Yes, and the variety that you get will not look like 50%/50% gender spread in every single field and profession, because there are innate differences between genders that come to the surface the more you remove social pressure and tyranny. That's literally the core argument of what Jordan B Peterson has been saying, and he has been getting a lot of flak in the mainstream media for that. So it's a controversial topic for some reason.
FWIW, those views are held not just by Peterson (who is easy to dismiss for his more extreme and loony views), but many if not most reputable researchers in the field, as far as I can tell.
Not op, but what difference between men and women would justify such a gap, if not a cultural one ?
We can't know for sure what's the right split, But I'd argue it's as unlikely to be 50/50 than it is to be close to 100/0 in fields where women aren't at a physical disavantage.
There is a slight biological bias in favour of men (105 men for every 100 women at birth) and that, combined with the whole womb thing, give women a lot of short term say over the circumstances where families are established.
It is enough of an imbalance to cause fierce competition amongst the men. Assuming a nuclear family and sensible family planning, it is highly likely that a bunch of men will not get to have families.
The men working hard to make money are in a fairly high-stakes game to break into the gene pool, biologically speaking. It isn't surprising to me that the men take working a lot more seriously. Every generation nature is roughly planning to cull ~1 man in 20 before life even starts. Individually it might not get acknowledged but that is a mighty biasing force over even 2 generations of cultural development. Being the lowest status man in the room has an implicit evolutionary threat in the way that being the lowest status woman doesn't.
> Being the lowest status man in the room has an implicit evolutionary threat in the way that being the lowest status woman doesn't.
What perceptible "evolutionary threat" could there possibly be in a 105:100 imbalance, which is so low as to be pretty much unknown to everyone who doesn't follow demographic data?
I know far more than 20 young men. Believe me, their larger worries at this point are securing a stable job and finding housing, not some sort of "evolutionary disadvantage reality".
And yet, mysteriously, their two larger worries are direct markers of what they'll need to do to find a partner and establish a family. If it wasn't, their genes ain't going to make it to the next generation (which isn't exactly a problem, I suppose).
Rank them by the security of their relationship with their girlfriend or wife. The first few without a partner (the marginal ones) would in all likelihood have partner if they were an equivalent girl. There is a lot of incentive to behave competitively.
1 in 20 don't usually die of COVID-19, but nearly a third of Americans never marry. I think it's obvious why the effect is much less noticeable in one case, notwithstanding that one literally ends up with people dead.
I don't study this, but as far as I'm aware there are biological differences between men and women on average that are neither physically advantageous nor disadvantageous. This appears to be supported by this study[0].
Jordan is a hack. he just makes up explanations to fit what we observe. “women don’t go into tech careers”. jordan: “oh that could be because women are interested in people and men are interested in objects”. what bs. spoiler: if that’s the case then it’s still a problem we created
> f that’s the case then it’s still a problem we created
Why? Why can't there just be innate biological differences in what people are interested in, between the genders, as a lot of data suggests.
Also if that is your hypothesis, how do you explain the data point that shows that the more egalitarian (free and fair) a country is, the higher the differences between the gender interests?
Also JBP is simply quoting the research in the social and psychological and psychometric fields that already exists, and is being done by a lot of other scientists. Isn't that the exact opposite of being "a hack"?
> Also JBP is simply quoting the research in the social and psychological and psychometric fields that already exists
He isn't, that is the main criticism. He usually uses actual research, yes, but then extrapolates widely and without empirical support.
For example he uses observed gender differences in the Big Five traits (which are actually there, though keep in mind the Big Five traits by themselves are already about 50% society, not genes), but then postulates differences in e.g. natural sciences, which cannot reasonably derived from this base.
His postulations often also actually stand in contrast to empirical evidence. For example in eastern Germany, the area of the former GDR, where gender equality was officially mandated and thus stronger than it is even now in Germany, girls had on average better math grades than boys in the 90s and early 2000s (see the national TIMSS data for these periods. This effect only disappeared in generations born after German reunification.
All this isn't surprising as Peterson is a Jungian (which is quack psychology), and to my knowledge has no empirical background.
Girls having better math grades could be explained by girls, on average, being higher in conscientiousness. I think generally grades in schools are more strongly correlated with diligence than natural talent.
Also, studies have shown that in more gender role laissez-faire societies there's actually a greater difference between genders, which your GDR study inadvertently corroborates.
> where gender equality was officially mandated and thus stronger than it is even now in Germany
How do you build that argument? If it was equality of outcome that was officially mandated, that is exact opposite of true freedom of opportunity.
Also I'm not sure why you are talking about math grades, when the discussion was specifically about interests, - ie, how many of those girls then proceed into careers in mathematical disciplines. Just because someone gets good grades in school in a subject, doesn't mean that the person is going to choose (ie, is intereste in) pursuing that subject as a life career path.
> If it was equality of outcome that was officially mandated, that is exact opposite of true freedom of opportunity.
I have said nothing about equality of outcome.
There is no freedom of opportunity without societal context. I am, as a man, legally free to wear a skirt in my country, yet I've never done and I've also met almost none who did - because of the socials costs this would incur. And skirt wearing is obviously 100% culture, 0% genes.
The surrounding society frames what opportunities are actually free to embrace.
Interests, BTW, are by their nature not really empirically measurable (you can give people questionnaires, but that's about it). You can't infer girl's interest in math from their chosen profession, that's why I gave an example of actual ability. This is also why serious psychologists usually research other concepts - and I suspect this is also why Peterson likes to talk about interests: they are essentially an unfalsifiable topic.
> legally free to wear a skirt in my country, yet I've never done and I've also met almost none who did - because of the socials costs this would incur.
I also have never weared skirt, but reasons are entirely personal - have no internal motivation to do so, have opinion that trousers are more practical and have no skirt in wardrobe. But i assume that if i ever wear a skirt, nobody would give a damn.
You can say that lack of my personal interest to wear a skirt is an effect of societal indoctrination and it may be true, but there is a clear difference between accepting/integrating that position and being forced to it by fear of societal costs. The second is oppression, the first is not.
> There is no freedom of opportunity without societal context. I am, as a man, legally free to wear a skirt in my country, yet I've never done and I've also met almost none who did - because of the socials costs this would incur. And skirt wearing is obviously 100% culture, 0% genes.
I see...
You need some serious twisting of the objective reality and ignoring a lot of things to arrive at that "skirt wearing is 100% culture" conclusion. But if you do believe that then of course it's easy to see how the rest follows from it.
I do not see it at all the same way.
Skirt wearing, as well as other clothes, especially "beautiful/sexu" clothes, is very related to the sexuality of people and the differences of how that sexuality plays out different in males/females. It has physiological differences, visual differences, ideological differences, practical differences in sexual selection, etc. To say that all that is just societally constructed is basically the same as saying "gender is purely a social construct", which, IMO, is 100% military-grade bullshit. It is used by ideologs to split the society and promote certain political agendas, it does not come from science.
I can imagine a society where it would not be about skirts per se, but it would be about some other very similar piece of clothing, that would similarly demonstrate female features, and signal things like health, sexual proclivities, sexual availability, age, sexual preferences etc. Those clothing pieces would also talk to the same centres in our brain that understand beauty, symmetry, healthy body shapes, etc. Most of those things are rooted in biology or deeper, even if there is a thick societal layer of covering on top of that.
> For example in eastern Germany, the area of the former GDR, where gender equality was officially mandated and thus stronger than it is even now in Germany, girls had on average better math grades than boys in the 90s and early 2000s (see the national TIMSS data for these periods. This effect only disappeared in generations born after German reunification.
I don't think that has ever been in question, last I remember the evidence is girls generally perform better in the education system. That is weak evidence in favour of there being innate gender differences.
Pretty much every company I've worked for over 100 people has made it quite clear they'd hire a girl over me if one had applied. As far as I can tell I owe my employment path to the fact that, as a gender, girls appear to be refusing to compete for it. The formal structures I've seen were formally tilted in favour of women in education, hiring and salaries.
> That is weak evidence in favour of there being innate gender differences.
But my example showed that this isn't an innate gender difference. The effect disappeared after the kids grew up in another system.
> As far as I can tell I owe my employment path to the fact that, as a gender, girls appear to be refusing to compete for it.
It was the same for actual professions: The female share of engineers was significantly higher in Eastern Germany than in Western Germany, and is no sinking since the reunification: https://www.industrial-production.de/wirtschaft---unternehme... (German source, sorry)
> more egalitarian (free and fair) a country is, the higher the differences between the gender interests?
this by itself is a contradiction. what makes a country egalitarian? how can you say a country is egalitarian and then say that some interests are not equally shared by men and women. in these countries women barely had voting rights 100 years ago but now they are called "egalitarian". maybe let's wait a generation or 2 more before concluding women biologically don't like math.
it's not even worth debating this pseudoscience. jordan is a quack. I imagine only sexists follow him because his idiotic but articulated explanations fit their view.
> this by itself is a contradiction. what makes a country egalitarian?
No it's not.
What makes a country egalitarian is set of laws and practices that give people most possible choice and regulate on a legal level the amount of prejudice the people have to face.
In other words, the amount of freedoms to choose that people get.
In the western developed countries, the more freedoms a country gives to people, the farther apart genders become in their self-expressed (self-chosen) occupations and intersts. Explain that.
> maybe let's wait a generation or 2 more before concluding women biologically don't like math.
Well it's been exactly more than two generations and all the data is moving in the wrong direction from your hypothesis. A lot of people feel like they have waited enough to make these conclusions.
Just calling someone a quack is just not a good argument, you need to show your reasoning instead.
> “oh that could be because women are interested in people and men are interested in objects”
In a free societies with free education like most West-Europeans are, this is indeed the best explanation up to date. At least way more convincing than conspiracy theories in which a sexual minority is purposely oppressing the majority.
