I feel like I somehow stumbled on breitbart rather than WCI forums.
Could it be that women just don’t like math and physics and would rather just talk about their feelings? And that men just love crunching numbers and lifting heavy things? And these are just intrinsic differences within our DNA? Hmmm…could be.
Or could it be that young girls are more likely to be encouraged to play nicely with their dolls while young boys are encouraged to get in the dirt? And if a teenage girl excels in AP physics and calculus she gets a different reaction than a boy in the same class, while if a teenage boy says he wants to be a nurse or a kindergarten teacher he gets a different reaction than his female peer who says the same. Can a teenager ignore those reactions and follow their dreams? Sure, but I know I was influenced much more by the reactions of others as a teenager than I am today, and based on my experience with many other young people, the young developing brain is easily influenced by what other people think. It takes a while to learn the art of not caring what others think….
Likely, as in most things in life, both nature and nurture play a role.
Interesting how people get so fired up about this topic.
The most bothersome thing to me is when people say that someone just got in to med school/residency/whatever job because of their race or gender. I rarely (if ever) have thought that was the case. On the contrary, the people I have met who are from an underrepresented demographic segment are often more talented and had to work extra hard for that talent to be appreciated due to the underlying (often unconscious) biases they have been up against.
Is your argument that the observable differences in men and women are based solely on socialization? All nurture, no nature? Do you have some scientific evidence to back this claim or strictly anectodes?
How do you explain the gender specific differences in toy preferences, rough and tumble play, peer preferences and infant interest among males and females? Did I mention I am referring to rhesus monkeys and that these differences parallel the differences seen in humans?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
Would your argument be that rhesus monkeys socialize the girl monkeys different than the boy monkeys?
Did you read the part where I said that “likely, as in most thing in life, both nature and nurture play a role?”
Brings to mind the research that demonstrates that women tend to be more detail oriented than men.
No, I missed that.

I would like to see the research that shows that a significant part of the reason that sex differences in occupation persist is due to socialization. I don't see it.
For example, the literature demonstrates that, on average, men are better at spatial ability than women and have greater interest in things. Could these variables not account in large part for the greater percentage of male engineers? Socialization is doing everything it can to encourage more women to get into engineering including female only scholarships, mentors and clubs as well as preferential hiring by engineering firms and academia. These are easily verifiable instances of overtly "pro female socialization", yet the imbalance persists.
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