Aug 24, 2017 · 1 min read
“The differences in personality between men and women that can be explained by biology are the ones that lead to differing levels of interest in engineering.”
Actually it doesn’t matter if its purely cultural or purely biological or some combination. What matters is the pool of talent Google can hire from and how many are female.
That said, the evidence of a very strong biological component is rather good. A few examples.
- CAH female have more typically male interests. By themselves, CAH females constitute a nature vs nurture test and nature wins.
- Other primates (males vs. females) show very similar preferences.
- The male/female ‘things vs. people’ preference shows up in 1-day old babies (in humans).
- In more sexually equal societies, fewer, not more women go into engineering. Canada and Sweden have more (not less) sexual differentiation in the workplace than Rwanda.
- MRI studies show that men’s brains are organized for focus and women’s brains are organized for communication. “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” shows up in MRI studies.
All of these results can be critiqued one way or another. However, they add up to a rather convincing picture. In the scientific world, male/female differences are taken for granted. Not so much in the political world.
