Thanks for providing a summary of the conference! My main takeaway is that people are very hung up (again) on the nature/nurture dichotomy when it comes to sex differences. It seems obvious that most of the development of human individuals is an interaction between innate tendencies and environmental influences. Arguments that polarize these factors are usually driven by emotional concerns arising from political and cultural pressures outside of the scientific debate. Sex-based discrimination is one of these. It would be helpful if both the scientists and the advocates for various interest groups could stop using arguments about sex differences to support positions that favor or oppose discrimination, which continues to be a real thing in our society.
Yes, it is obvious "that most of the development of human individuals is an interaction between innate tendencies and environmental influences". But this interaction could be 98% environmental and 2% biological or 98% biological and 2% environmental- so the extent to which both of these contribute is important to understanding. I wouldn't say these experts are "hung up" on the nature/nurture dichotomy so much as trying to find clear evidence for their relative contributions.
The relative contribution of culture and nature also is important for policy. For example the research on gender egalitarian countries implies that egalitarian cultures don't make women and men more similar and therefore the lack of equal representation of women and men in various fields isn't simply because enough money or effort has not been thrown at the problem.
Which countries are you classifying as "gender egalitarian"?
I agree that "the lack of equal representation of women and men in various fields isn't simply because enough money or effort has not been thrown at the problem." Frankly, I know of no one who is asserting that.
The lack of equal representation is multi-determined, like all social problems that have persisted for hundreds of years. One of the most common contributors is the tendency of people to discriminate in favor of men based on factors that have nothing to do with actual potential to succeed at a job, or even with demonstrated performance. Some of these preferences are blatantly sexist assumptions that women are, for example, "not qualified to be leaders." But many other non-rational factors are attraction to persons perceived to be similar to oneself, tendencies to promote people based on personal liking, recommending the bros one golfs with, and, at high levels of power, recommending only one's prep school classmates.
Men with resources have had access to pretty much any job they wanted to do for a very long time. Many of them have been incompetent at those jobs, but people did not immediately conclude that they were incompetent because they were men. I find it remarkable that within two generations after U.S. women began to increase their participation in public life and employment outside the domestic sphere, that we are now seeing so much interrogation of women's ability to replace men in those jobs.
1- which countries are gender egalitarian? - places like Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Holland and not places like Algeria, Tunisia and the UAE- the gender equality paradox paper used a measure called the Global Gender Gap Index
2- I don't think lack of equal representation is a problem. Check out Lubinski's work- they asked the most mathematically gifted men and women how many hours per week they would work a their ideal job- 30% of the women but just 7% of the men wanted to work less than full time at their ideal job. Women also prioritized their health, spending time with family and hobbies over work. Goldin, who just won the Nobel Prize said -"The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours” - the same could be said about gaps in certain fields. Goldin also said men have time for "greedy jobs" that take up all their hours whereas women's "greedy job" is usually motherhood.
Thanks for the detailed and interesting response. The pressure in “big jobs” to work 12 hour days and to some extent be available 7 days/week has become a big problem for everyone. High tech is the primary employer in my area, and is a prime offender in this regard. Young people are showing a strong commitment to changing this, even though they are taking a big hit in income. I applaud their willingness to change the American lifestyle in this direction.
Interesting to take on feminists as opposed to TRA's, but I understand the importance of being able to talk about these issues. There was a common 19th century phrase, "Classics for gentlemen, science for ladies." Computer engineering was initially thought of as a woman's job. And there have been massive increases in women in STEM, because of a concerted cultural effort to create room for them. I don't understand why these points are so often ignored. Of course there are average behavioral differences, and of course some of them are rooted in biology. But why ignore the cultural?
"In 1970, women made up 38% of all U.S. workers and 8% of STEM workers. By 2019, the STEM proportion had increased to 27% and women made up 48% of all workers.
Since 1970, the representation of women has increased across all STEM occupations and they made significant gains in social science occupations in particular – from 19% in 1970 to 64% in 2019.
Women in 2019 also made up nearly half of those in all math (47%) and life and physical science (45%) occupations."
I agree. There needs to be continued pressure on stopping discrimination based on sex. The definition of prejudice is that individuals are prejudged based on their presumed group identities, instead of on their performance as individuals. Whether or not women as a "group" are more or less interested in STEM fields than are men as a "group" should not determine whether an individual woman is admitted to a program or hired into a job. Anyway, "STEM" is not a unified subject. Many women are interested in both veterinary and human medicine, for example, and have increased their numbers dramatically since sex discrimination in these fields declined.
That's the thing. For all we know, the older idea that computers are 'women's work' might have been 'right' all along. Ada. Adm. Hopper. I have no axe to grind either way. Why not just let it happen?
... if Lisa (above) wants to call that social engineering then fine. But I'd call it letting women be what they want to be -- and have the ability to actually succeed in doing.
> By 2019, the STEM proportion had increased to 27%
Via massive social engineering such as quotas. It seems that if social engineering is not controlling everything, the more egalitarian the society the *more* we see the sexes conforming to 'traditional' roles. Unfortunately the social engineers make it impossible to actually answer the question: what's the split between social effects and biological effects? It would really be nice to answer that question so I'd suggest that all engineering stop and actually *observe* what happens rather than force the outcomes that our ideologies demand.
Thanks for this. Will you send me some links to the quotas for women in the STEM fields and the other social engineering? I don't have that info. I know there were restrictions on what women could study, what jobs they could hold, whether they could have bank accounts and credit cards in their own names, etc, and many of those restrictions went by the wayside thanks to second wave feminism. I know less about the quotas and social engineering that followed (because you're saying that promoting the idea that woman *can* do STEM isn't social engineer, yes?). Thanks!
I suppose that formal or informal affirmative action is what is meant by "quotas." I started grad school in 1969. There were about 20 people in my class, and I think the class was about 50% women. This split had been agreed upon by faculty, starting that year. The next year, half the class was of color, mostly black men, also by faculty agreement.
Previous to 1969, most grad students in the same grad program had been white men, as were the overwhelming majority of the faculty. There were 1.5 women on the faculty, and about ten times as many men. In my class only one of the women was married at time of admission. All the rest of us were admitted without needing to go through admission interviews, but that one woman was singled out for an in person interview, in which she was grilled about her intentions to stay in school versus have babies and drop out. (Her husband was in Vietnam at the time).
I recall an incident when I was in the student lounge studying and one of the most narcissistic men in my class approached me and with a sneer asked me how I felt about "being in a male dominated field" (i.e., clinical psychology). I told him that I considered our profession to be "traditional women's work" and smiled. Undaunted by my statement, he intensified his sneer and repeated, "It IS a male-dominated field!" and waltzed out the door. My profession currently consists of 80% women.
This is in some ways a tragedy, as men are very much needed as therapists. I don't know to what extent they are being kept out of mental health professions by discrimination against white men. I suspect that most of the imbalance is due to the fact that psychotherapy is an occupation that women are very strongly drawn towards, due certainly to socialization to be caretakers as well (probably) to innate abilities and role preferences.
I won't do the homework for you. One hears about these things all the time, it's every day. But I don't have a list.
> I know there were restrictions on what women could study
Yes. Indeed there WERE. They are not only long-gone (and good riddance) but they have been replaced by reverse discrimination. The 'second wave' was, all considered, a necessary thing. Even Patriarchialists like myself look back on the day when a woman couldn't be an engineer (or a man a nurse) as absurd.
> (because you're saying that promoting the idea that woman *can* do STEM isn't social engineer, yes?)
Well ... if you think that a deliberate agenda of removing barriers is social engineering then I must concede the point.
Indeed. I use the term 'social engineering' in only a critical way but that's hardly fair. We properly socially engineer all the time, I just wish the progressives would stop engineering insanity.
Hm, "One hears about these things all the time." Indeed, I have not. That's why I asked. You say there are quotas—so I'm asking for the evidence so I can shift my argument. I can't learn and shift if you have no proof.
We can never just observe, this is not a lab experiment. Does implementing laws about, say, maternity leave or accommodations for nursing moms,etc count as part of "just observing" or part of social engineering? Same with laws that favor (financially) marriage or staying single? Every law and regulation a society has is social engineering in some way. Not all of it is bad (although some certainly is).
There's truth in what you say but still it is possible to 'back off' the progressive agenda to some degree. I myself would love to know what the female aptitude for STEM is absent both restrictions and inducements. Mean time we keep maternity leave.
The dismantling appears to be pretty well advanced where I live. I hope that it can be reversed here and stopped elsewhere. Unfortunately, young people here are to a great extent in favor of the gender madness.
I am starting to think that the best solution to our social problems in the U.S. is to resurrect the principle of "majority rule" that used to guide our formal decisions. Of course we must voluntarily consider the needs of minorities, but pandering to small groups of extremists has gotten us to where we are now.
To say that the larger brains in men indicate higher intelligence is not the sort of conclusion I would expect from educated people.
An elephant brain is 3-4 times the size of a human brain but nobody would say that elephants are more intelligent than humans. Some whale species have brains ten time the size of human brains.
Men show superior 3D visualization; this is important because while topographic intelligence, two dimensions, is inborn, the ability to think in 3D correlates with intelligence and is one of the six scales that should be used in place of the singular metric of IQ. We don't naturally think in 3D; we've been out of trees too long.
Trying to shoehorn two distinct sexes into one is a contemporary foolishness that I hope goes away soon.
There is one factor nobody mentioned; every century or so the world produces a mathematician whose insight is off the scale. Not a math genius, much more, someone who makes a century of progress in a few years. Galois was one. Two factors that all these stellar methematicians have in common:
* they do all their best work before age 20
* they are all men
There have been female math geniuses but there has never been a woman comparable to these rare men.
I recommend looking at Marco del Guidice's presentation about why he thinks, in light of new evidence, that men have 3-5 points higher IQ on average. And it's not just because their brains are bigger.
Isn't it a common understanding now that the bell curve of male intelligence is flatter? More geniuses but also more morons? And do we not have solid evolutionary understanding of why this must be so? Females, we would expect, seek security -- a safe place to raise their kids. Males, disposable and competitive by the nature of their fundamental biological role, seek opportunity to triumph -- win or die. Take deer for example -- there's no second place for bucks -- if you want to pass on your genes you hafta go all-in and defeat the dominant buck. If you loose, you may just as well die. If you win, you sire the next generation, but might have exhausted yourself to the point were you are sure to die over the winter -- but that doesn't matter. Thus we notice successful men, but we don't notice the pile of failures -- failed men don't matter and nobody cares. But females demand security.
I don't see why someone's sex should be commented on or relevant for most things unless one is courting or seeing a doctor...I'm in agreement with Joel. One's sex is just one facet of one's identity, it might be much more relevant and interesting to be focusing on other things about a person, most of the time.
Just FYI: males given estrogen have their brains shrink--this is shown both in people
Pol, H. E. H., Cohen-Kettenis, P. T., Van Haren, N. E. M., Peper, J. S., Brans, R. G. H., Cahn, W., Schnack, H. G., Gooren, L. J. G., & Kahn, R. S. (2006). Changing your sex changes your brain: Influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure European Journal of Endocrinology, 155(Supplement_1), S107–S114. https://doi.org/10.1530/eje.1.02248
and rats
Gómez, Á., Cerdán, S., Pérez-Laso, C., Ortega, E., Pásaro, E., Fernández, R., Gómez-Gil, E., Mora, M., Marcos, A., del Cerro, M. C. R., & Guillamon, A. (2020). Effects of adult male rat feminization treatments on brain morphology and metabolomic profile. Hormones and Behavior, 125, 104839. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104839
In her book Testosterone Rex, Cordelia Fine also talks about women's risk taking:
"The reported gender gap in risk-taking would almost certainly narrow if researchers’ questionnaires started to include more items like: ‘How likely is it that you would bake an impressive but difficult soufflé for an important dinner party, risk misogynist backlash by writing a feminist opinion piece, or train for a lucrative career in which there’s a high probability of sex-based discrimination and harassment?”"
The difference is that pregnancy is sorta hard coded as something that the females of a species are going to do. The risks males take are often explicitly of a 'recreational' nature.
The nonbinary, gender non-conforming, gender fluid, etc would all be aghast if they could see home movie footage of our Christmas Day, circa 1955.
They would see two of my girl cousins lovingly cradling their new dolls, while us boys played with our gifts, toy guns. We were considerably more active in our play, running about and ‘shooting’ each other. It was typical girl and boy fun at the time.
Thank goodness we have enlightened ones with us these days, who can tell the rest of us humans how wrong we have always been. Gender identity always trumps the concrete reality of one’s sex, don’t cha know. Never ever gave your gender identity so much as a nanosecond’s thought? Shows what you don’t know, doesn’t it?
my dears: I wish you cozy holidays with significant elders conversations, phones off, unless recording their unique and never recorded memories. I hope for the younger generation to renew a sense of history and of appreciation for those of us who went before you. While your tapping onto little thin boxes means the world to you, our world is soon to be lost.
Anyway this conference seems to have been a fantastic thing. Imagine fraternizing with the enemy? And realizing that they're just people too? Whoever called that conference has my deepest respect. (Two men, naturally ;-)
Yes it is admirable. I wish I could claim to have the willingness and ability to do the same, but the more I fraternize with the enemy, the more I hate them.
I think that's the natural feeling. But it seems to me that the essential thing about democratic civilization is that we train ourselves to learn to get along in a civil way with our opponents. Thus, the polarizing vectors are tamed before they get out of hand. When we cut each other loose, there's nothing to stop things from getting more and more polarized, is there? We need JS Mill right about now. I've seen these 'round table' shows where a bunch of Reps and Rats get together over beers. Far from it ending up as a gunfight, it ends up as a love-in. There's ways of getting people together such that they want to friends. I think this conference is a shining example. In the right environment I suspect that the sex cancellers -- who are also the gender essentialists, interestingly -- must surely come to see the absurdity of their religion. We want their faith to die, not with the bang of defeat on the battlefield (tho that might have to suffice) but with the whimper of the corrected child.
J. S. Mill is the bugbear of a certain kind of Substack philosophy bro who can't get over the fact that we won't see the light and simply follow natural law.
Hallelujah!!! Part of what leads to gender war enhanced mental illness is, again, displacement. Either/or. If we accept that gender expression has as many forms as all the other fascinating variety in our species, then we obviate the need or acceptance of stereotypical expectations. With rare exception, this would allow people to be, and to gather with, their natural selves. The truly gender dysphoric should get and deserve the mediation and support they need.
One does not need to tear everyone apart by edict in order to find a very personal place for happiness. Humility and acceptance goes a long way, for all sides.
Also, can a health provider or our endless forms not distinguish the old, young, obese, pregnant, severely disabled, etc., on those charts without unnecessary, invasive and expensive analysis? Common sense?
As a woman writing this, and seemingly a supporter of the strong biology view, how would you feel if someone were to say you shouldn’t even be here debating this, but should leave it to the men with the “bigger brains”. Surely this is the conclusion that many would come to (very wrongly, in my opinion, but I am more of a strong socialism type).
Short people (controlling for gender) are well established to have lower IQs on average. No one objects to or against s offended by this because height isn’t a politicized trait like gender. Lo and behold, no one is trying to bar short people from participating in science or assuming that all short people are stupid. People are perfectly capable of knowing that a trait is associated with another trait without prejudging people with the first trait as necessarily having the second trait.
These kinds of articles and conferences are so strange: the actual question is “why aren’t women happy with low social status”. I call it “why does a shitty male programmer get paid more than a good female teacher”.
My conference summary:
Why aren’t women’s brains like men’s brains? Why don’t women get more men’s jobs? Why doesn’t medicine ignore women more? Why doesn’t erasing female sex as a concept make women happier? Why don’t we tell children more often that growing up a woman is valueless? Are women low status because of biology or social conditioning? In medicine, “Dosing women the same as men may be suboptimal, and affects men who insist they are women.”
Very important questions all, indeed Professor Higgins!
The money quote:
“Daphna Joel countered this by pointing out that women are generally happier in gender-egalitarian countries compared to those with strict gender roles, like Afghanistan and Iran.”
Translation:
Women are generally happier in societies that value them than those which don’t.
That is generally called a tautology.
Staggering insight.
Lerner and Lowe said it best in 1964, and to music!
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historically fair.
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Why can't a woman be like that?
Why does every one do what the others do?
Can't a woman learn to use her head?
Why do they do everything their mothers do?
Why don't they grow up, well, like their father instead?
Why can't a woman take after a man?
Men are so pleasant, so easy to please.
Whenever you're with them, you're always at ease.
Would you be slighted if I didn't speak for hours?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Of course not.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Would you be livid if I had a drink or two?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Nonsense.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Would you be wounded if I never sent you flowers?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Never.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Well, why can't a woman be like you?
One man in a million may shout a bit.
Now and then, there's one with slight defects.
One perhaps whose truthfulness you doubt a bit,
But by and large we are a marvelous sex!
Why can't a woman take after a man?
'Cause men are so friendly, good-natured and kind.
A better companion you never will find.
If I were hours late for dinner would you bellow?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Of course not.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
If I forgot your silly birthday, would you fuss?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Nonsense.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Would you complain if I took out another fellow?
Pickering
Never.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Why can't a woman be like us?
[dialog]
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so decent, such regular chaps;
Ready to help you through any mishaps;
Ready to buck you up whenever you're glum.
Why can't a woman be a chum?
Why is thinking something women never do?
And why is logic never even tried?
Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.
Why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside?
One nitpick, the "infamous Google Memo" written by James Damore went out of it's way to state that the problem of women's participation in STEM had nothing to do with capability and everything to do with interest. Women aren't interested in STEM fields as much as men. As a result of this lack of interest, women therefore don't study STEM topics as much as men. Women certainly are capable of studying STEM and enter the field in greater percentages in societies that limit female advancement, such as India and China.
Damore wrote "Women generally … have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men." Further, this may “in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas.” That tends to follow the research in this area. Given a free choice, women tend to be attracted to medicine and education. It's why women dominate teaching and nursing. It's also why women have caught up to men as doctors, but not as engineers. Being a doctor is a social career with lots of interpersonal interaction, whereas engineering deals with tools and machines more than people. Both are highly difficult fields that require highly capable people. Again, women's choice of one field over another has nothing to do with capability and everything to do with interest.
That begs the question: what explains women and men's vocational interests?
As a man who has been a manager and has not liked it at all, I wonder why, if men are said to like things more than people, men still tend to dominate management jobs where they are responsible for the performance of other people.
Thanks for providing a summary of the conference! My main takeaway is that people are very hung up (again) on the nature/nurture dichotomy when it comes to sex differences. It seems obvious that most of the development of human individuals is an interaction between innate tendencies and environmental influences. Arguments that polarize these factors are usually driven by emotional concerns arising from political and cultural pressures outside of the scientific debate. Sex-based discrimination is one of these. It would be helpful if both the scientists and the advocates for various interest groups could stop using arguments about sex differences to support positions that favor or oppose discrimination, which continues to be a real thing in our society.
Yes, it is obvious "that most of the development of human individuals is an interaction between innate tendencies and environmental influences". But this interaction could be 98% environmental and 2% biological or 98% biological and 2% environmental- so the extent to which both of these contribute is important to understanding. I wouldn't say these experts are "hung up" on the nature/nurture dichotomy so much as trying to find clear evidence for their relative contributions.
The relative contribution of culture and nature also is important for policy. For example the research on gender egalitarian countries implies that egalitarian cultures don't make women and men more similar and therefore the lack of equal representation of women and men in various fields isn't simply because enough money or effort has not been thrown at the problem.
Which countries are you classifying as "gender egalitarian"?
I agree that "the lack of equal representation of women and men in various fields isn't simply because enough money or effort has not been thrown at the problem." Frankly, I know of no one who is asserting that.
The lack of equal representation is multi-determined, like all social problems that have persisted for hundreds of years. One of the most common contributors is the tendency of people to discriminate in favor of men based on factors that have nothing to do with actual potential to succeed at a job, or even with demonstrated performance. Some of these preferences are blatantly sexist assumptions that women are, for example, "not qualified to be leaders." But many other non-rational factors are attraction to persons perceived to be similar to oneself, tendencies to promote people based on personal liking, recommending the bros one golfs with, and, at high levels of power, recommending only one's prep school classmates.
Men with resources have had access to pretty much any job they wanted to do for a very long time. Many of them have been incompetent at those jobs, but people did not immediately conclude that they were incompetent because they were men. I find it remarkable that within two generations after U.S. women began to increase their participation in public life and employment outside the domestic sphere, that we are now seeing so much interrogation of women's ability to replace men in those jobs.
1- which countries are gender egalitarian? - places like Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Holland and not places like Algeria, Tunisia and the UAE- the gender equality paradox paper used a measure called the Global Gender Gap Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Gender_Gap_Report
2- I don't think lack of equal representation is a problem. Check out Lubinski's work- they asked the most mathematically gifted men and women how many hours per week they would work a their ideal job- 30% of the women but just 7% of the men wanted to work less than full time at their ideal job. Women also prioritized their health, spending time with family and hobbies over work. Goldin, who just won the Nobel Prize said -"The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours” - the same could be said about gaps in certain fields. Goldin also said men have time for "greedy jobs" that take up all their hours whereas women's "greedy job" is usually motherhood.
Thanks for the detailed and interesting response. The pressure in “big jobs” to work 12 hour days and to some extent be available 7 days/week has become a big problem for everyone. High tech is the primary employer in my area, and is a prime offender in this regard. Young people are showing a strong commitment to changing this, even though they are taking a big hit in income. I applaud their willingness to change the American lifestyle in this direction.
What is known about why women (and men) in gender egalitarian countries are making the vocational choices they are making?
Interesting to take on feminists as opposed to TRA's, but I understand the importance of being able to talk about these issues. There was a common 19th century phrase, "Classics for gentlemen, science for ladies." Computer engineering was initially thought of as a woman's job. And there have been massive increases in women in STEM, because of a concerted cultural effort to create room for them. I don't understand why these points are so often ignored. Of course there are average behavioral differences, and of course some of them are rooted in biology. But why ignore the cultural?
"In 1970, women made up 38% of all U.S. workers and 8% of STEM workers. By 2019, the STEM proportion had increased to 27% and women made up 48% of all workers.
Since 1970, the representation of women has increased across all STEM occupations and they made significant gains in social science occupations in particular – from 19% in 1970 to 64% in 2019.
Women in 2019 also made up nearly half of those in all math (47%) and life and physical science (45%) occupations."
I agree. There needs to be continued pressure on stopping discrimination based on sex. The definition of prejudice is that individuals are prejudged based on their presumed group identities, instead of on their performance as individuals. Whether or not women as a "group" are more or less interested in STEM fields than are men as a "group" should not determine whether an individual woman is admitted to a program or hired into a job. Anyway, "STEM" is not a unified subject. Many women are interested in both veterinary and human medicine, for example, and have increased their numbers dramatically since sex discrimination in these fields declined.
That's the thing. For all we know, the older idea that computers are 'women's work' might have been 'right' all along. Ada. Adm. Hopper. I have no axe to grind either way. Why not just let it happen?
I have a feeling that when they said computers were "women's work" they were thinking about jobs where people spent all day wrangling punch cards.
I’m all for letting it happen!
... if Lisa (above) wants to call that social engineering then fine. But I'd call it letting women be what they want to be -- and have the ability to actually succeed in doing.
> By 2019, the STEM proportion had increased to 27%
Via massive social engineering such as quotas. It seems that if social engineering is not controlling everything, the more egalitarian the society the *more* we see the sexes conforming to 'traditional' roles. Unfortunately the social engineers make it impossible to actually answer the question: what's the split between social effects and biological effects? It would really be nice to answer that question so I'd suggest that all engineering stop and actually *observe* what happens rather than force the outcomes that our ideologies demand.
Thanks for this. Will you send me some links to the quotas for women in the STEM fields and the other social engineering? I don't have that info. I know there were restrictions on what women could study, what jobs they could hold, whether they could have bank accounts and credit cards in their own names, etc, and many of those restrictions went by the wayside thanks to second wave feminism. I know less about the quotas and social engineering that followed (because you're saying that promoting the idea that woman *can* do STEM isn't social engineer, yes?). Thanks!
I suppose that formal or informal affirmative action is what is meant by "quotas." I started grad school in 1969. There were about 20 people in my class, and I think the class was about 50% women. This split had been agreed upon by faculty, starting that year. The next year, half the class was of color, mostly black men, also by faculty agreement.
Previous to 1969, most grad students in the same grad program had been white men, as were the overwhelming majority of the faculty. There were 1.5 women on the faculty, and about ten times as many men. In my class only one of the women was married at time of admission. All the rest of us were admitted without needing to go through admission interviews, but that one woman was singled out for an in person interview, in which she was grilled about her intentions to stay in school versus have babies and drop out. (Her husband was in Vietnam at the time).
I recall an incident when I was in the student lounge studying and one of the most narcissistic men in my class approached me and with a sneer asked me how I felt about "being in a male dominated field" (i.e., clinical psychology). I told him that I considered our profession to be "traditional women's work" and smiled. Undaunted by my statement, he intensified his sneer and repeated, "It IS a male-dominated field!" and waltzed out the door. My profession currently consists of 80% women.
This is in some ways a tragedy, as men are very much needed as therapists. I don't know to what extent they are being kept out of mental health professions by discrimination against white men. I suspect that most of the imbalance is due to the fact that psychotherapy is an occupation that women are very strongly drawn towards, due certainly to socialization to be caretakers as well (probably) to innate abilities and role preferences.
I won't do the homework for you. One hears about these things all the time, it's every day. But I don't have a list.
> I know there were restrictions on what women could study
Yes. Indeed there WERE. They are not only long-gone (and good riddance) but they have been replaced by reverse discrimination. The 'second wave' was, all considered, a necessary thing. Even Patriarchialists like myself look back on the day when a woman couldn't be an engineer (or a man a nurse) as absurd.
> (because you're saying that promoting the idea that woman *can* do STEM isn't social engineer, yes?)
Well ... if you think that a deliberate agenda of removing barriers is social engineering then I must concede the point.
Indeed. I use the term 'social engineering' in only a critical way but that's hardly fair. We properly socially engineer all the time, I just wish the progressives would stop engineering insanity.
Hm, "One hears about these things all the time." Indeed, I have not. That's why I asked. You say there are quotas—so I'm asking for the evidence so I can shift my argument. I can't learn and shift if you have no proof.
Google 'gender quotas in STEM', you'll get the usual million hits.
We can never just observe, this is not a lab experiment. Does implementing laws about, say, maternity leave or accommodations for nursing moms,etc count as part of "just observing" or part of social engineering? Same with laws that favor (financially) marriage or staying single? Every law and regulation a society has is social engineering in some way. Not all of it is bad (although some certainly is).
There's truth in what you say but still it is possible to 'back off' the progressive agenda to some degree. I myself would love to know what the female aptitude for STEM is absent both restrictions and inducements. Mean time we keep maternity leave.
No way in hell will we allow our entire society to be dismantled just to kowtow to a small group of psychologically disturbed misfits.
The dismantling appears to be pretty well advanced where I live. I hope that it can be reversed here and stopped elsewhere. Unfortunately, young people here are to a great extent in favor of the gender madness.
I am starting to think that the best solution to our social problems in the U.S. is to resurrect the principle of "majority rule" that used to guide our formal decisions. Of course we must voluntarily consider the needs of minorities, but pandering to small groups of extremists has gotten us to where we are now.
Absolutely true. Bring it back.
Those who advocate for a gender-free society tend to share an excessive obsession with gender and a prodigious appetite for tilting at windmills.
To say that the larger brains in men indicate higher intelligence is not the sort of conclusion I would expect from educated people.
An elephant brain is 3-4 times the size of a human brain but nobody would say that elephants are more intelligent than humans. Some whale species have brains ten time the size of human brains.
Men show superior 3D visualization; this is important because while topographic intelligence, two dimensions, is inborn, the ability to think in 3D correlates with intelligence and is one of the six scales that should be used in place of the singular metric of IQ. We don't naturally think in 3D; we've been out of trees too long.
Trying to shoehorn two distinct sexes into one is a contemporary foolishness that I hope goes away soon.
There is one factor nobody mentioned; every century or so the world produces a mathematician whose insight is off the scale. Not a math genius, much more, someone who makes a century of progress in a few years. Galois was one. Two factors that all these stellar methematicians have in common:
* they do all their best work before age 20
* they are all men
There have been female math geniuses but there has never been a woman comparable to these rare men.
I recommend looking at Marco del Guidice's presentation about why he thinks, in light of new evidence, that men have 3-5 points higher IQ on average. And it's not just because their brains are bigger.
https://youtu.be/iCI2mS-jEtQ?si=bQ7JpQBuUwjk4Fri&t=361
Isn't it a common understanding now that the bell curve of male intelligence is flatter? More geniuses but also more morons? And do we not have solid evolutionary understanding of why this must be so? Females, we would expect, seek security -- a safe place to raise their kids. Males, disposable and competitive by the nature of their fundamental biological role, seek opportunity to triumph -- win or die. Take deer for example -- there's no second place for bucks -- if you want to pass on your genes you hafta go all-in and defeat the dominant buck. If you loose, you may just as well die. If you win, you sire the next generation, but might have exhausted yourself to the point were you are sure to die over the winter -- but that doesn't matter. Thus we notice successful men, but we don't notice the pile of failures -- failed men don't matter and nobody cares. But females demand security.
Cue gender essentialism . . .
I don't see why someone's sex should be commented on or relevant for most things unless one is courting or seeing a doctor...I'm in agreement with Joel. One's sex is just one facet of one's identity, it might be much more relevant and interesting to be focusing on other things about a person, most of the time.
Just FYI: males given estrogen have their brains shrink--this is shown both in people
Pol, H. E. H., Cohen-Kettenis, P. T., Van Haren, N. E. M., Peper, J. S., Brans, R. G. H., Cahn, W., Schnack, H. G., Gooren, L. J. G., & Kahn, R. S. (2006). Changing your sex changes your brain: Influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure European Journal of Endocrinology, 155(Supplement_1), S107–S114. https://doi.org/10.1530/eje.1.02248
and rats
Gómez, Á., Cerdán, S., Pérez-Laso, C., Ortega, E., Pásaro, E., Fernández, R., Gómez-Gil, E., Mora, M., Marcos, A., del Cerro, M. C. R., & Guillamon, A. (2020). Effects of adult male rat feminization treatments on brain morphology and metabolomic profile. Hormones and Behavior, 125, 104839. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104839
Many women also engage in risk-taking behavior - it’s called childbirth. So I’m not sure risk-taking behavior is that useful a distinction.
In her book Testosterone Rex, Cordelia Fine also talks about women's risk taking:
"The reported gender gap in risk-taking would almost certainly narrow if researchers’ questionnaires started to include more items like: ‘How likely is it that you would bake an impressive but difficult soufflé for an important dinner party, risk misogynist backlash by writing a feminist opinion piece, or train for a lucrative career in which there’s a high probability of sex-based discrimination and harassment?”"
The difference is that pregnancy is sorta hard coded as something that the females of a species are going to do. The risks males take are often explicitly of a 'recreational' nature.
The nonbinary, gender non-conforming, gender fluid, etc would all be aghast if they could see home movie footage of our Christmas Day, circa 1955.
They would see two of my girl cousins lovingly cradling their new dolls, while us boys played with our gifts, toy guns. We were considerably more active in our play, running about and ‘shooting’ each other. It was typical girl and boy fun at the time.
Thank goodness we have enlightened ones with us these days, who can tell the rest of us humans how wrong we have always been. Gender identity always trumps the concrete reality of one’s sex, don’t cha know. Never ever gave your gender identity so much as a nanosecond’s thought? Shows what you don’t know, doesn’t it?
my dears: I wish you cozy holidays with significant elders conversations, phones off, unless recording their unique and never recorded memories. I hope for the younger generation to renew a sense of history and of appreciation for those of us who went before you. While your tapping onto little thin boxes means the world to you, our world is soon to be lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stQpwGcrZPg
Dialogue is key
Anyway this conference seems to have been a fantastic thing. Imagine fraternizing with the enemy? And realizing that they're just people too? Whoever called that conference has my deepest respect. (Two men, naturally ;-)
Yes it is admirable. I wish I could claim to have the willingness and ability to do the same, but the more I fraternize with the enemy, the more I hate them.
I think that's the natural feeling. But it seems to me that the essential thing about democratic civilization is that we train ourselves to learn to get along in a civil way with our opponents. Thus, the polarizing vectors are tamed before they get out of hand. When we cut each other loose, there's nothing to stop things from getting more and more polarized, is there? We need JS Mill right about now. I've seen these 'round table' shows where a bunch of Reps and Rats get together over beers. Far from it ending up as a gunfight, it ends up as a love-in. There's ways of getting people together such that they want to friends. I think this conference is a shining example. In the right environment I suspect that the sex cancellers -- who are also the gender essentialists, interestingly -- must surely come to see the absurdity of their religion. We want their faith to die, not with the bang of defeat on the battlefield (tho that might have to suffice) but with the whimper of the corrected child.
The more we communicate, the more we learn that we agree.
Who'm I kidding?
Sorry, what's your point?
Responding to your first paragraph
I just bought a copy of J.S. Mill, On Liberty. These times reveal the lasting wisdom and relevance of our founders.
That was a long time ago. If you think liberty an' freedom are so rewarding, go to a mall and look at the shoppers' faces.
J. S. Mill is the bugbear of a certain kind of Substack philosophy bro who can't get over the fact that we won't see the light and simply follow natural law.
Ah! To own a copy, that's the right commitment. I've only read it online. Hard truth in hard copy it better.
Hallelujah!!! Part of what leads to gender war enhanced mental illness is, again, displacement. Either/or. If we accept that gender expression has as many forms as all the other fascinating variety in our species, then we obviate the need or acceptance of stereotypical expectations. With rare exception, this would allow people to be, and to gather with, their natural selves. The truly gender dysphoric should get and deserve the mediation and support they need.
One does not need to tear everyone apart by edict in order to find a very personal place for happiness. Humility and acceptance goes a long way, for all sides.
Also, can a health provider or our endless forms not distinguish the old, young, obese, pregnant, severely disabled, etc., on those charts without unnecessary, invasive and expensive analysis? Common sense?
As a woman writing this, and seemingly a supporter of the strong biology view, how would you feel if someone were to say you shouldn’t even be here debating this, but should leave it to the men with the “bigger brains”. Surely this is the conclusion that many would come to (very wrongly, in my opinion, but I am more of a strong socialism type).
Short people (controlling for gender) are well established to have lower IQs on average. No one objects to or against s offended by this because height isn’t a politicized trait like gender. Lo and behold, no one is trying to bar short people from participating in science or assuming that all short people are stupid. People are perfectly capable of knowing that a trait is associated with another trait without prejudging people with the first trait as necessarily having the second trait.
No mention of the source of the gender movement. Central banks finance this. It’s global. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/
The only feminism that could possibly support transgender anything is a captured feminism. The vast majority of us don’t buy this garbage, believe me.
These kinds of articles and conferences are so strange: the actual question is “why aren’t women happy with low social status”. I call it “why does a shitty male programmer get paid more than a good female teacher”.
My conference summary:
Why aren’t women’s brains like men’s brains? Why don’t women get more men’s jobs? Why doesn’t medicine ignore women more? Why doesn’t erasing female sex as a concept make women happier? Why don’t we tell children more often that growing up a woman is valueless? Are women low status because of biology or social conditioning? In medicine, “Dosing women the same as men may be suboptimal, and affects men who insist they are women.”
Very important questions all, indeed Professor Higgins!
The money quote:
“Daphna Joel countered this by pointing out that women are generally happier in gender-egalitarian countries compared to those with strict gender roles, like Afghanistan and Iran.”
Translation:
Women are generally happier in societies that value them than those which don’t.
That is generally called a tautology.
Staggering insight.
Lerner and Lowe said it best in 1964, and to music!
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historically fair.
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Why can't a woman be like that?
Why does every one do what the others do?
Can't a woman learn to use her head?
Why do they do everything their mothers do?
Why don't they grow up, well, like their father instead?
Why can't a woman take after a man?
Men are so pleasant, so easy to please.
Whenever you're with them, you're always at ease.
Would you be slighted if I didn't speak for hours?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Of course not.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Would you be livid if I had a drink or two?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Nonsense.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Would you be wounded if I never sent you flowers?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Never.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Well, why can't a woman be like you?
One man in a million may shout a bit.
Now and then, there's one with slight defects.
One perhaps whose truthfulness you doubt a bit,
But by and large we are a marvelous sex!
Why can't a woman take after a man?
'Cause men are so friendly, good-natured and kind.
A better companion you never will find.
If I were hours late for dinner would you bellow?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Of course not.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
If I forgot your silly birthday, would you fuss?
COLONEL PICKERING:
Nonsense.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Would you complain if I took out another fellow?
Pickering
Never.
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Why can't a woman be like us?
[dialog]
PROFESSOR HIGGINS:
Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so decent, such regular chaps;
Ready to help you through any mishaps;
Ready to buck you up whenever you're glum.
Why can't a woman be a chum?
Why is thinking something women never do?
And why is logic never even tried?
Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.
Why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside?
Why can't a woman behave like a man?
One nitpick, the "infamous Google Memo" written by James Damore went out of it's way to state that the problem of women's participation in STEM had nothing to do with capability and everything to do with interest. Women aren't interested in STEM fields as much as men. As a result of this lack of interest, women therefore don't study STEM topics as much as men. Women certainly are capable of studying STEM and enter the field in greater percentages in societies that limit female advancement, such as India and China.
What is it that shapes women's vocational interests?
Damore wrote "Women generally … have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men." Further, this may “in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas.” That tends to follow the research in this area. Given a free choice, women tend to be attracted to medicine and education. It's why women dominate teaching and nursing. It's also why women have caught up to men as doctors, but not as engineers. Being a doctor is a social career with lots of interpersonal interaction, whereas engineering deals with tools and machines more than people. Both are highly difficult fields that require highly capable people. Again, women's choice of one field over another has nothing to do with capability and everything to do with interest.
That begs the question: what explains women and men's vocational interests?
As a man who has been a manager and has not liked it at all, I wonder why, if men are said to like things more than people, men still tend to dominate management jobs where they are responsible for the performance of other people.