Here's a list of observations I've made over the years that make this such a difficult thing to talk about: 1. People love to rank things. The moment you say t

Here's a list of observations I've made over the years that make this such a difficult thing to talk about: 1. People love to rank things. The moment you say two things are unequal, their brain is busy trying to rank them. Things are either the same, or one is "better" than the other. A lot of people really do see everything as totally ordered sets, 2. If your selection criterion is "person who is good at X" and your pool is a fair sample of society, the person you find is more likely to be male (because you'll get an outlier). But this doesn't mean if you were to take a man and a woman at random from the same pool the man is likely to perform better at X, nor does it mean the same person would be picked given (even very slightly) broader criteria, 3. If you tell people "you will suffer prejudices etc. due to Y" then they will attribute every misfortune, every unsuccessful endeavour and, yes, downright unfair, but unrelated, treatment (e.g. nepotism etc.) to Y and are less likely to think "maybe I should just try again". I just find it really tiring to have these discussions now because you try to be reasoned and then find you're talking to someone who thinks we all fit into some neat hierarchy and can't see the massively multi-faceted nature of human beings. I also find that almost everyone is sexist (and everything else -ist) to some degree, especially a certain type of feminist. So when people talk about what we should be doing everyone is talking about a different thing (see equal opportunity vs equal outcome).