All animals are equal

This is one of the recurrent topics in the residents´ room when we´re not talking about sex, and I thought I could discuss it here.
The issue is "differences between men and women". Some of us are sexist (or feminist), some others claim we are all the same.
I think denying the differences inherent to our gender is nonsense. With this I´m not saying I don´t believe we should have the same opportunities. Unfortunately quite often I throw stones against my own roof (spanish phrase) but I would be stupid if I did it in this context... And I´m a woman, not a stupid!
As Jüng and a NY metro station wrote, "Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose".

(Use this pause to think about this statement and how it relates to the matter on discussion)

We cannot deny nature´s rules. We´re different from the moment of our conception. All of our cells carry a whole different chromosome (out of 46 in most cases, which means, even if the rest of our genome was exactly the same, we would still be 2.17% different).
We´re physically, mentally and emotionally different. Our brains develop in slightly different ways. Our bodies develop in hugely different ways. It´s all chemistry. We are naturally not equally qualified to perform the same tasks, socially or biologically.
For some reason when we hear something like this, the idea immediately pops up that poor women are meant to become legged incubators, and that they are weaker, which by the way is kind of true though not politically correct (stone), so denying it is our first impulse. I am not going to discuss the potencial kinds of weakness, let´s just assume I´m talking about physical strength. The majority of women are physically not as strong (let´s put it that way) as the majority of men, therefore there are certain tasks that the male gender will perform in a better way or more easily, generally speaking. Which is not to say that no woman can do better than a man, that would be a not very smart deduction. But it means that, in my very arguable opinion, a woman should not be given any advantage to access the army, for example. Or any other job involving psysical stregth. In this respect, I claim for equal rights for persons, not genders. If the job requires you to lift a car on one hand and a person, male or female, cannot do it, then I´m sorry, they don´t qualify. And I don´t care that I´m facing the strongest woman on earth. Good for her, but she still can´t lift the car, so she´s not qualified for a car hand lifting post. So percentual restrictions in this kind of jobs are counterproductive. (And now that you bring that up, let´s talk about percentual restriction in other jobs, because that´s something I cannot make up my mind about. At least 30-40% women in a company? I don´t know. Is it fair?)
Now, this said, I must say I hate stereotypes. I hate novels "for women", movies "for women", etc... Yet I have to agree that certain books or movies are better received by women than men, or men than women. Example: you will find more female readers who like Jane Austen and more male readers who like Tom Clancy. The reason? No idea. It´s also more likely in my experience that a man likes reading essays and a woman likes reading poetry. Or that a man likes reading the newspaper and a woman likes reading magazines.
This though might have nothing to do with the 46XX or 46XY karyotype, but with the educational baggage or the socio-cultural background traditionally associated to each phenotype. XXs play dolls, XYs play superheroes. Girls are sweet, boys are brave. Girls are cute, boys are smart. Tags are deleterious both ways. A girl is expected to become a mom someday, and a boy is expected to sustain his family. (This, according to nature laws, might have a practical sense though). Girls´ idols are singers and actresses, boys´ idols are football players.
Just a note about tags. They don´t necessarily have to be related to gender. As a child I was always said to be sensible, cautious and shy, and I wonder how much of my self repression, fearfulness and social impairment obbeys to that. To what extent are we what others make of us?
But now, back to stereotypes, and speaking of the quest for happiness that is giving me so much trouble these days, I also think we have a different sense of what will make us happy. While stereotypical women are eager to find their one true love, stereotypical men want to be successful to afford a young and pretty wife to show and fuck. Too much of a cliché, I know, I´m sorry. But then, this would be much more likely than the opposite situation where a man sighs for his love and a grams pays a hottie for sex. Another cliché, girls want to get pregnant and guys freak out. A woman wants a man that is warm, sweet and honest, and a man wants a woman who is smart, independent and respects his privacy. Yep, stereotypes, yet there is some truth in them...
I must say though, I tried to make an experiment with my male and female friends some time ago, asking them to choose the 3 qualities they would like their mates to be defined by, and I didn´t get the results I expected. But then the sampling might not have been representative enough (I got answers like "cheap, big mouthed and not too loud") so further studies are warranted.
Also according to my experience, and here I´m totally risking my roof, I have to say that the average intelligence of the males I have met in my life was significantly higher than that of the females (measured in terms of no idea what). In med school for example, we were about 100 girls and 20 guys in my year. If you looked at the top 10 scores, there might be 6 girls vs 4 guys. Which means, in average, guys performed better. And this is also true for the MIR exam, where the best score every year is almost invariably a male. And if you look at the favorite readings of the males and females I know, males tend to be deeper (I told you, they read essays!). And I still cannot find a reasonable explanation for this. (Any males to help?)
Anyways, concluding, I do think men and women are different (come on, it´s pretty obvious...). I think the situation we have now with feminism is a fair rebound to the sexist society of past generations (this is actually not a good conclussion as I have not mentioned any of this above, but spare this woman). And I think equal rights should not be demanded for men and women but for individuals. Otherwise we are admitting that we women are in fact inferior and need to be protected or given an advantage.
But then, there´s the unsolvable issue of pregnancy and career opportunities...
Peace :)