Darwinian theories about women being wired differently than men are perpetuated because science backs them up. We don't know exactly how, or how much of the difference is genetic vs. cultural, but it's just a reality that men and women have different motivations, aptitudes, etc.
Nobody would argue that evolution has made us different physically. Men are much stronger and better coordinated. Women are more able to bear pain and often have stronger senses of smell and taste. Why would it not stand to reason that evolution might make each sex better at some mental tasks than the other, just as it has physical? It's not sexist to point out that male weight-lifters are able to bench more because men have been designed by evolution to be stronger. Why is it sexist to say we show up more frequently in science departments because we have also been designed by evolution to be better at math?
Sexism is not believing that one sex is different than another, it's believing that those differences make it inferior.
Because compared with bench-pressing, claims of mathematically ability being better in men (and partially ordered, to boot) is seriously jumping the gun.
We know what's involved in a bench press. We understand how testosterone stimulates the production of muscle. We are nowhere close with mathematical ability. We have no theory of mathematically ability -- we really don't know what it means, or if the simplest metrics are even useful for higher level math. We have no experimental results, because we have no controlled variables. We have few pieces of data, none of which are conclusively disentangled from cultural and historical influence.
In the past two decades, the number of women scoring highly on the IMO, the IOI, the Putnam, and SMPY has gone up by roughly a factor of six. Doubtful that the number of girls with 'math talent genes' have sextupled that quickly. Isn't this evidence that we should hold off on our conclusions?
But we need to be open to the fact that they are there. It hinders scientific and social progress to scream sexism any time someone suggests the sexes might be different in some way.
It might be absurd to assert equality, but it's a decent postulate to take while we don't know for sure. And I think asserting the certainty of particular innate differences, without sufficient evidence, is more dubious than the corresponding assertion of equality.
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Not convinced? By the same theory, one would think that men in today's society would be highly encouraged to have children with multiple partners -- at roughly age 18. Yet, we discourage both for no apparent genetic benefit. Rather, it's for a societal benefit.
As I note below, often societal benefit trumps genetic benefit, which remains true as long as there is a high genetic correlation between the people in that society.
Women and men are wired differently. That much is a fact. The obvious, those of reproductive organs, are visible and nobody would deny them. Those in the head, are invisible and so somehow made into a sensitive issue, but significant differences exist. Women have a larger corpus callosum than men; one could suppose then, that their hemispheres talk faster with each other: efficient multitasking. There is nothing wrong with this step: it is the same kind of reasoning that you apply to saying that giraffes have long necks to eat food in trees.
The problem about discrimination is what happens after this step: a man is unable to multitask. A giraffe is unable to eat food that is not in trees.
But these are two things. And most knee-jerk antidiscriminationist rhetoric lumps them into one. Also, I am not calling you one :)
We are in agreement, and I give you credit for explaining the point better than I did.
I also probably should have been more specific when I said it's dangerous to believe that "women [are] wired for different work than men". I'm not arguing that women and men are the same in every way. Clearly there are differences. I'm saying it's unfortunate to take a problem like the low number of women founders and to use Darwinian theory to say "women just aren't wired for this type of intellectual work." This makes it all too easy to overlook other causes of the problem and, as you point out, can lead to discrimination in various forms.
Indeed, someone just posted this timely article on HN today about a study showing that "boys are not innately better at maths than girls, and any difference in test scores is due to nurture rather than nature." http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2283083,00....
Here's a good rebuttal. http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/duke/050106
Not convinced? By the same theory, one would think that men in today's society would be highly encouraged to have children with multiple partners -- at roughly age 18. Yet, we discourage both for no apparent genetic benefit. Rather, it's for a societal benefit.
Unfortunately, Darwinian theories about "women being wired for different work than men" are perpetuated at all levels. (Anyone remember Lawrence Summers at Harvard?) And because people actually begin to believe the theories, they become in themselves a form of subtle discrimination that both discourages women from attempting certain activities and prevents them from being offered certain opportunities.
It's really important not to belive it yourself and to consider all the many factors at play here.