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Sex-neutral skill
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</noinclude> A sex-neutral skill or trait is one that is relatively independent of a sex difference biologically or physiologically associated with either females or males. People need a broad range of skills in order to contribute to a modern economy and a technological society. Most general skills are likely to be sex-neutral skills, including well-learned tasks and those requiring a mixture of different abilities. Skill A skill is a learned capacity to carry out a pre-determined result often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both. For example, in the domain of work, some general skills would include time management, teamwork and leadership, self motivation and others, whereas domain-specific skills would be useful only for a certain job. Skill usually requires certain environmental stimuli and situations to assess the level of skill being shown and used. Sex differences Quantitative differences are based on a gradient and involve different averages. For example, males are taller than females on average, but an individual female may be taller than an individual male. Sex differences usually describe differences which clearly represent a binary male/female split, such as human reproduction. Though some sex differences are controversial, they are not to be confused with sexist stereotypes. For example, where performance is strength-related (such as upper-body weight-lifting), men on average are stronger than women. Studies have shown that well-learned tasks and tasks that require a mixture of different abilities do not vary systematically with variations in estrogen and progesterone over the menstrual cycle. But, boys and girls from a low SES group did not differ in their performance level on these tasks. Here the population is relatively isolated so this pattern may reflect genetic rather than experiential factors. This seems to be a sex-neutral skill. The Advanced Vocabulary, Inferences, and a modified Raven's Progressive Matrices are considered sex-neutral tests. But, the reverse did not always hold true for the performance on a feminine task. While the demand for jobs requiring problem solving skills rose during the 1980s, the increase was not radically different from changes in the demand for these workers in past decades. Skill definitions were often saturated with sexual bias so that far from being an objective economic fact, skill was often an ideological category imposed on certain types of work by virtue of the sex and power of the workers who performed it. As this population is relatively isolated, these patterns may reflect genetic rather than experiential factors.<ref name=Levine/> See Also
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