Women’s Intuition - And Risk

Pivoting off an article by extreme mountain biker Shauna Stephenson, Lane Wallace thinks about gender and risk taking:

Stephenson quotes Jody Radtke, program director for the Women’s Wilderness Institute in Boulder, CO, as saying that women aren’t necessarily more risk-adverse than men. However, she says, when faced with challenging situations, men tend to produce adrenaline, which makes them pump up and, as Stephenson puts it, “run around hollering like frat boys at a kegger.” But women, when faced with a similar situation, produce something called acetycholine. Which basically … makes them want to throw up. Consequently, because women don’t have the same chemical reward for confronting risky situations, they tend to rely on more calculated, cross-cranial decision-making before leaping into a risky endeavor.