Today’s piece was originally supposed to be the second and last part of a short series on the Google memo, but in light of the author’s rapid termination, I’ve decided to add at least one other installment on the topic. As such, my analysis on how Spiral Dynamics fits into the whole drama will have to wait till another day.
As everyone knows by now, Google went ahead and fired James Damore, the author of the now infamous memo on Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber. In yesterday’s piece I remarked about how shocked I was by the extraordinarily charged and hyperbolic language being used by so many of those who disagreed with what Mr. Damore wrote. Indeed, the language and mischaracterizations of the memo itself were so completely unhinged in many instances, it’s hard for me to believe that many of these people even read it in the first place.
First off, while I happen to agree with a lot of what he wrote, that’s besides the point. If you read the memo it’s obvious that the author went out of his way to avoid triggering people who are easily triggered. Whether or not you agree with the conclusions, it was written in a respectful and measured way. He goes out of his way to clarify what he’s saying so as not to be misunderstood Here are just a couple examples of what I mean:
I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
Incredibly, people are calling this guy (who has a masters degree in Systems Biology from Harvard) a Nazi because he has a different opinion than the dogmatic prevailing consensus within what clearly is a Google echo chamber culture. He was politely trying to have a discourse about a topic he feels passionately about and did so in a respectful way. For that unforgivable act, he’s been deemed a misogynist Nazi and fired. I’m not the first person to note that by firing him for writing this, Google essentially proved his point regarding the company’s closed cultural and ideological environment.
Indeed, what Google did to this employee is a textbook example of “ritual defamation,” as Yale professor Nicholas Christakis explained in a recent tweet.
Firing by @google of employee https://t.co/4GRWLWizbW seems a Ritual Defamation as per @LairdMWilcox https://t.co/DLLvJysZst #googlememo pic.twitter.com/7aL5dm5Ue4
— Nicholas Christakis (@NAChristakis) August 8, 2017
Despite being fired, James Damore will be just fine. There are enough people completely sick and tired of the authoritarian left for him to have countless opportunities. I’m not so sure about Google. In fact, I’d expect many talented people at the company to start looking for new, less ideologically stifling jobs, and I think ten years from now the brain drain from Google will likely be obvious. Google has publicly demonstrated itself as a drab and intellectually dishonest place to work, and such a place cannot and will not attract the best and brightest in tech.
Not to mention the fact that when it comes to making money from ads, Google is perfectly fine with “perpetuating gender stereotypes” (the supposed reason they fired Mr. Damore). For example, take a look at this screenshot from the Google adwords page, Add Demographic Targeting to an Ad Group:
Target by gender. There you go. When it comes to Google making money, gender differences suddenly exist.
Google rushed to fire this guy so fast they didn’t even stop to think how full of shit they are.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 8, 2017
Moving along, although Google executives clearly lack the maturity and wisdom to take the memo as an opportunity to have a productive and rigorous debate, plenty of other people have. One of the most interesting articles I’ve read in this regard was written by Scott Alexander and published at Slate Star Codex. He comes at the issue by explaining his view that many of the very real and observable differences in professions between men and women can be explained not by sexism or capacity, but by different interests at the population level between the genders. In other words, the whole “men tend to like to work with things, and women tend to like to work with people” observation that James Damore discussed in his memo.
Here’s an excerpt from the piece, but I highly recommend reading the entire thing:
Might girls be worried not by stereotypes about computers themselves, but by stereotypes that girls are bad at math and so can’t succeed in the math-heavy world of computer science? No. About 45% of college math majors are women, compared to (again) only 20% of computer science majors. Undergraduate mathematics itself more-or-less shows gender parity. This can’t be an explanation for the computer results.
Might sexist parents be buying computers for their sons but not their daughters, giving boys a leg up in learning computer skills? In the 80s and 90s, everybody was certain that this was the cause of the gap. Newspapers would tell lurid (and entirely hypothetical) stories of girls sitting down to use a computer when suddenly a boy would show up, push her away, and demand it all to himself. But move forward a few decades and now young girls are more likely to own computers than young boys – with little change in the high school computer interest numbers. So that isn’t it either.
So if it happens before middle school, and it’s not stereotypes, what might it be?
One subgroup of women does not display these gender differences at any age. These are women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition that gives them a more typically-male hormone balance. For a good review, see Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People. They find that:
Consistent with hormone effects on interests, females with CAH are considerably more interested than are females without CAH in male-typed toys, leisure activities, and occupations, from childhood through adulthood (reviewed in Blakemore et al., 2009; Cohen-Bendahan et al., 2005); adult females with CAH also engage more in male-typed occupations than do females without CAH (Frisén et al., 2009). Male-typed interests of females with CAH are associated with degree of androgen exposure, which can be inferred from genotype or disease characteristics (Berenbaum et al., 2000; Meyer-Bahlburg et al., 2006; Nordenström et al., 2002). Interests of males with CAH are similar to those of males without CAH because both are exposed to high (sex-typical) prenatal androgens and are reared as boys.
Females with CAH do not provide a perfect test of androgen effects on gendered characteristics because they differ from females without CAH in other ways; most notably they have masculinized genitalia that might affect their socialization. But, there is no evidence that parents treat girls with CAH in a more masculine or less feminine way than they treat girls without CAH (Nordenström et al., 2002; Pasterski et al., 2005). Further, some findings from females with CAH have been confirmed in typical individuals whose postnatal behavior has been associated with prenatal hormone levels measured in amniotic fluid. Amniotic testosterone levels were found to correlate positively with parent-reported male-typed play in girls and boys at ages 6 to 10 years (Auyeung et al., 2009).
The psychological mechanism through which androgen affects interests has not been well-investigated, but there is some consensus that sex differences in interests reflect an orientation toward people versus things (Diekman et al., 2010) or similar constructs, such as organic versus inorganic objects (Benbow et al., 2000). The Things-People distinction is, in fact, the major conceptual dimension underlying the measurement of the most widely-used model of occupational interests (Holland, 1973; Prediger, 1982); it has also been used to represent leisure interests (Kerby and Ragan, 2002) and personality (Lippa, 1998).
In their own study, they compare 125 such women and find a Things-People effect size of -0.75 – that is, the difference between CAH women and unaffected women is more than half the difference between men and unaffected women. They write:
The results support the hypothesis that sex differences in occupational interests are due, in part, to prenatal androgen influences on differential orientation to objects versus people. Compared to unaffected females, females with CAH reported more interest in occupations related to Things versus People, and relative positioning on this interest dimension was substantially related to amount of prenatal androgen exposure.
What is this “object vs. people” distinction?
It’s pretty relevant. Meta-analyses have shown a very large (d = 1.18) difference in healthy men and women (ie without CAH) in this domain. It’s traditionally summarized as “men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people”. I would flesh out “things” to include both physical objects like machines as well as complex abstract systems; I’d also add in another finding from those same studies that men are more risk-taking and like danger. And I would flesh out “people” to include communities, talking, helping, children, and animals.
So this theory predicts that men will be more likely to choose jobs with objects, machines, systems, and danger; women will be more likely to choose jobs with people, talking, helping, children, and animals.
Somebody armed with this theory could pretty well predict that women would be interested in going into medicine and law, since both of them involve people, talking, and helping. They would predict that women would dominate veterinary medicine (animals, helping), psychology (people, talking, helping, sometimes children), and education (people, children, helping). Of all the hard sciences, they might expect women to prefer biology (animals). And they might expect men to do best in engineering (objects, machines, abstract systems, sometimes danger) and computer science (machines, abstract systems).
I mentioned that about 50% of medical students were female, but this masks a lot of variation. There are wide differences in doctor gender by medical specialty. For example:
A privilege-based theory fails – there’s not much of a tendency for women to be restricted to less prestigious and lower-paying fields – Ob/Gyn (mostly female) is extremely lucrative, and internal medicine (mostly male) is pretty low-paying for a medical job. But the people/thing theory above does extremely well! Pediatrics is babies/children, Psychiatry is people/talking (and of course women are disproportionately child psychiatrists), OB/GYN is babies (though admittedly this probably owes a lot to patients being more comfortable with female gynecologists) and family medicine is people/talking/babies/children.
Meanwhile, Radiology is machines and no patient contact, Anaesthesiology is also machines and no patient contact, Emergency Medicine is danger, and Surgery is machines, danger, and no patient contact.
Here’s another fun thing you can do with this theory: understand why women are so well represented in college math classes. Women are around 20% of CS majors, physics majors, engineering majors, etc – but almost half of math majors! This should be shocking. Aren’t we constantly told that women are bombarded with stereotypes about math being for men? Isn’t the archetypal example of children learning gender roles that Barbie doll that said “Math is hard, let’s go shopping?” And yet women’s representation in undergraduate math classes is really quite good.
I was totally confused by this for a while until a commenter directed me to the data on what people actually do with math degrees. The answer is mostly: they become math teachers. They work in elementary schools and high schools, with people.
Then all those future math teachers leave for the schools after undergrad, and so math grad school ends up with pretty much the same male-tilted gender balance as CS, physics, and engineering grad school.
This seems to me like the clearest proof that women being underrepresented in CS/physics/etc is just about different interests. It’s not that they can’t do the work – all those future math teachers do just as well in their math majors as everyone else. It’s not that stereotypes of what girls can and can’t do are making them afraid to try – whatever stereotypes there are about women and math haven’t dulled future math teachers’ willingness to compete difficult math courses one bit. And it’s not even about colleges being discriminatory and hostile (or at least however discriminatory and hostile they are it doesn’t drive away those future math teachers). It’s just that women are more interested in some jobs, and men are more interested in others. Figure out a way to make math people-oriented, and women flock to it. If there were as many elementary school computer science teachers as there are math teachers, gender balance there would equalize without any other effort.
I’m not familiar with any gender breakdown of legal specialties, but I will bet you that family law, child-related law, and various prosocial helping-communities law are disproportionately female, and patent law, technology law, and law working with scary dangerous criminals are disproportionately male. And so on for most other fields.
This theory gives everyone what they want. It explains the data about women in tech. It explains the time course around women in tech. It explains other jobs like veterinary medicine where women dominate. It explains which medical subspecialties women will be dominant or underrepresented in. It doesn’t claim that women are “worse than men” or “biologically inferior” at anything. It doesn’t say that no woman will ever be interested in things, or no man ever interested in people. It doesn’t say even that women in tech don’t face a lot of extra harassment (any domain with more men than women will see more potential perpetrators concentrating their harassment concentrated on fewer potential victims, which will result in each woman being more harassed).
It just says that sometimes, in a population-based way that doesn’t necessarily apply to any given woman or any given man, women and men will have some different interests. Which should be pretty obvious to anyone who’s spent more than a few minutes with men or women.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m pleased Mr. Damore wrote this memo, because this conversation is long overdue. I hope people aren’t afraid to say what they think, because our cultural hostility toward debate is getting ridiculously dangerous. If people aren’t allowed to write a thought provoking memo in a polite manner questioning corporate policies without being fired, we’ve lost an essential component to any halfway decent civilization — the ability to have a conversation without name calling and career destruction. If we’ve truly lost that, we are doomed.
Fortunately, I do not think that’s the case, and I don’t think the SJW mindset of Google executives resonates at all with the vast majority of Americans irrespective of where they reside on the political spectrum. If you actually read the memo, it’s quite obvious that his intent was not to offend or insult anyone or any group. He was just a guy with a view that doesn’t fit into the Google echo chamber and he wanted to spark a conversation about it. For that, he was burned at the stake. Hopefully, the rest of us find that unacceptable.
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Part 3 on the topic will be published tomorrow.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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The level of self thinking and actual self-info-searching is a rarityin this gadget society anymore. Enter the new age of Ignorance-such as the global warming hype.
1) Ok, so girls major math and not physics because you can be a math, but not a physics, teacher?! I thought i had a gotcha, but hey, you’ve everything figured out! I am plain amazed at the flawlessness of your arguments. Perfect like a circle. What about… Chemistry? Design/Industrial design? Architecture?
2) Who added abstractness to the “things” bundle, by the way? Was this researched or did it just pop up in your text like a mushroom? I very much disagree on this one.
3) Plus, regarding the firing of this engineer, Sundar Pichai in his memo clearly acknowledges that the call for discussion was a valuable one and that discussion is going to happen and does not end with firing this engineer. The firing was due to his breaking the code of conduct or however they call it at Google. If you demand that people accurately read the initiating memo, please do the same with any subsequent memos.
4) Women make great mathematicians and programmers, and liking “things” such as electronic boards or robotic arms has nothing to do with the beautifully abstract craft of programming.
You weren’t listening to the Dude’s story…
Just what precise reason did Pichai give in the memo/statement for the firing, if not “perpetuating gender sterotypes” as Damore alleged? How does the tweet from M.K. in his article not clearly articulate the hypocrisy of that specific reasoning?
1. Not sure what you are even referring to. Did you actually read the memo?
2. Abstraction and the human capacity (AND interest levels) for it has been measured for a long time. The memo focuses on the interest aspect, not the capacity aspect, because it has been shown repeatedly that women and men have effectively equal capacities.
3. I have a feeling that whether or not the memo violated Google’s code of conduct is going to be determined in court in the near future.
4. Of course. The memo covers this and at no point says that women can’t excel in these areas. Back to #1, I am sort of wondering if you actually read it. Nowhere in the memo does it say that women lack a capacity for these things, just that on-average over the whole population, more men are interested in them than women. Seriously, that is the gist of it. Nowhere does it say that women have less capacity or capability, just less interest at a population level, and at the individual level you will find many women with the requisite interest.
The studies the memo pulls data from have shown trends indicating that more men like “things” than women when tabulating individual preferences. It is not saying that women cannot or do not like “things”, just that there is a statistical trend showing that more members of one gender than the other have a preference. Furthermore, the memo explicitly states that biology is only one suspected factor, on top of social factors. More succinctly, the memo is saying that the gender disparity in tech fields is due to more than discrimination alone (and many people, particularly those that are deliberately misrepresenting the content of the memo, ARE arguing that it is the sole cause of the disparity, which has zero basis in reality).
Many people seem to be concerned that, even if what the memo states is correct, showing that sexism is not the only (or even primary) cause of the gender disparity in tech will somehow lead to the conclusion that sexism does not exist. That is unfounded fear-mongering. Of course sexism exists, and all but an extreme fringe of people would claim otherwise. The memo also clearly states that gender discrimination exists in the tech world, but it tries to make the case that it cannot possibly serve as the full explanation for the observed disparities. Is it a factor? Of course. Is it the ONLY factor? There is zero evidence to support such a claim.
You clearly can’t do math. Must be a woman… he said that there are MORE math teachers needed at all levels. Most students have one physics class throughout their whole grade school and high school career. (Some have zero) whereas everyone has math every year. Duh!
> breaking the code of conduct or however they call it at Google
….by making a public call to discussion. He just should have kept that call to himself and have the said discussion with his wife and Google would tolerate him further.
“regarding the firing of this engineer, Sundar Pichai in his memo clearly acknowledges that the call for discussion was a valuable one and that discussion is going to happen and does not end with firing this engineer. The firing was due to his breaking the code of conduct or however they call it at Google. If you demand that people accurately read the initiating memo, please do the same with any subsequent memos.”
OK. I can play this game.
I “demand” that you re-read what Michael wrote. As he “clearly” addressed both of your points above.
The overarching point is that Pichai’s memo is incredibly hypocritical in light of the fact that he fired Damore for starting the discussion which he simultaneously called “valuable”.
Hence the tolerance police cartoon at the beginning.Which you might want to print out and put on your refrigerator until it sinks in.
> Sundar Pichai in his memo
Quote:
Google fired the engineer. Its ‘Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance’ stated:
We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company. [..] Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.
(Translation: “You are welcome to discuss your alternative policy views – unless we disagree with them.”)
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/08/equality-or-diversity-questions-from-a-google-memo.html
I think one of the most sexist things one can do is to assume that male “leadership” roles are inherently superior. I would not be able to tolerate a job where I had to stay away from my family for long periods of time, especially if I was working for someone else. I value my happiness, peace of mind, and life balance too much for it to be worth it at any price. I may be more self aware than some ambitious young women are, who could be pidgeonholed into a job like this for the sake of “diversity” even though it quickly makes all sides miserable…and how can you have individual accomplishments when you’re judged as representing a group?
The comments to Mr. Damore’s memo which I read yesterday in no way prepared me for its substance. I think Google did Mr. Damore a huge favor by sending him to some other company which will be glad to have such a thoughtful, intelligent, and respectful employee. At a greater salary, I expect.
By the same token, I think other companies may be taking note of the vitriolic commenters’ names, and putting them on a “no-hire” list. That sort of reflexive, antagonistic, ideological non-thinking should have no place in a company dedicated to intellectual progress.
“Thinking outside the box”, indeed. Google has shown its utter inability to do so.
For all the talk people have about bringing out “Reductio ad Hitlerum/Godwin’s Law,” people forget that he’s only the fourth worst despot of the last century behind Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin.
If we want to go Red Scare with it, we are seeing the fruits of what Yuri Bezmenov called Ideological Subversion. Sides/Tribes will move from their foundational beliefs just so long as they are opposite the current belief of those they are against.
I wonder how were Hitler and other surnames even made it to the topic.
Are you trying to hi-jack the discussion of genders and statistics and push us all to “go Red Scare” and “Russian collusion” and all that politically correct hysteria good citizens have to take part in today?
RE: Arioch The. Hitler/Nazi’s made it into the conversation when others accused Damore of being one, see early paragraph in the article. My response was mostly tongue in cheek but also a relevant point when there are those who constantly refer to others they disagree with the despot pejorative. It’s Godwin’s Law being taken offline and multiplied.
As to Ideological Subversion, I have no other way of explaining the mass proliferation of questionable science being taken as irrefutable evidence. So many competing ideas that people can’t find consensus so when they latch onto feelings for an attempt at rational discourse everything turns out irrational.
My perhaps personal problem with that your tongue in chick, is when Poland in 1919 invaded Ukraine and two other neighbors – and occupied their large chunks until 1939 – they claimed to do it “to save Europe from Russian bolshevism”.
When Poland in 1938 together with Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia (best tank plants of the time) – they bragged how they forced Russian savages out of European politics.
When Hitler invaded USSR in 1941, he was aimed at extinctions of Slavs (and also Gypsies and Jews), but called it – rather similar to Poles – protecting Europe from Jewish bolshevism.
Now you say Hitler was lesser evil than Stalin, basically repeating all the mantras invaded to make genociding Russians a righteous civilized act.
At least, then include USA presidents to the list, whose defarming and CWA/PWA were inspirations for Stalin’s collectivization and GULag.
What it looks like to me is that as time goes on the left is becoming more and more unhinged. One of the founders of the Earth First! movement said the same thing just looking at it from the other side. He said that the Earth First! was created to make the Sierra Club look normal and presentable and now we are several stages past that.
it sadly is not about left, or right. it is not limited to politics.
as underground movement gains strength in mainstream it becomes a career trampoline and the same persons people fled away to create this new movement, those persons see opportunities and dive into this previously informal subculture, that was created back ago exactly to escape them.
it is not only in politics, for example a very harsh and cynical and rather anti-social subculture of anonymous said being subdued to similar process too:
(strong language warning) https://web.archive.org/web/20170525135936/https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/The_cancer_that_is_killing_/b/
PS. @Michael two “green” announcements at top of https://www.reddit.com/r/encyclopediadramatica/ might be of some interest, though also can be just a one more of many sad but mundane issues.
Mike, this case is simply the ongoing war on whistleblowers of all kinds and in every place. Whistleblowers are people who expose corruption, be it in the government, in a corporation, or even in culture. And here, just like every other case, the whistleblower is destroyed. This guy exposed the stifling culture of the Google workplace and its debilitating effect on morale, and he was purged for it.
I don’t expect this ridiculous farce to have any effect on the “Pop Cultists” — a term more fitting than “leftist ideologue” since the hysteria we are witnessing seems to be driven by pop culture icons, celebrities, and the so-called intellectuals of the left.
No, the pop cultists won’t step back and say “Things have kinda gone too far” until the condemnations, expulsions, terminations, arrests, incarcerations, confinements, and executions start to claim too many of their own.
Then, they’ll be like the Russians after 1937, the French after 1794, the Cambodians after 1975: “I don’t know how it ever got so far out of hand.”
They never considered to ask what horribly corrupt politicians and powerbrokers of the time needed it to happen for their own purposes…
Whistleblowers of discrimination, a.k.a. “whiners”?
> like the Russians after 1937
1937 is a good example, exactly because it was the year where “snake bit its own tail” and illegal ways of arrests and investigations suddenly became less inclusive and were redirected to the persons inventing and promoting them.
Solzhentsyn says it was because of natural tendency of corruption to spread more and more, that was overlooked by power-drunkards.
Stalinists say it was deliberate play of USSR government, who could not bring mid-level officers to subordination by legal means and had to re-use their illegal ways.
However they describe who was the target of 1937-1938 similarly and they both deny those years created some special terror, but only redirected it to strata thought themselves superhumans – and those immediately saw the horrors and started whining and playing victims.
So your idea
> No, the pop cultists won’t step back …. until (repressions) start to claim too many of their own.
might be much more on the point than you think.
Also, Soviet Union was not “Russia”, it was anti-Russia, even officially. Unless you try to say USSR was democratic state with government elected by free majority vote. What you said above is close to racial prejudice.
I have a BS in math with a lot of statistics. The first thing one must understand when we say men and women are different is that it is meant in a statistical way with a different population distribution for each.
I was not encouraged to study math. The interest just came naturally. Men’s interest is not because of their greater ability. Males’ interest is because of it being difficult. Males like the mental challenge. Their brains are designed for problem solving. Females will give up a lot sooner on a problem than a male will.
Concerning leadership, the reason for so many males being great leaders is that great leaders tend to be sacrificial. The most manly thing you can do is to be sacrificial, to think of others needs first. Most females are too self centered to be great leaders. Hillary Clinton is one example.
Based on my personal experience, women tend to think of the needs of others far more than men.
They also tend to be less self-centered.
This is my personal experience.
@Michael, basically u said women tend to turn office into a family while men tend to turn office into machine, army. While former option should provide for pleasant warm atmosphere, it does not scale up. It should be perfect in some SOHO size company, in startup, etc. But if it gains steam and grows into larger many-levels corporations – this just does not scale up. So, then women would naturally remain leaders of small working groups, where their preferred family approach works great. And to grow to higher floors they either have to abandon that in favor of “masculine traits” or be inefficient…
MK, yes on a personal level and if they would stay that way they have the potential to be a good leader. But, too many times when they get into a position of authority they think they have to act like a man, which to them means being more assertive.
My comment was more about females seeking leadership positions. They make it about themselves. Again, Clinton is an example.
My position is supported by surveys. A high percentage of both males and females would prefer not to have a woman boss.
Men understand leader is a position. We can be friends after work and respect their authority during work. I have seen too many female bosses that are very impersonal because they think that if they were not, their authority would be undermined.
Here’s how I see it.
Men in general tend to seek status/power more than women because they tend to possess, on average, more of what we would define as masculine traits/energy. I don’t think this makes them better leaders, but rather, that these traits tend to propel you into positions of power, particularly in the society we inhabit.
I don’t think women in positions of power in our culture (CEO or high powered politician let’s say) are “acting” like men at all, I think these women tend to be ones that naturally posses high levels of what we would call masculine traits/energy, even more than the average male, which is why they end up in those positions — they desire them and work to attain them. They aren’t “acting” at all, it’s their true nature.
As far as if both men and women tend to react negatively on average to women with high levels of masculine traits, I suppose it’s possible that’s the case.
For the record, at my last Wall Street job at Sanford Bernstein, the CEO was a woman and she was extremely competent, respected and well-liked. I don’t think men are naturally better leaders, but I think men definitely prioritize status and power more than women, likely for evolutionary reasons.
A footnote to this discussion:
A 2015 article by Anne-Marie Slaughter, who shows up in Google’s story in other posts (and not in a good way), points to the toxic workload so common in Corporatelandia and its soul-destroying (my word, not hers) effect on both men and women. Because of the these firms’ unwillingness to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate family life, they drive women (and some men) away. And don’t seem to understand why they can’t keep them. It has been this way for decades, and has only gotten worse since the introduction of smart phones. There is an unspoken but palpable expectation that workers are available 24/7 to meet the firms’ needs. I think this will only improve with active, vocal pushback, at all socio-economic levels.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/a-toxic-work-world.htmleffects on both men and women.