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Ad Nausica Commenting on Women in STEM

"Ad Nausica", Comment 13 responding to "Gender inequality in the sciences? It’s still very present in Canada." in MacLean's (June 23, 2015).

Multinational studies find “women have higher levels of well-being than men, with a few exceptions in low income countries” and “We conclude that differences in well-being across genders are affected by the same empirical and methodological factors that drive the paradoxes underlying income and well-being debates.” That is, women feel better about their different life choices than men do. The implication is that women’s innate desires to a job that satisfies them drive their choices moreso than men, who appear to make choices less for happiness in the job and more for the wages … Further, as to the attraction to STEM fields of men vs women, the evidence is strong that men prefer “things” and women prefer “people” and social value. Put more scientifically, “The tendency of men to predominate in fields imposing high quantitative demands, high physical risk, and low social demands, and the tendency of women to be drawn to less quantitatively demanding fields, safer jobs, and jobs with a higher social content are, at least in part, artifacts of an evolutionary history that has left the human species with a sexually dimorphic mind. These differences are proximately mediated by sex hormones.