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I wonder if this disparity only arises at the high end of intellect/education. Below that, I find men and women to be indistinguishable in terms of what kind of

I wonder if this disparity only arises at the high end of intellect/education. Below that, I find men and women to be indistinguishable in terms of what kind of beliefs and thoughts they will hold (gender-related issues aside). But, it does seem that well-educated men are more likely to develop a hardline obsession with science and rationality. I think emotion and sentiment have a lot to do with it. It's easier for us to take that detached, analytic viewpoint. Disclaimer: This is a big generalization, and there are many people to whom it does not apply, but I do believe it to hold in aggregate.

tomp 14y ago
One theory that I've read (unfortunately, even though this is a science thread, I have no studies backing or rejecting this) is that as men are evolutionarily less valuable than women (for reproduction), the genetic variations are more pronounced in men than in women. This would mean that at the high end of intellect, more men are smarter/more rational than women, but the reverse happens at the low end; more men are also stupider than women. In statistical terms, IQ (even though intelligence is not linear) has mean 100 for both sexes, but s1 > s2, where s1 is standard variation for men, and s2 is standard variation for women. My anecdotal evidence confirms this, but unfortunately only on the high end (my male classmates got more top grades than women, though one of the smartest people I know is a female) and in a single dimension of intelligence (I'm a mathematician).