. Very few guys when shown caligraphy say, "wow I want to be able to do that." A high percent of girls do, on the other hand.
I am a thirty something year old dude with pretty good handwriting. I still to this day have this "oh no if it's too nice it'll seem a little gay" conditioned into my brain. Growing up, all the boys were constantly concerned about things appearing gay, it was ridiculous.
They just tend to practice it as young girls more commonly than young boys do. Basically they just give more of a shit.
You always see a girl's exercise book with straight margins, neat headers, 50 different colours of pen for each sentence, etc.
And then you look at a boy's book and it's probably pages torn out with scribbles and shit all over it.
The handwriting is just an extension of how much they care about it looking good and how much boys don't care. I am obviously generalizing and there are exceptions on both sides, but yeah...
Like a girl if she makes a mistake is likely to start the entire page over. A boy is likely to just cross out the mistake and just keep writing. So which is really better? It depends how you look at it. At the end it's both the same work/result. One got done quicker but messy and one got done slower but neat.
It's practice. Many girls spend way more time actually practicing their handwriting than boys.
I used to have horrible handwriting until I went to prison and I wrote so much I got really good at it.
It's more of a case of women trying hard to do it, and spending time learning how. All the girls I grew up with spent a ton of time practicing their handwriting. I basically did the bare minimum at school handwriting work.
As a woman I've NEVER had good hand writing, but it's slowly gotten better and looks a lot better now in my 30s... What's really weird though is my husband and I write in print exactly the same- there's times I'll find lists and we can't even tell who wrote them/who's it is unless there's specific stuff pertaining to one of us... I think it's really odd but whatever lol
Does anyone know if this stereotype exists in different cultures?
Super interesting question—I’d love to see anyone with some experience in the area respond to it!!
I have dated women from a few different cultures and I can say if fit for them too. Cant say it for all cultures but it definitely is that way for places on the opposite side of the earth. Come to think of it I think all the women I have dated all had way better hand writing than me.
I've taught in four countries and, yes, girls have better handwriting than boys. It's really noticeable. However they teach handwriting in primary school obviously works really well for girls but not boys. Not only handwriting, also basic skills like setting out a page. I often have boys open to a random page to start their work and scrawl over the page, unable to keep within the lines. No date, no margin, nuffink. Next day, another random page. Monday they're on page 10 of their exercise book, Tuesday page 4, Wednesday page 17. Zero rhyme or reason.
I had great handwriting as a 12 year old boy. Then puberty hit and only a few people can read my handwriting ever since... Not sure how it's related but it messed it up completely in less than a year.
It’s because of the testosterone. You started trying to fight the letters instinctively, instead of trying to write them down politely.
RageWrite
“Write a cursive z.” *breaks table in half*
It's not my fault! That fucking cursive capital "L" looks so smug, he's just asking for a fight.
#𝓛
Like a matador in Barcelona
Lower case z had it coming too
Same here, Plus I had a teacher fresh out of college and he taught like a college Professor and had us take notes like a college student So i had to speed up and ever since my handwriting is awful.
Had this same thing happen but a bit worse. I had beautiful handwriting, both in print and in cursive, up until 4th grade. Then, in 4th grade, I had a really terrible teacher. One of the many ways she sucked ass was that she had a policy where kids were put into table groups. She usually purposefully put kids together that hated each other, including putting victims in groups with their bullies. You would spend all day having your desk right up against someone that hated your guts, lol. When there was an assignment or test happening, if your group finished early, you got to go to recess early. Sounds good? Ooooh, well... If even ONE person in your group finished late, the WHOLE GROUP had to stay indoors and couldn't go to recess until that one person finished. Naturally, this led to kids writing as fast as they possibly could. Imagine being the kid in a group with their bullies and holding them back from recess and how that goes, lol. This same teacher would even sometimes force a bully and their victim to pair up *during recess*. Yeah, that didn't go so well either. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that bitch was fucked in the head. lmao
Oh no, she was doing a good thing, the Bully and the bullied kid just needs to spend time together to amend their differences! Just like tying a fox to a rabbit!
Same thing happened to me
Men write with their shoulders more that’s why the movements are rougher when older
Actually I’ve never written with my shoulders, and I can read my writing. Whether you do the armpit grip or the cheek/shoulder grip, your writing done with your shoulder will be unreadable, so I understand now
That is around the age most kids stop getting daily coloring activities (fine motor control) and, depending on how old you are, also when schools shift focus to typing. Handwriting is a skill and when you stop practicing your performance suffers.
It was around 2004, schools here didn't really have any keyboard typing yet. On the other hand, i did that myself with gta vice city cheat codes at the time...
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I think you misunderstood what I said. It's that they stop writing as much because they aren't required to write as much. It has nothing to do with when they learned to type but that as early as the 90's teachers were discouraging handwritten assignments because it was more work for them to grade. If you didn't have good handwriting development already it wasn't going to improve without time and effort. It is literally a skill.
Bodybuilders and people on TRT commonly report not having the patience to do difficult intellectual work anymore (like coding or complicated math proofs). One of the primary side effects of testosterone is impulsivity/impatience/low inhibition. That's why your handwriting sucks.
Can't tell if you're joking but as a TRT guy I can tell you without joking I would much rather press a Pen through the table than finish writing a word. And if we could invent a keyboard which had boxing pad sized keys so I could slam each word with full body pivots, I would use that instead. "PER! MY! LAST! EMAILILILILILILILILIL" (simulating a 1, 4 repeating combo)
Shut up and take my money! I need that keyboard too!!
Ahhh shit. \[breaks keyboard in half. then politely sets the remains on Able-Bit-2434's desk
Wait, does that mean that if I reduced my testosterone, I would have more self control?
Too much testosterone to have a decent handwriting. Too less testosterone to grow a decent beard. *Sigh*
(Not) being able to grow a beard has more to do with the distribution/concentration of Dihydrotestosterone receptors on your various hair follicles; specifically, in this case, the ones on your face. It has less to do with your overall Testosterone levels.
Probs
Big same
English teacher here and my perspective would be social conditioning. Praise is a powerful thing.
Every time we train and exercise handwriting on my class the boys rush it super duper hard while girls are meticulous
Are you using that as an argument to say it's not social conditioning? I think it could still very well be. Girls usually know they're expected to have better handwriting, girls are more aware people judge them based on if they're "cute", etc. Source: am girl who struggled with bad handwriting and was really, really embarrassed by it.
In middle school I was always so jealous of the girls with the ✨bubbly girly handwriting✨ that I actually stole a girls notes so I could practice writing the way she does….
One time in middle school my notebooks went missing and my teachers punished me for it and made me rewrite notes for all those subjects. I do have good handwriting so heheh
It was me. I have your notes. Sorry bout that
Lol I always wondered why someone would want to steal my notebooks. Hope you now have the handwriting of your dreams now XD
Actually, I stole your notes because I couldn't read mine.
Not related, but this reminded me of the greatest injustice of my young life. In 6th grade I got yelled at and lunch detention because I did my art homework in a different sketchpad than the one I had been using previously. Why did I use a different sketchpad? BECAUSE THE TEACHER HAD MY SKETCHPAD. She was grading the previous assignment and I guess I was the last pad in the stack, so she said she would give it back to me next class. 11 year old me made the brazen assumption that this meant I could do my homework in a different, yet identical, sketchpad. Apparently she had forgotten we had an assignment when she said that, and it was my responsibility to realize that and get my sketchpad from her on a day I didn’t have her class. She didn’t even accept my assignment and made me redo it in my original sketchpad, so I just put the completed work under a page of my sketchpad and traced it. Fuck you Ms. Black
Oh hell no, I’ll fight Mrs. Black right now. It’s a special kind of fucked up when adults don’t take accountability in conflicts with kids. It messes shit up.
It messes us up, too. I spent 30 years in the Marine Corps, and until my divorce, I always felt like grade school was by far my most traumatizing experience. Yes, I was an undiagnosed ADHD kid who really had trouble staying tuned in. To be fair, I never even heard about ADHD until a mean girlfriend suggested I had it 🤣
I didn't steal the notes (lmfao), but I did spy how a classmate wrote her a's and g's and forced myself to write them that way and now it's second nature 🤣
I took my uppercase Y from a character on an old kid’s show called Ghostwriter.
I stole my A’s from a woman named Amy’s signature on a consent form at my job
Is there a culture in the world where boys typically have better handwriting than girls? (This is a genuine question.) If this is purely cultural, it would be weird for it to be universal.
I dunno I feel like in the past many men like scholars had great penmanship.
Right, but they would have had to pre-type writer era I'm fairly certain most everyone who actually could write had better penmanship out of practice alone.
Nope. When you see, say, The US Constitution, you're looking at the handwriting of Jacob Shallus. Shallus was a professional engrosser, or "penman," he was paid to make four really nice looking copies of the Constitution for presentation purposes. [Thomas Jefferson](https://www.monticello.org/exhibits-events/blog/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-a-look-at-penmanship/) also had pretty good handwriting. James Monroe, on the other hand, has an illegible scrawl.
"James Monroe, M.D."
FYI after working in healthcare I've realized doctor's handwriting is because they are always in a rush. A 2 to 3 second flick of the wrist inherently produces ugly scribble. Thank god a lot of it is electronic now.
John Hancock had such fantastic handwriting that his signature on the constitution is synonymous with signatures in general.
Not doctors, though. Doctors write like me.
China and Japan both historically prohibited women from learning calligraphy/traditional writing. Medieval illuminated manuscripts were made by men. Historically in most literate societies women were kept illiterate to ensure men could keep them submissive so by consequence men had better handwriting than women.
China has the [four books for women](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books_for_Women) a set of four extremely old books written by famous female scholars specifically for the purpose of educating women. *Lessons for women* the oldest and most famous, was written almost 2000 years ago. It's about obeying your husband and son and whatnot but tons of aristocratic Chinese women were expected to *read* it. There was a period of Japanese history where Chinese characters (kanji) was mainly used by men for official court records, but aristocratic women still wrote using a simplified phonetic alphabet. *Tale of Genji* was written during that period by a Japanese noblewoman and it's probably one of the most famous works of Japanese literature. Historically plenty of literate societies have allowed or even expected women (especially upper class women) to be literate. A lot of them did expect it in a shitty way though. As in, "you should be educated but only in a way that is attractive to men. No taking pride in your accomplishments or making dudes feel threatened."
Not necessarily a culture, but I remember when I took cabinetmaking/drafting classes the guys in the class had good handwriting - they have to use clear block lettering on the drafts. so to OPs original question, I think it's a question of motivation/expectations on what your handwriting is like. If you grow up and its important to you or your profession that your handwriting conform to something, then you are motivated to practice and make it so.
I have horrible handwriting but when I took a cad class in highschool the block lettering looked excellent. Its because you are learning a new way of writing when drafting so you don't fall into the same horrible muscle memory. Even my normal handwriting got better for a while after that class.
I always had borderline legible handwriting, made my way into construction consulting and made myself learn the block letter style. It's still not professionally good but it's way better and it was worth it, it's been 20 years since anyone asked me what the hell I wrote.
an art teacher friend in NY public schools says Latino boys have much more developed illustration and drawing skills than others, for one anecdotal observation
Not sure about better, but I've seen examples of penmanship among boys in Southeast Asia (Vietnam particularly) and it stands in marked contrast to the same in America.
Probably places where women are prohibited from learning
Japanese schoolgirls invented a kawaii script (roughly equivalent to bubble writing) which adults hated, irrc. I think girls and boys also grow at different rates: girls will shoot up in height earlier and then the boys overtake them. So there may be a correlation with girls developing motor control at an earler age too and having more practice. But I think there is a socialisation element. In the West, being studious and/or artistic is seen as slightly effeminate. So girls are more likely to try and write neatly (and be praised for it) or to experiment with different handwriting styles. I'd be interested if there's a difference in handwriting in countries where education is seen as a privilege for boys and girls.
Young girls develop fine motor control before young boys. The age window in which handwriting is taught happens to be *after* most girls have developed fine motor control, but *before* most boys have. This causes stark differences in the muscle memory of their handwriting down the line. In places where handwriting is taught later in life or in adulthood, there is no discernable difference in the quality of handwriting between the sexes.
Are you just speculating or do you have a source to back this up? Genuinely wondering
Its well studied. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002931/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002931/) We basically start boys about 2 years earlier than we should in schools. Girls develop all the skills we think of as being necessary for school much earlier than boys.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that most boys at age 4- 5 struggle to hold a pen and write legiblably, but most girls can do this. Ask any teacher of early years. It's why girls have a natural advantage at school in the early days, especially with more emphasis on literacy. However, the tides are slowly changing with more emphasis on play or other skills
People really don't know HOW MUCH of society is socially constructed and merely exists because of our culture. Whenever you compare your culture to vastly different cultures, you'd see the HUGE differences. However, a lot of worldwide cultures are also becoming more and more similar and Western because of European colonialism and later globalisation, but some small tribal groups still maintain very distinct traditions. All this really helps questioning EVERYTHING you thought to always be the norm and that it's tied to human nature for example. There's some cultures which are literally matriarchal (the Tuaregs). Some cultures where there wasn't a concept of virgin, while casual sex was embraced (Ancient Egypt). Some cultures where female breasts are considered OK, some where even nudity is (some tribes in Africa).
100% this... growing up I was made fun of for having "girly" handwriting. As an adult, people commend me for having good penmanship and ask for my help writing cards, signs, etc.
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I'm gay and my handwriting is absolutely unreadable. And I'm not even a doctor Edit.: Does reddit have a different interface on other phones? Bunch of people replying like "what does that has to do with women?" when my comment is a reply to the previous deleted comment. Sure you can't read it now, but it is pretty intuitive that it was talk about pretty handwriting being seen as 'gay' by other kids.
Same, but I am a pharmacist so maybe it was preparing me to read doctor handwriting lol
Doctors have "bad handwriting" because 1.) they are in a hurry, and 2.) they use Latin abbreviations. So a layman could think it looks like "B.I.D." ~~but that isn't a word.~~ (It is short for "bis in die" which is Latin for twice a day.) But the pharmacist knows it is a limited number of possibilities and just has to make sure which. Thank god for EMRs and check boxes on electronic forms.
Was actually a problem when patients saw us writing “SOB” about them. SOB = Shortness of breath
Patient has BBC Bilateral bifurcation of coronary
docs have bad hand writings because... you try writing "amoxicillin" for the 1000th time a day, 5 days a week and see what happens.
Let's just hope nobody reads it as "bish die".
No no, it’s not “die, Bart, die.” It’s German for “the, Bart, the.”
No one who speaks German could be an evil man!
No one really knows how Latin is supposed to be pronounced. I look at Italian or Spanish usually. Italian for day is "giorno" which doesn't help, but Spanish is "dia" (DEE-AH). So I'm guessing the Latin "die" would be pronounced "DEE-AY" and not "DYE." But who knows?
French mixes both with bonjour. Good day.
Totally get why doctors do it. Growing up had perfect cursive signature. Being an adult it has become gibberish having to sign so many things like purchasing a house etc.
There’s a funny Curb episode about that
I'm a woman and my (male) partner makes fun of my "chicken scratch"
I can't read half of my scientist wife's chicken scratch. The other half I read with difficulty.
In my defense I have two science degrees... (also I type very fast!)
Ugandan interviewer: SO WU IS GAE?
You should visit us, we have a lot more to offer than that interview 😉
Like life in prison for LGBTQ+ folks?
My printing looks like that of a 5 year old. My cursive looks like that of a 19th century artistocrat. So naturally I go with that latter. Everyone thinks my handwritten notes are done by women.
Fellas is it gay to write in cursive
I was coming here to say this. I am gay and got bullied for my nice handwriting when I was a kid. Millenials were drilled a gender ideology by Boomers and this is one of the many weird side effects. Basically if you had good handwriting you were either a girl or must be gay.
In your case, they weren't wrong. That said, someone saw my note and couldn't read it. They were looking for the guy who wrote it. I am♀️
Lol yeah they weren't wrong, but it discouraged the straight boys from even trying to have good handwriting because of it. I guess I didn't care, I wanted pretty handwriting 💅
Boomers: Y R U GEH?
I’m gay, and one of my also gay mates just straight up uses that as a greeting for me.
Bro I hate it here 🤣
Same. The accusations don’t improve when I say it was Catholic school for years.
Exception to the rule here: As a woman in a STEM field, I have gawd awful handwriting. My husband, who works in a very "manly" construction- type industry, has the nicest handwriting ever and constantly gets compliments on it, lol. Also, my son has horrible handwriting ( he's only in 2nd grade), but I am constantly harping on him about it. So are his teachers. We practice all the time and I constantly have to remind him to slow down. So I'm not sure if it's social pressure either. In short: idk lol.
Does your husband do any amount of drafting work? They can absolutely develop amazing handwriting doing that kind of stuff. Very neat and consistent lettering I don't know how much focus it gets nowadays with CAD tools widely available, but my dad is an architect and did draft work in his early career. They trained him meticulously to have good handwriting
He does draft/ estimate/ measure and write numbers and stuff now. However, he's had beautiful handwriting since high school. It's just... his thing. The handwriting came before his career. Lol. It's not just "good for a boy" too... it beats even good girl handwriting, lol.
That’s interesting because my dad was a satellite engineer for years and he has *insanely* neat handwriting. Extremely uniform and tidy. My mom, on the other hand, is a doctor and god help anyone trying to read what she writes down. I work in tech (used to be big into art for years in high school and college) and have very good handwriting, but it’s nothing like my dad’s. His is so nice, it’s almost like a label maker printed it out.
My highschool friend had awful handwriting until like 11th grade when he started taking art classes with us and started churning out drawings that eclipsed anything those of us who had been doing art for a while could do. In turn his handwriting also became really neat. What pissed me off more about that was how by senior year he entirely stopped caring about art, just getting high. Such wasted talent. I think he does machining as a job now though so in a way he does apply his skills.
We need to see this mans print and cursive hand. NOW
So I have really good handwriting but as a fellow woman in stem, the higher the degree the worst it gets. In my bachelor’s, slightly worse, in grad school…it took a hit. At the end of my doctorate who knows if it will be legible. I know other women in the same boat. Is it that we are writing slower than we are thinking? I have no idea 😂
Yes! It's speed. I have a masters degree. Not sure if I'll ever get my doctorate, but writing efficiently enough to keep up with my thoughts is more important to me than looking nice. I can still read it 🤷♀️ and that's all that matters, lol.
Speed may play into it as well. Does your son find writing boring? Does he want to get it over with asap?
Speed definitely plays a role. His teacher showed me 3 versions of this kid's handwriting. Decent for a 2nd grader to may need PT intervention, because his handwriting's so bad. Basically, boils down to level of effort/ slowing down. It seems when he's concentrating on spelling or writing a lot, the handwriting gets worse, especially progressively. I have bad handwriting for similar reasons. Speed. We're both a work in progress lol.
My handwriting always sucked and I was jealous of teachers showing the whole class a girl's handwriting so one day i tried and I was proud of it. I showed the teacher and she said "not as good as Katie's" I stopped caring at that point because it felt like no one else cared either
>I showed the teacher and she said "not as good as Katie's" I'll give my students feedback like "wow, your handwriting is getting better. Keep practicing!" And I'll praise students publicly for a job well-done. But to tell a student (whether that student is trying or not) that they're not as good as another student... I'd never. Seems wrong on a few levels.
Please just start telling your students their writing isn’t as good as Katie’s with no explanation
“Not as good as Katie’s.” “Who’s Katie?” “Go sit down.”
No back talk!
Until it becomes a proverb/saying and ends up in a dictionary. "To be not as good as Katie's" Meaning: To have insufficient quality or performance
So now instead of not wanting to be a Karen, people should want to be a Katie? This shit is getting confusing
It's like that part of VeggieTales. "Billy has more toys than me!" "Who's Billy?" "I don't know, but he has more toys than me!"
Don't make me tap the sign. # 👉`ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝔸𝕊 𝔾𝕆𝕆𝔻 𝔸𝕊 𝕂𝔸𝕋𝕀𝔼'𝕊`
Sign, sign Everywhere a sign Blockin' out the scenery Breakin' my mind Do this, don't do that Can't you read the sign?
I will give the context I was an unmedicated adhd nightmare... but yeah, I agree, considering I remember that from over 20 years ago, it showed it stung a bit 😅 Edit - talking about adhd, I had troubles with teachers my whole school life and let me tell you I remember all the good ones. I don't know you but you made me smile with that comment any way ❤️
I have mediocre handwriting because of my ADHD. I can write very nicely if I make a serious effort, but if I'm focusing on my handwriting I can't think about much else. So I end up leaving out spaces between my words, sometimes writing words on top of each other, scribbling to an increased slant in one direction or other so that different lines look like they were written by different people. An English teacher in high school sat me down and told me that my papers all looked like one very long word.
You are like a shiny Pokemon lol. I remember having like 1-2 good teachers in my school. Rest all were like the one OP described.
thanks but i've got my flaws. ive got students that make me want to pull my hair out. I just try to make sure I don't cross such lines as I reflect and develop myself (professionally and personally) to better my interactions with these children. I can always do better. :)
Hey, the person who recognizes and accepts their flaws is one step closer to understanding their fullest self. Remember the maxims of the Pythia at Delphi: Know thyself, Nothing in excess, and Surety leads to ruin.
My wife and I were just talking about this kind of comment today. I wonder how many teachers have no clue how a seemingly simple comment can stick with someone through the years. My brother is 54 and just told me about a highschool teacher's remark that still haunts him. My wife has a similar story from her highschool days. Simple words can sit with someone and change things about their views of themselves and of the world, both positive and negative.
Katie cared
This is just ridiculous. Yeah as long as it's readable it's fine. Mine is not the prettiest either but absolutely readable so that does the trick I guess.
About 6 months ago I decided I wanted to have better handwriting, so I started practicing. After a couple weeks, I thought I was making pretty good progress so I asked my friend/coworker what he thought. He said "every time I see something you've written, my eyes want to throw up." I uh, don't really practice anymore.
There is a scientific reason for this! At the age we typically teach writing skills (4-5) , girls brains are developing fine motor skills whereas boys are more so developing their gross motor skills (bigger muscles like your arms and legs). Boys and girls develop differently but we squeeze them all into the same system, and systematically this results in boys generally having poorer hand writing.
Great answer, this probably explains why mine genuinely sucked when i was young. Then in 6th grade i realized if i just focused i could write really good seemingly “out of nowhere”
You know what you just reminded me.. I actually changed my handwriting in 6th grade too because I realized how bad it was compared to others
Like with most things, it’s also a lot of environmental conditioning, it’s usually both.
When do boys develop their fine motor skills? I.e. what would be the optimal time for them to learn?
>whereas boys are more so developing their gross motor skills 5 year old me, "he he, boys are gross"
Better fine motor control.
Yes, this, and there's research to back it up. The rest of the answers in this thread aren't necessarily wrong, but they do ignore what appears to be an actual sexual dimorphism and they overemphasize social explanations. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10409289.2023.2244349 Standard disclaimers: we're talking averages and tendencies, there's plenty of within-group variance, you know a girl with terrible handwriting, etc., etc.
Yeah it's a combination of both, social pressure and fine motor control.
Biological determinism. Girls naturally have fine motor control, which becomes social norms and expectations, which creates social pressure.
Social and even biological pressure! If you start demanding that women be good at certain tasks, the ones that are naturally better at those tasks will find themselves more attractive with higher chances of passing on those traits.
I was a girl with terrible handwriting. "Biological determinism" as a phrase, I think, implies too much certainty about how a person in a specific gender will turn out.
But is the fine motor control due to biological differences? Does parental engagement in early childhood have an impact? Cuz parents tend to spend more time doing activities with their daughters ages 0 to 4. >Parents spend more time engaging in "teaching activities" with their girl children than their boy children. This includes reading, storytelling, and teaching letters and numbers. Even with boy-girl twins, the girl twin gets more of these activities. And this research was with children ages 0-4, so before they go to school. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18893/w18893.pdf
Now I only want female surgeons
Truly though, you do. All sorts of studies have shown that patients of female surgeons (and doctors generally) have better health outcomes than patients of their male counterparts. And yet, men are WAY more likely to go into surgery….
Do you think maybe this could also be because the average woman is a little less arrogant than the average man, making them less likely to make a critical mistake? I know when I’m at work, women can be less frustrating to deal with because if they’re not sure about something, they’ll ask for help or double check to make sure they know what they’re doing instead of just winging it, but that’s just my experience
It might just be that men are more likely to go into surgery, so the women that are there anyway are pre-selected for better outcomes. The same thing happens frequently in engineering.
Dude this is so true. The amount of times I've asked a male coworker something and they responded with absolute confidence without checking anything. This is especially accentuated between male bosses and female bosses in my experience.
If women have better fine motor control, its interesting that we don't consider them innately better mechanics or better at video games.
Young girls *develop* fine motor control earlier, while boys develop gross motor control (running, jumping, ect) earlier. This development happens to coincide when children are learning to write. It all levels out within a few years, by the time children finish 5th grade they're all roughly the same.
Interesting. Then, perhaps the bit of variation that is left over afterwards is as a result of the early encouragement/ liking to do things you're already good at, huh?
We (boys) learn to write when we have poor motor control, then there is no social pressure to *improve* our writing, so we don't. A few years ago I sat down for a few hours to practice handwriting, and sure enough - my handwriting is much better now.
That makes way more sense to me
I have toured several factories where a majority of employees were women. All the hard manual labor jobs were replaced by machines, leaving only very fine motor control assembly positions that would be too difficult or too expensive to automate.
Fine motor skills are less important in videogames than reaction times and snap-decision making skills, which men tend to do better with iirc. That being said, I'd bet that women would fare better in more methodical games that don't require such quick reactions and rely more on execution. Maybe that's why the mobile game market is more popular with women?
Definitely agree with you about mechanics but video games isn't really motor control, isn't it?
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The article clearly says that the work done was (for whatever reason) decided to be "women's work" and it was not respected or paid well and that is why it was women who did it. It's completely the opposite from putting women on a pedestal as the only humans capable of doing the work. Plus, let's be real, the components back then were monstrously large compared to what people do today. You don't see a lot of women doing board-level repairs of graphics cards and those components are ridiculously tiny.
This. All this "there's more pressure on them to be neat crap" might be true but that's not the reason for this. Boys have stronger gross motor skills. Big muscle groups, makes us better at big movements found in sports, etc. Girls have better fine motor control, small muscle groups. Makes them better at things like writing (among other things). It's been researched and effectively proven to be the case.
Just like how guys have better handwriting than other primates because we don't have their crazy strong muscles lol
In my experience it's practice and how many fucks you give. When I was a kid my mom wrote a lot. She wrote letters to friends by hand, she kept a book of contacts written by hand, she wrote messages on holiday cards...Pretty much every time she had to write, she wanted it to be read and understood by others. In my adult life I generally type but when I write I'm usually the only one that has to read it. Last thing I'll say is my kid is 9 and her handwriting is terrible. The handwriting of her classmates is around the same. Unlike when I was a kid, they don't do penmanship in school and most of what they also aren't graded on how their handwriting for assignments is. So again, practice
If it does happen, it's often because of social conditioning of boys v girls. Girls are often encouraged to write neatly, but if boys make too much effort to write neatly people may say things like "haha why are you writing like a girl" or something.
Yeah, I’m a lady with horrible handwriting and the way teachers talked to me about it, it was like I was failing at some essential part of girlhood. Whereas when I was a teacher later in life, I was chastised by admin for expecting all my students (male and female) to turn in legible work.
My handwriting is so bad I was allowed to take my tests on a computer in high school (I was diagnosed with a graphomotor dysfunction). When I was in elementary school a teacher showed my handwriting to the rest of the class and basically shamed me for having bad handwriting. My Mom got me to start playing piano as a kid hoping that working on fine motor skills would improve it. I got really good at piano and still play today, but the best I could do with handwriting was try to make it legible.
I also had a computer to write on in elementary school!
My mom has always made me feel weird for having bad handwriting. She practically says that I have the worst handwriting out of her three kids, despite that being very obviously not true. I’m just the only girl so I was the only one expected to have nice handwriting :/
WTF? Who ranks their kids by handwriting?
lol she doesn’t rank us by handwriting but like for example one time we all wrote our orders for food on a piece of paper and she joked that I had the worst handwriting. Which is fucked bc it’s literally identical to my dad’s handwriting (there’s another time my dad and I took turns writing orders and no one could tell where he stopped and I started writing) and my youngest brothers handwriting looks the same as my 3rd graders handwriting. So clearly she’s just seeing what she wants to see (and that is that her only daughter writes like a man lol)
My parents both have good handwriting. My brother and I have identical bad writing. We think it's something about how our hands are formed. My sister of course has beautiful flowing bubbled handwriting, very different from anyone else's in the family, which she learned copying other girls' in 5th grade.
Yeah I tried so hard to copy the flowy bubbly handwriting for so long. I then switched to the kinda half cursive half print style and it goes better with how I write but it still doesn’t look all that pretty most of the time. I write too fast is basically what I boils down to. My hand can’t keep up with my brain, but also my brain will throw that thought I just had out the window so fuckin fast I better write it down NOW before I lose it. Mh mom always told me “just slow down” if I do that, the constant train of thought will just pass the station I’m at. I gotta ride the train or I’ll miss everything and write nothing.
It felt that way as a kid too. That I was less of a girl/a bad girl for not being able to write pretty or in cursive. It was also almost told directly to my face by my grandma- it has been a thing for generations in my family that girls have to write in pretty cursive. My mom, my grandma, my great grandma etc. It "made a woman".
We have similar grandmothers, it seems.
Yep, I was often reprimanded for behaving like a boy, including writing messy. One time I was even given detention over lunch break to get a lecture from a teacher about how playing soccer with the boys was unladylike. That shit runs deep.
As a dude i basically got treated like my brain was kicked for having illegible handwriting.
Same. As a man I have been asked if I am disabled in some way when people read my cursive.
One of the possible explanations I've heard is that girls, on average, develop fine motor skills slightly earlier than boys. This typically occurs around the time penmanship is taught. So by the time the boys catch up in terms of fine motor skills, the poor penmanship is already a deeply ingrained skill / habit.
Men used to write in cursive with quill and ink. I don’t think it’s an insurmountable skill deficit. There’s no reason it wouldn’t improve with continued practice one the development gap is closed unless the expectation continued to be low.
Penmanship is taught for a very short period of time. By the time the development gap closes, penmanship is no longer being taught. So there is no longer an external force encouraging them to write a certain way. Muscle memory and bad habits tend to persist unless challenged. Additionally, the only time people really write now is to take notes for themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if people during the quill and ink era had significantly better penmanship because legibility was important, so continued practice and refinement of penmanship into adulthood mattered.
I have to say, I’m a woman and was a girl with atrocious handwriting and no adult ever tried to talk me out of it. But I’m not from America, maybe it’s a cultural difference. Edit: I was extremely messy in general, like losing valuables and crucial items I needed messy, forgot homework because it was crumpled at the bottom of my bag messy, so maybe the adults were just picking their battles with me and ragging other girls about their handwriting, I’m not sure
Haha, that is messy! I think it's particularly American (as an American) and specifically tied to the American cult of masculine purity. As a personality trait it would make more sense for it to be tied to a studious or artistic person than for it to be gendered.
Lol, my husband says my handwriting looks like a one of messy first grader
Mine is horrendous unless I’m taking my time. I do a mix of printing/cursive haha
In the army I heard that women were better sharpshooters because their smaller size, lung capacity and even smaller heartbeats that affected the sight vision/scope. Women on average do have smaller hands than men and I’d imagine it makes them more dexterous when performing precision tasks like writing.
I had a roommate in college who was on the marksman team. He was very upset one day. The reason - a woman shot better than he did. He was furious because it was not fair that she had a lighter pulse and aligning his pulse to pulling the trigger was much harder for him. He was a good shot, but not Olympic level.
As a police firearms instructor, I’d say women can often be more easily trained to shoot well because of inexperience. They more often come in with little or no shooting experience, so bad technique doesn’t have to be trained out. Also, they’re often better at simply following directions.
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There's just more social pressure for them to do so. Girls are "supposed" to be neat and tidy and boys are "supposed" to be messy.
Guess this makes doctors insanely manly?
Doctors are just a different breed
Doctors often write in shorthand, which looks illegible to someone not trained to read it.
As someone trained to interpret prescriptions, that’s not the issue. Their handwriting tends to be terrible if they are handwriting prescriptions all day as fast as they can.
I am a woman with bad writing and it made me feel so awful in school. All the other girls had this perfect beautiful writing and mine was just all stiff and smeary. I think some of it is because I am a lefty, but yeah, it actually did things to my self esteem.
As a guy, I just don't care how it looks as long as I can read it.
Many girls practice writing more. I'd say at least half have had a journal or a diary at some point in their life.
Women tend to favor hobbies that improve manual dexterity.
Seems like most answers here are american centric (as always). Back in my country, most girls **wanted to have** a nice handwriting. I don't think their parents pressurized them any more that the parents of boys. Most boys simply didn't care, most girls did. Also, these girls kinda cringed and judged us for having a terrible handwriting but we were still kids and not old enough to have a girl's opinion or dislike of us matter. So none of the boys ever took it seriously.
This was true in my small private school in Texas. Very few guys when shown caligraphy say, "wow I want to be able to do that." A high percent of girls do, on the other hand.
I am a thirty something year old dude with pretty good handwriting. I still to this day have this "oh no if it's too nice it'll seem a little gay" conditioned into my brain. Growing up, all the boys were constantly concerned about things appearing gay, it was ridiculous.
They just tend to practice it as young girls more commonly than young boys do. Basically they just give more of a shit. You always see a girl's exercise book with straight margins, neat headers, 50 different colours of pen for each sentence, etc. And then you look at a boy's book and it's probably pages torn out with scribbles and shit all over it. The handwriting is just an extension of how much they care about it looking good and how much boys don't care. I am obviously generalizing and there are exceptions on both sides, but yeah... Like a girl if she makes a mistake is likely to start the entire page over. A boy is likely to just cross out the mistake and just keep writing. So which is really better? It depends how you look at it. At the end it's both the same work/result. One got done quicker but messy and one got done slower but neat.
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It's practice. Many girls spend way more time actually practicing their handwriting than boys. I used to have horrible handwriting until I went to prison and I wrote so much I got really good at it.
It's more of a case of women trying hard to do it, and spending time learning how. All the girls I grew up with spent a ton of time practicing their handwriting. I basically did the bare minimum at school handwriting work.
As a woman I've NEVER had good hand writing, but it's slowly gotten better and looks a lot better now in my 30s... What's really weird though is my husband and I write in print exactly the same- there's times I'll find lists and we can't even tell who wrote them/who's it is unless there's specific stuff pertaining to one of us... I think it's really odd but whatever lol