> Yes, that is the dominant view. You may have a different opinion (which you haven't substantiated except by assertion), but that's just that, your opinion.
Whether the view is widely held has nothing to do with whether its supported by evidence. You can't claim to be making a scientific argument, when a major link in your chain of reasoning is nothing more than an appeal to preconception.
> Actually, most of the studies that replicated these findings (with large effect sizes and very large sample sizes) were cross cultural.
The studies don't show that occupational preferences are stable across cultures (and in fact they're not). The fact that places like China have much higher representation of women in STEM is a smoldering hole in the theory that these preferences are biological.
> One of the most interesting finding (that's also been replicated), is that gender differences in these traits increase the more egalitarian the society. This is the exact opposite of what you'd expect if the differences were caused by cultural pressure.
That conflates two different things: what gender roles a society imposes on adults, and how the society socializes children. Those two things are not necessarily linked. Take India for example: it's not very egalitarian; women are still strongly encouraged to stay home with kids (and the work force is 70% men). On the other hand, half of STEM majors in India are women. How do you explain that result if you assume that preferences are biological?
> That conflates two different things: what gender roles a society imposes on adults, and how the society socializes children. Those two things are not necessarily linked. Take India for example: it's not very egalitarian; women are still strongly encouraged to stay home with kids (and the work force is 70% men). On the other hand, half of STEM majors in India are women. How do you explain that result if you assume that preferences are biological?
Presumably because they're not free to choose what they would prefer, and instead do what their family expects of them.
Of course, we're getting back into your "women make a choice because they've been socialized to make it" territory here, which I find pretty convincing.
> You can't claim to be making a scientific argument,
> when a major link in your chain of reasoning is
> nothing more than an appeal to preconception.
"Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People
There is considerable interest in understanding women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure. Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."
"To sum up: I think there is more than "a shred of evidence" for sex differences that are relevant to statistical gender disparities in elite hard science departments. There are reliable average difference in life priorities, in an interest in people versus things, in risk-seeking, in spatial transformations, in mathematical reasoning, and in variability in these traits. And there are ten kinds of evidence that these differences are not completely explained by socialization and bias, although they surely are in part."
UPDATE: But actually, that does not really matter. His argument was that because there are differences we cannot rule out the possibility that unequal outcomes may have causes other than discrimination, not that he had proof that these differences are the cause.
Stipulate that men and women like things and people respectively, and this is a fundamental biological truth.
With this, tech is more biased than it should be. Engineering as a whole is pretty people-oriented: projects are team efforts and require a lot of collaboration, requirements gathering and user research. Math, as a counterpoint, requires much less of this but is less biased. That suggests that the Thing/People dichotomy doesn't fully explain the gender distribution of high tech.
As a side note, it is suspicious that science is exactly matching up with how the West has structured it's society. Other societies have different distributions despite having the same biological impulses.
> Engineering as a whole is pretty people-oriented: projects are team efforts and require a lot of collaboration, requirements gathering and user research.
Just like the statement about coding, I think that's a tad bit generalized because you can apply this to anything you scale bigger. You can make a big project, involving lots of different people, out of pretty much any skill.
Tho that doesn't change the basic "requirements" to be good at a specific skill. A coder can still code an app on his/her own, he/she might need more time, but the whole "additional people" thing is entirely optional in this scenario.
Same deal with engineering: It might take more time, but even big projects can be done with very few people. Adding more people is an entirely optional thing to speed up the process.
It's for that very same reason that many big projects, involving lots of people, have positions solely build around managing the whole "people" part of the project, leaving the engineers to do their engineering and the coders to their coding.
Because that's just how we humans are: We ain't perfect at everything, we can't be because lots of it is based on trade-offs.
Whether the view is widely held has nothing to do with whether its supported by evidence. You can't claim to be making a scientific argument, when a major link in your chain of reasoning is nothing more than an appeal to preconception.
> Actually, most of the studies that replicated these findings (with large effect sizes and very large sample sizes) were cross cultural.
The studies don't show that occupational preferences are stable across cultures (and in fact they're not). The fact that places like China have much higher representation of women in STEM is a smoldering hole in the theory that these preferences are biological.
> One of the most interesting finding (that's also been replicated), is that gender differences in these traits increase the more egalitarian the society. This is the exact opposite of what you'd expect if the differences were caused by cultural pressure.
That conflates two different things: what gender roles a society imposes on adults, and how the society socializes children. Those two things are not necessarily linked. Take India for example: it's not very egalitarian; women are still strongly encouraged to stay home with kids (and the work force is 70% men). On the other hand, half of STEM majors in India are women. How do you explain that result if you assume that preferences are biological?
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