| Addressing your responses: 1. Unless I've misunderstood, the original assertion was that the gender gap is present in many engineering professions. I'm not clear on what facts you are relying on, but the data I've seen (and linked to) seems to bear this observation out. Such an observation is not at odds with your assertion that there are 'structural biases' against women. And if I has to guess, to put it bluntly, I suspect China was not included as their official statistics on any remotely economic matter are highly suspect. Additionally, there are quite disparate outcomes among countries. On no measure of gender workforce equality is the US in the lead, at least according to the data in the linked study. The US is better than most on vertical inequality (i.e. wage gaps within the same occupational groups) but roughly average on horizontal inequality (i.e. occupational gender segregation). The US is closest to South Africa in these respects. 2. I don't have much to say here really. I guess part of this might come down to what one subjectively defines as a 'high status' profession. I don't really have an opinion here, so I defer to yours. 3. I don't recall saying that that study I linked to rebuts your point of view. I linked to the study because it's fairly comprehensive, informative, and seems to have a sound methodology. The data analysed is fairly credible too: large cross country social surveys and Census data. I'm not sure where R^2 comes into this, as the authors are not constructing a predictive model. Rather, they're simply calculating observational statistics. And I'm not asking you to concede that the debate should shift into some kind of weird, abstract mathematical exercise. But if you refuse to even glance at some of the data put forward (or any data really), preferring some nebulous facts that you haven't actually presented, then I'm afraid you're likely to have a hard time convincing people who don't already agree with you. |