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by xevb3k 2960 days ago
If you believe this is a fundamental biological difference, then back it up with data/research.

Otherwise, this could just as easily be a social adaptation (and if we are seeking equality in our society, which should try and address it).
1 comments
dahdum 2960 days ago
Sex differences in risk-taking behavior is a well documented finding, and that it has an underlying biological cause isn't controversial as far I've seen.

Testosterone is strongly linked to aggression as well as financial/physical risk taking, so part of the difference between sexes is expected on that alone. [1][2]

The evolution of risk taking is actively researched [3], and we see pretty consistent sex based differences across most species.

On an individual level, women who want to take these high risk physical jobs should clearly have equal opportunity to do so. We're just unlikely to ever hit 50/50.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11206

[2] https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_0044...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3600861/

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xevb3k 2959 days ago
So I’m not sure I’m very convinced by these papers.

The first (nature) paper appears to show that in market traders increased levels of testosterone result in more risk taking.

The third is mostly about fish and other animals, and doesn’t seem hugely relevant (though it’s interesting).

The second seems like the most interesting (MIT press article). They look at risk taking in adolescents. The paper seems to show that testosterone is linked to risk taking in males, but increased (natural) testosterone in females didn’t seem to show much increase in risk taking.

Overall, boys had very slightly riskier behavior than females. From the graphs the error bars are pretty big and the difference in risky behavior is quite small.

The difference doesn’t seem big enough that it would result in skewed gender ratios in jobs for example.

So, if this is well established in the literature, I’d expect to see better results than this. Are there papers that more really show that males are more prone to risky behavior and that this has a biological, rather than social basis?

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