In more egalitarian societies, we consistently see women make "better" choices when it comes to work/life balance etc, where as men are much more likely to unhealthily pursue career / etc doggedly even if it means sacrificing everything else.
It probably only tips the scales a tiny, tiny bit, but when you're talking about 7B people and societies that want to extract maximum efficiency from participants, it shows.
Also, romance writing and fiction writing as a whole (self-publish or not) is dominated by women and the hustle they need to do requires a ton of determination and business sense.
Would you say women are pursuing nursing because they want to be the best nurse in the world? That is the kind of behavior I'm saying you see more in men (as an average). I was under the impression that nursing is attractive because you get to work with people, it pays pretty well, you can do it with an associates degree, and you can have a good work/life balance. But yes, of course doing it well requires drive.
Again, the idea here is not "men have drive and women don't", it is "men by a razor thin margin are more inclined to doggedly pursue something to the exclusion of all else, which shows up when you're looking at entire populations and you've geared your society in a way where you elevate people that are the best at one very particular thing". A nurse having more drive than you isn't really the point. It is like when you say "men are stronger than women", it does not mean that any man will be able to best any woman in a contest of physical strength. Of course not.
Nursing requires continued certificate renewal and continued education. It's also competitive to get into any nursing program, so much so that you indeed need a lot of dogged pursuit to get in.
Also, as mentioned in a sibling comment, it used to be that you could find a single authoritative hosting of this lecture/essay, but now it's been ... adopted by the internet. I'd recommend googling and checking sources.
However, statistically men are more likely to be the breadwinners while women are more likely to have the luxury of "better" choices.
It used to be that you could find a single authoritative hosting of this lecture/essay, but now it's been ... adopted by the internet. I'd recommend googling and checking sources.
Nature vs Nurture - it's this combined with a lack of scientific rigor that I primarily disregard discussions in this area. At worst discussions become a screaming match of woke.
A large percentage of "normal" people, ie close to the median will see those famous people as potential role models. When their internal pattern matching engine detects that 90% of those belong to a class they do not identify with, that can cause a crisis of faith in their own dreams, self-esteem, etc.
At that point, there is no comfort to be found that 90% of the people at the very bottom belong to the same class as those at the top. Not only do they not see those at the bottom, they do not WANT to see them.
So if someone tells a story that explains the difference as a result of oppression, it becomes really tempting to chose that explanation, whether or not it is true.
Oppression may indeed be the main reason for differences in many cases, but even when it is not, it will be attractive to believe it is.
It's a bit like investing. Nature takes a more high risk approach with men. High risk can yield high reward, but it also means a higher rate of failure. This is why, when investing, the advice people generally give you is to make conservative/safe investment decisions.