| All these studies like big 5 and gender paradox suffer from "correlation is not causation" syndrome.
I can agree that the studies correctly show what the state is now. But that doesn't mean this is how it SHOULD be. It can very well be that society is causing these differences. For example, I can claim that women are more agreeable because that's how they are raised by their parents, influenced by their teachers and tv shows, etc. It's a cycle. These studies didn't uncover some ancient rule of nature. People treat these studies as justification instead of treating them as a wake up call to improve the situation. You say Sweden has more opportunity yet not many women go in STEM. I see that as a contradiction. Yes, legally, women are free to do any job in Sweden (more or less) but the society doesn't encourage it. Society was built over many years and it developed certain roles for men and women. Go search for boy and girl toys online and see the differences. I see what you are saying with extremes, but trying to explain this by sports analogies doesn't work because clearly different sports require different physical traits. The fact that there are physical differences between men and women is not under question but does not explain the lack of women in STEM, I would think. The fact that women give birth and take care of children more than men can't (or at least shouldn't) account for this large gap. > One last time stressing the point: this has nothing to do with individual men and women. This is simply what we observe when crunching the numbers for human populations. I'll just repeat at the end: observations are just that, observations. They don't tell us how things should be for the better. They just tell us how bad it is now. |
That is true. Though I think that's less likely. While I agree that this may not be the case for most people, I had my (relatively privileged) formative years in a background where boys and girls had equal access to all sort of different activities and a varied curriculum. From my own observations and information I've been presented I choose to believe (after all, this is simply a point of view among many in my life, and not what I preoccupy myself with most of the time) that it's more likely that evolution has a larger part of influence than culture, simply because it seems to also be the case for other aspects of life.
A sibling comment referenced a book by Cordelia Fine (which I haven't read yet), which mentions on its abstract "Instead, sex, hormones, culture and evolution work together in ways that make past and present gender dynamics only a serving suggestion for the future – not a recipe".
I think this is definitely true – these factors certainly intertwined – but a factor being a biological "serving suggestion" carries to me more weight than culture, which is malleable, fluid and man-made.
> But that doesn't mean this is how it SHOULD be. > The fact that women give birth and take care of children more than men can't (or at least shouldn't) account for this large gap. > They don't tell us how things should be for the better. They just tell us how bad it is now.
To be fair I don't think it should be one way or another. I don't hold opinions on how these things should or shouldn't be. I'm also curious to know why you feel strongly that things should be a given way, and that that objective warrants large-scale social reform. I feel more often than not, large-scale social reform, even with positive intents, ends up having unintended consequences. The Chinese cultural revolution, as an example close to my background, certainly comes to mind.
> Go search for boy and girl toys online and see the differences.
I do think most toys I see are crap, whether "girl" toys or "boy" toys. I think they're all geared towards consumerism rather than child development. I do believe however that these toys evolved into boy/girl toys because of the reasons I mentioned, associated with market selective pressure and getting kids to want to acquire things.
All in all I think a few good wooden spinning tops with strings and a group of kids playing around with them among themselves as a group will be healthier for development than anything I might see on a billboard.
Mostly I give my kid Legos, wooden blocks/gears/shapes/tools, lots of books, abstract things/widgets that seem to encourage reasoning, along with plenty of time in the woods and nature, observing animals, plants, mosses, things like that. Socialising with other kids/cousins of different but similar ages and genders is also very important. Which is also why I think raising kids in multigenerational households and with a large extended family around is so important, as seldom happens in the Western world it seems, but that's a different conversation.