4 ms·

> Women are somehow innately less capable of leading a business. This is obviously wrong. What about the real possibility that men are in some way more ambitio

> Women are somehow innately less capable of leading a business. This is obviously wrong. What about the real possibility that men are in some way more ambitious than women? IQ tests show that the average intelligence of men and women are the same but that men occupy a more extreme distribution: they are more likely to be idiots and geniuses. Science has proven that there are innate differences between men and women. Discrepancies of representation between men and women in many fields are in part biological. To say that they are 100% social construct is an extreme position and easily disputed. Men are 4 to 5 times more likely than women to commit suicide. Men are 13 time more likely to die on the job than women. 15% more women are graduating college than men, and the gap is increasing. Are these differences due to genetics? Mostly likely at least in part. To not at least admit that this can account for some of the difference is to create solutions for problems that don't exist.

burkaman 9y ago
It's possible, but I've never seen any evidence and it seems obviously wrong. CEO is not the only position that requires ambition. How about surgeon, another profession that requires an immense amount of work over a very long time? But surgeons are 59% male, not 95%: https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/how-medical-specialties-vary-gender https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/how-medical-specialties-... Also, CEOs are not solely driven by ambition, it's one of the best-paying jobs in the world. If women were somehow less motivated by profit than men, I think economists would have noticed by now. So of course it's possible, but I don't think it's a good idea to push these theories without any evidence. It gives people an easy way out, so they can rest easy that there's no real societal issue, it's just unchanging biology out of anyone's control. But there are very real, very obvious societal problems that would close at least some of this gap, and they can't be ignored just because they're hard to fix. If there's some kind of ambition gap, of course we need to know, but don't spread that idea until there's a reason to. There's plenty of problems with mountains of evidence that need to be solved.
badrabbit 9y ago
You took quite a twist there. Suice rates and the way men die has much more to do with social expectations and culture than genetics.you need to at least have a theory on how genetics explains your correlation (other than saying "how else can you explain it")

burkaman 9y ago

It's possible, but I've never seen any evidence and it seems obviously wrong. CEO is not the only position that requires ambition. How about surgeon, another profession that requires an immense amount of work over a very long time? But surgeons are 59% male, not 95%: https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/how-medical-specialties-vary-gender https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/how-medical-specialties-... Also, CEOs are not solely driven by ambition, it's one of the best-paying jobs in the world. If women were somehow less motivated by profit than men, I think economists would have noticed by now. So of course it's possible, but I don't think it's a good idea to push these theories without any evidence. It gives people an easy way out, so they can rest easy that there's no real societal issue, it's just unchanging biology out of anyone's control. But there are very real, very obvious societal problems that would close at least some of this gap, and they can't be ignored just because they're hard to fix. If there's some kind of ambition gap, of course we need to know, but don't spread that idea until there's a reason to. There's plenty of problems with mountains of evidence that need to be solved.

badrabbit 9y ago

You took quite a twist there. Suice rates and the way men die has much more to do with social expectations and culture than genetics.you need to at least have a theory on how genetics explains your correlation (other than saying "how else can you explain it")