[quixoticaxolotl]

There are some errors in your reasoning, though.

Here's one. When people collect datapoints and observe a difference in one case not present in the other, they sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that their dataset is exhaustive - that it captures all the variables that matter.

In other words, it's easy to start with the observation "women tend to be more represented in fields that exhibit qualities of care and less represented in leadership roles" and conclude that the absence of the variable "has leadership" makes up the core difference.

But this is a conceit that you, the observer, made. Your choice of variables to look at influenced your observations of what is different and therefore important.

Here's a counterpoint that contradicts your observed conclusion. Female heads of state and politicians have been increasing in number throughout the last century, and have done remarkably well in those roles. Has the nature and autonomy of executive power changed like medicine (according to you) has? It has not. It is a sign that you have not taken all variables into account.

Here's another error in your reasoning. Why those variables specifically? How do you know those are the variables your subjects are thinking about? When women sign up to be doctors and nurses and not CEOs, are they expressly telling you the shared decision making are the important variables? Or is it because you inferred that those variables are important because you can measure them?

In the interest of correct methodology, here are some other variables that people have suggested to explain the same data: women are conditioned or socialized into early expectations of caregiving roles; women are rewarded for pursuing caregiving roles in a way men aren't; there are more barriers for women than for men, and so on.

Now are these variables the correct answer? We don't know. It is a complex topic, because humans are complex. It is possible biology and perceptions of role play a part, as does socialization and others.

But what we can do is go a little meta and ask the likelihood that a biological variable is a good explanation in the first place. Consider what a good explanation has to do: it has to provide a causal mechanism, and be able to explain how the cause led to the effect you see. The trouble with every single biological explanation that's been proposed in this area is that they don't provide this causal mechanism. What exactly is it that makes women gravitate towards submissive roles? Is it estrogen levels? Hormones? Menstrual cycles? But then people on hormone therapy, people born with extra chromosomes, people with hermaphroditic parts, and so on should all display manifestly different behaviour and choices, which they don't. To explain these differences, you need to invoke more and more factors, until you end up with epicycles all over again.

More generally, the history of biological explanations simply don't fare all that well in comparison to sociological explanations. A reasonable prior is to assume that it may play a small part, but that larger effects are driven by how society treats and works with people.

[erenyeager]

Thanks for your reply. I would like to see social factors put to a similar rigor of analysis then, since it seems to me that you are proposing socialization is (1) a major factor and (2) that the socialization of women towards non-leadership roles is incorrect from a normative standpoint.

My counterpoint is that motherhood, pregnancy, chastity, fertility, these are tied up in the biologic of a woman, and these fulfill important roles that can’t be explained by social factors. We are not at the stage where we can replace women with mass artificial wombs and then no child has a “mother” they know and grow with. Rather we know from studies that a nurturing mother is incredibly important for a child at the epigenetic level all the way to the social level.

So much of a social role is devised around motherhood and so much of male mating and paternity is focused on not wanting the woman to have children who are not his.

This is why it is said polygamy is a natural choice for people, women are more likely to accept and be ok with having one husband even if he has multiple wives, compared to the inverse. From a biological paternity standpoint, this makes a lot of sense.

I also challenge your notion that scientific studies conducted in a research study fashion are the preferred criterion for evidence. A study without context and understanding is dangerous. And there are many truths we know without putting them to the now industrialized scientific process of producing studies —- many of which suffer political and ideological pressures in terms of what they can study when it comes to the relationship between human behavior and controversial social issues.

So when you say women are pushed into caregiver roles… this is obvious if you understand the concept of motherhood. As for a rise in women leaders of countries, I will say overwhelmingly the political and business class is male, and generally women are not suited for leadership of a country. We saw a rising “feminization” of society in terms of corporate interactions and corporate decorum now being a default in many respects for how society operates; there are also ideological reasons to elevate “women leaders”; all of these are reasons I suggest you see a rise in women leaders of countries. If you look at societies where ostensible crude military control and authority are important to display, or even in war situations, we see that men are by far the ones involved in combat.

A big question to ask, why so few women in the military roles then, if they have been open to women now? If you look at women’s physical performance it becomes obvious. We aren’t at the stage of all robot armies yet; and the militaries of today are still by far men.

[quixoticaxolotl]

> I would like to see social factors put to a similar rigor of analysis then, since it seems to me that you are proposing socialization is (1) a major factor and (2) that the socialization of women towards non-leadership roles is incorrect from a normative standpoint.

This is accurate, though, to be clear re: (1), I am saying that socialization of both men and women plays a role in these disparate distributions. Men are also socialized, to a great extent.

> My counterpoint is that motherhood, pregnancy, chastity, fertility, these are tied up in the biologic of a woman, and these fulfill important roles that can’t be explained by social factors. We are not at the stage where we can replace women with mass artificial wombs and then no child has a “mother” they know and grow with. Rather we know from studies that a nurturing mother is incredibly important for a child at the epigenetic level all the way to the social level.

I think you are blurring an important distinction here: motherhood during pregnancy and parenthood of a child. Yes, you clearly need women for the first, but that doesn't have anything to do with the latter - a nurturing parental figure is needed, but not necessarily women. Surrogate children, for example, thrive despite their biological mothers being absent in their developmental lives, as do adoptive children from early ages.

If you think about it, children have a variety of developmental needs, but none that are conditioned on requiring their parents to be of a specific gender. Children raised by successful gay male couples are simply not developmentally harmed in any way by any study, metric or measure, though neither parental figure is a woman.

The narrative that you need a nurturing, attentive and competent parental figure is certainly valid - but the idea that only a woman can fulfill that role isn't, because there's practical and ample evidence otherwise.

> So much of a social role is devised around motherhood and so much of male mating and paternity is focused on not wanting the woman to have children who are not his

But what about this is biological, exactly?

The trouble with the biological explanation is it doesn't explain exceptions very well. There are women who don't want children, men who don't want children, asexual people who don't care about sex but love the idea of raising a family, hikikomori who don't want any social contact, and more. That these people exist, are rational thoughtful individuals with full lives, and don't conform with the expectations biology supposedly places on them suggests biology can't be that strong a force in the first place. (You could claim these people are defective, of course, but that's circular and motivated reasoning - if biology is infallible except when it isn't, then we should just accept it's fallible instead of demonizing the exceptions).

The other trouble is that the biological explanation is very selective. As a species, we do a great deal of unnatural things. We eat cooked food, we wear clothes, we have manners, we employ language, use toilets, and more. Yet, somehow, when it comes to the topic of finding a mate, we somehow argue that our instincts, rather than our society, has shaped us into who we are, despite having shaped almost everything else.

Take one example where socialization has overridden this supposed base instinct: beauty standards. Small feet are not correlated with reproductive success, yet at some point in history foot binding was introduced. There are tribes that engage in neck elongation and other forks of bodily mutation that people learn to find attractive. Yet it would be foolish to argue that this is somehow a biological imperative - after all, we no longer include small feet as an index of beauty. Why does sexual reproduction get the special treatment?

To bring this idea back to the original talking point, the idea that motherhood is something you need to aspire to can't be something innate because there are many women who do not want (or even like!) children at all. Promiscuity and parenting preferences aren't "male" phenomena or "female" phenomena - these are people phenomena, and the currents of what we encourage, enshrine, highlight, reference, and consider weird shape how people internalize what parts of themselves are okay and aren't okay.

> I also challenge your notion that scientific studies conducted in a research study fashion are the preferred criterion for evidence. A study without context and understanding is dangerous.

Of course. But bad methodology at arriving at said context and understanding is much more dangerous, and significantly more common than bad analytical science. One rule that is usually overlooked, for example, is that explaining the outliers is much more important than explaining the average of the distribution.

> So when you say women are pushed into caregiver roles… this is obvious if you understand the concept of motherhood.

It's not just that women are pushed into caregiver roles - it's also that men are pushed away from these roles. It's an invisible pipeline that begins with how we think about feelings and how to process them. In general, men don't receive the emotional guidance women do. We're encouraged to think about sex as a prize, status as a measure of self-worth, anger as a primary means of self-expression. Close male friendships are rare in comparison to close female relationships. Suicide is much more prevalent, as is violence. The joy of emotional labour and pure authenticity is never presented to us until we experience and mine it for ourselves - or rather we are told it is only possible to have that when we are in relationships with submissive women, home with children who are supposed to love us for all our faults we never work on, at which point we explode because we cannot handle the idea that mature adult love is so much more than about just blind devotion. All these things shape our perspective on what's right for us.

So, no, I would say it is not obvious. I would say it glosses over the lived experiences of many men and many women to arrive at that specific conclusion.

> As for a rise in women leaders of countries, I will say overwhelmingly the political and business class is male,

But that doesn't mean anything? Of course they are overwhelmingly male - you've accepted that doors were formally barred to women for a long time, and there are invisible doors that continue to operate even now.

> We saw a rising “feminization” of society in terms of corporate interactions and corporate decorum now being a default in many respects for how society operates; there are also ideological reasons to elevate “women leaders”; all of these are reasons I suggest you see a rise in women leaders of countries

I don't understand what you mean by "corporate decorum/interactions". It sounds like you are arguing that it's only out of politeness that women are now allowed to be leaders. I assure you, when Boudica led a revolt against the Romans, savaging city after city, it was not because the men she led were being polite.

Take a first principles approach. It's possible to articulate what qualities or skills are required for competence in leadership: competence, assertiveness, popularity, diplomacy, and decision-making skills. No item on this list disqualifies women or even disadvantages them. There is no shortage of tough women out there.

> If you look at societies where ostensible crude military control and authority are important to display, or even in war situations, we see that men are by far the ones involved in combat. ... A big question to ask, why so few women in the military roles then, if they have been open to women now? If you look at women’s physical performance it becomes obvious. We aren’t at the stage of all robot armies yet; and the militaries of today are still by far men.

I've written a lot of thoughts above, but I'll reiterate once more because I'm tired and can't do full rebuttals: biological explanations are weak explanations, because they don't explain the outliers. The fact there are military women in the first place is the interesting finding, not their rarity.