Originally Posted by
Oracle
This is assuming risk taking is somehow a beneficial trait for business. While there's a time and place for risk taking, it's not an all important business skill. Successful businesses survive because of a combination of risk taking and risk management. Risk taking is only really necessary during the early stages of a business, and during periods of large market shifts. Risk management is more valuable when a company is large and long-standing, since stability is more valuable at that point than rapid growth. Yet long-running companies still typically have male CEOs, despite testosterone encouraging risk taking and males producing more testosterone than women. From a purely biological standpoint, this is the worst possible gender to pick from for the role.
Big businesses have to take risks to outcompete the other big businesses, you are of course correct to a degree though, in addition its not just any males or just any females that are being picked for these roles its the ones that the companies think will do best, i.e. the roight balance of calculated risk taking and the ability to manage risk.
This is missing the point slightly anyway, testosterone is of course not the only difference between men and women and calculated risk taking and confidence are not the only desirable traits in a business leader. Im not going to pretend Im a biology expert or a business expert, my point is that its no surprise that different jobs have skewed amount of men and women.
No matter how I look at this statement, it looks like a modern reinterpretation of "this is a man's job". Risk taking and confidence are not binary traits determined easily by chemical levels, and can be fostered in the correct environment. Neither is risk taking or confidence required to be exceptionally high to be successful as a CEO. It looks more like the role is being labeled to fit a certain piece.
This is not what is meant; women can of coyrse be excellent CEOs, some biological differences could mean more men end up wanting and/or suiting different jobs to women but the right woman is clearly better than the wrong man. What I mean is; I fully expect there to be a skew in many jobs, some will suit more men and some more women, but that doesnt mean no woman is right for that job.
Studies even say that women either perform evenly, maybe even better than male counterparts when in leadership roles within business. While the sample size is small, it does beg the question of whether environmental factors, such as this assumption that males are better at business than women, push females away from pursuing an otherwise successful career in business. While it's not systemic discrimination, it is societal predisposition that functionally achieves the same result.
Can I have the study(ies), Im interested? I also cant comment on the studies if I havent seen them, but I would like to know how the studies simulated a real business environment, because I would assume its extremely complex and exceedingly difficult to accurately simulate.
But to write it all off as biological is a pretty big stretch. Women perform about equally to men in mathematics, yet they're underrepresented in STEM jobs, fields that emphasize strong math skills. Biologically, males and females seem about equal in learning math, yet representation heavily skews to favor males. What biologically would be causing this? People would have said something along the lines of "well females are more compassionate so they likely go to more service related jobs" which seems more like another example of tailoring the hole to the puzzle piece again. Why would being compassionate be a reason a woman avoids a STEM job? You can use compassion in STEM fields just as much as any other field. Again, it seems like societal influence pushes women into certain fields because of preconceived notions.
I cant disagree with you here, again biology is more than compassion and extremely complex, and again I cant pretend I know enough about biology to answer you. But Id ask you the same question, what particular societal influence (toys? tv? films?) would cause this?
I expect youll say a combination, but the same explanation could be given from my side, its too complex a question for me to properly answer and it is for you too! Whether its a problem or not is questionable (which is why its being questionned) because we cant prove the cause, but should we try to fix something if we dont know if something is wrong or not?
I actually looked into this, and this is false. The world of fashion is a man's world, with only around 40% of top fashion designers being women. So no, men are not discriminated against in this field, this is you discriminating against the field by assuming it's a woman's field.
It was a rhetoric, the point is that some fields have more men and some more women, I dont see it as discrimination in either case. The question posed is, do you see it as discrimination in both cases or just one?
It's less what they say you can't be, and more what they say you can be. Because of these aforementioned gender roles that society still perpetuates, the jobs children are pushed towards are different. There's been an improvement in recent years, but you'll still see that there's a gender divide even as children between jobs, and a lot of it seems to be based around gender stereotypes. Boys are more likely to want to grow up to be athletes, firefighters, astronauts etc. etc. while girls are more likely to want to grow up to be doctors, teachers, scientists, and chefs/bakers. It's also worth noting that, despite more girls wanting to be doctors, there's twice as many male doctors compared to female doctors in America. And female doctors performing, on average, better than male counterparts.
Basically, biology should be playing a minuscule amount in representation within a field. All genders are equally qualified, it just appears that the societal narrative steers genders into different fields.
Obviously this isnt very scientific but bare with me here; in my school life a lot of girls started off wanting to be doctors but then hated maths and chemistry as subjects and so stopped pursueing that career. Noone tells girls not to like maths and I dont see the underlying societal pressures telling then not to either, male and females brains are differently composed to could their liking of different subjects be stemmed from there? Its worth noting that following a career path not only requires you to be suited to that job but also for you to be suited to the path that takes you there and for the job to be suited to you. (Also a girls ideal of a doctors job isnt the same as the real thing ofc). Its also interesting you bring up chefs/baking because stereotypically in the household more women are shown to cook so societal pressures would push more girls to that career but iirc more chefs are male.
