Read on Twitter
bunch of radfems following this dude who seems to think the current distributions of IQ in any way speak meaningfully speak to inherent biological differences instead of environmental factors + socialization. men are not to be trusted https://twitter.com/zaelefty/status/1225645263978545152
his gender paradox book also deeply sucks by 1. taking the notion of the gender paradox as reliable, even though the data showing its existence is faulty at best 2. then goes onto to believe that women naturally trend to certain occupations/interests & this can be gleaned
from the theoretical gender paradox, even though removing economic/social mobility barriers for women without removing heavily enforced gendered expectations cannot actually tell us that these women "naturally" are more interested in particular fields
all of the countries the supposed "gender paradox" was observed in still had imposed gender stereotypes that aligned very closely with the career choices that men & women made, whereas countries with less gender disparity in typically male-dominated fields
were more likely to be impoverished & value/pay male-dominated careers more, hence why women in poor socioeconomic conditions would likely choose those jobs more, when possible.
when you reduce poverty as a threat & grant women more economic/legal freedom to pursue interests/fields they wish, but still inundate them heavily with gendered expectations, it stands to reason they would choose to apply their greater freedom
to follow career paths along the lines of the forced expectations, because their choices are still deeply societally influenced. it really says next to nothing about innate occupational/interest preferences
gender paradox theorists also tend to treat the association between all STEM fields = seen as male as persistent across cultures & that is not at all true. they love to trot out the fact that more women go into CS in saudi arabia or india
without considering that in those societies, CS is culturally seen as very suitable for women. so in fact women are still following patterns of socialized behavior. really if anything, this proves socialization is an incredibly powerful force in shaping interests
it really annoys me that so many of the people who talk about the gender paradox take STEM fields = seen as stereotypically male as a given. it has not even been a given in the USA, CS (less science more math at the time) was seen as drudgery & women's work circa the 60s
so it truly seems magnanimously arrogant to enshrine the association between STEM & men as if its universally persistent, and then treat it as "a paradox of gender equality" when the data does not reflect that
