Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies
This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today.<p>It&#x27;s well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men.<p>And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there&#x27;s an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that can be used to explain the gap.<p>By itself, I don&#x27;t take any issue with it. It&#x27;s true. But if you turned it around and explained the CS gap starting from the assumption that men are disproportionately represented among the upper levels of spatial and mathematical abstraction skills, there&#x27;d be an uproar. Petitions would be signed, scalps would be taken. I say that as someone who thinks much of those differences can be explained by childhood socialization.<p>And you&#x27;re not even allowed to talk about it. I&#x27;m hesitant to post this comment, for fear someone might hunt me down and dox me to my employer. (Even now, I ponder if I should be making a throwaway account.)<p>In real life, I had been willing to have conversations about this because I find it an interesting and nuanced topic. But now both sides have taken to treating anyone who doesn&#x27;t take a stance of complete agreement with their respective ideologies as the Enemy.<p>It&#x27;s creating a class of people who know just to shut up and withdraw from any discussion about the topic, because there&#x27;s clearly no good that can come from it, either socially or professionally. Even academics. And I genuinely don&#x27;t get why anyone would want that.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nber.org&#x2F;papers&#x2F;w24274" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nber.org&#x2F;papers&#x2F;w24274</a>