It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men.
And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that can be used to explain the gap.
By itself, I don't take any issue with it. It'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'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.
And you're not even allowed to talk about it. I'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.)
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't take a stance of complete agreement with their respective ideologies as the Enemy.
It's creating a class of people who know just to shut up and withdraw from any discussion about the topic, because there's clearly no good that can come from it, either socially or professionally. Even academics. And I genuinely don't get why anyone would want that.
This account began as a throwaway. I used to comment with my real name, in the days before the war broke out. In the days when pg used to comment here regularly. The days when, if someone disagreed with you, they'd tell you so, or why you're wrong, or maybe that you're a dumb-dumb. Now, if you don't follow approved talking points in your social media communiqués, you're in real danger of being pilloried, and - as these things go - you're more likely to be attacked by fellow members of the party. I've identified as left-leaning my entire life, but I've never for a moment feared this sort of personal sabotage from a right-leaning person. This is a pursuit of ideological purity at any cost.
> Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
More from her about Damore's memo and scientific research in this space:
> Despite how it's been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.
> As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men.
> We see evidence for this in girls with a genetic condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who are exposed to unusually high levels of testosterone in the womb. When they are born, these girls prefer male-typical, wheeled toys, such as trucks, even if their parents offer more positive feedback when they play with female-typical toys, such as dolls. Similarly, men who are interested in female-typical activities were likely exposed to lower levels of testosterone.
> As well, new research from the field of genetics shows that testosterone alters the programming of neural stem cells, leading to sex differences in the brain even before it's finished developing in utero. This further suggests that our interests are influenced strongly by biology, as opposed to being learned or socially constructed.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manife...
EDIT: I wish I understood why I've been downvoted so that I could improve my comments in the future. Is the problem that it's too verbose? OK, I've tried to shorten it and replaced the links to three studies with a link to Deborah's article above.