Are women more peaceful than men? After thinking of many different ways to respond to this question, it still, like many other questions in this field, seems empirically unanswerable. It can be proved one way, critiqued, proved over, critiqued again, and the cycle continues. Great for debate, but highly unlikely to ever be agreed upon for the very reason that there are many different people with different views on peace and what it means to be peaceful in this world.
However, after rephrasing the question, historically speaking, men have been shown to be more violent. This could be because they have dominated in political decisions, wars, terrorism, crime and physicality. They in comparison are known to be more aggressive than women, making people view them in this more violent prone manner. However, by saying this, I don’t feel that saying men are more violent makes women more peaceful. Thus far if ever, I don’t think it can be said which gender is more peaceful. I say this because not acting violently doesn’t mean you’re acting peacefully. Overall, people in general need to become much more peaceful in their actions; but this has to happen holistically.
I agree that this question is empirically unanswerable – and therein do not give much credit to the hypothesized genetic ‘proof’ that tries to place blame for aggressive and violent tendencies on genetically ingrained gender roles. However, I do see (unfortunately) a very strong case in the argument that correlates early male socialization to their aggressive and violent tendencies later on. Whether this is through family based gender roles, athletics, friendships etc… I think this argument has a good amount of merit attached to it. I find it interesting to think about if women had been socialized in a similar nature over a long period of time – would they be just as violent/aggressive if put in the same situations as males?