Gender equality paradox Puns

There is a great misunderstanding when it comes to gender equality and inequality. While people here seem to instinctively understand that there is something wrong with only focusing on pre & post revolution attire, we may not fully grasp why though. This post will put things in better context.

First of all, let's give a background of the statistics before the revolution when it came to women:

Female adult literacy was 24%. Female life expectancy was below 60. Only 46.5% of female adults survived to the age of 65. Birth rate was 6.4 child per women. Infant mortality rate was 124 deaths per 1000.

So, on average, a woman was most likely illiterate, had more than six children, there was a 12% chance her infant would die, and it was very likely she wouldn't survive to 65.

And just for comparison's sake, Turkey at that time was 45% literacy rate, almost double us. Average for Middle East & North Africa was 32%, so we were 25% BELOW the average in the middle east. Globally, it was around 60%. Jordan was 52%. Syria was 37%. Iraq was 32%.

So, compared to most countries in the region, who was already underdeveloped, we were behind.

Here you can compare Iran with the average of MENA (middle east, north africa):

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.FE.ZS?locations=ZQ-IR

Notice how we were below average, and then moved up the average. The average is now 72%, while Iran is 80% (latest data for World Bank was for 2016). This number should be higher now, obviously.

Most metrics are the same, look at gender parity index, regarding literacy:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.1524.LT.FM.ZS?locations=ZQ-IR

We were below average in MENA, and now we are above it.

Here is youth female literacy only, we were below average at 42%, above average today at 98%

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.1524.LT.FE.ZS?locations=ZQ-IR

Female life expectancy at birth, same, we were below, now above:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN?locations=ZQ-IR

And so on, no matter what metric you find, you see that we were below the average IN MENA, and I'm taking Mena, not developed countries! No sanctions, no war, support from

CLAIM 1: There exists a Gender Equality Personality Pardox.

CLAIM 2: There is far stronger evidential support for explaining this paradox through an evolutionary perspective rather than through a social role theory perspective.

The following are studies (across multiple countries, multiple cultures, and using massive sample sizes) that have found that, across cultures, as gender equality increases, gender differences in personality increase, not decrease:

1. https://sci-hub.do/https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/eaas9899

2. https://sci-hub.do/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18179326/

3. https://sci-hub.do/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19824299/

4. https://sci-hub.do/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijop.12529

Here is an excerpt from the fourth cross-cultural study:

>Sex differences in personality are larger in more gender equal countries. This surprising finding has consistently been found in research examining cross-country differences in personality (Costa, Terracciano, & Mccrae, 2001; McCrae & Terracciano, 2005; Schmitt, Realo, Voracek, & Allik, 2008). Social role theory (e.g., Wood & Eagly, 2002) struggles to account for this trend. This is because the pressure on divergent social roles should be lowest in more gender equal countries, thereby decreasing, rather than increasing, personality differences (Schmitt et al., 2008). Evolutionary perspectives (e.g., Schmitt et al., 2017) provide alternative accounts. These suggest that some sex differences are innate and have evolved to optimise the different roles carried out by men and women in our ancestral past. For example, male strengths and interests such as physical dispositions may be associated with protecting family and building homesteads, while female strengths and interests such as nurturing may be associated with caretaking of offspring and the elderly (Lippa, 2010).

Finally, conclusions – which can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ijop.12265 – are drawn by researchers on what these findings mean for the social role theory of gender differences:

>As noted earlier, social role theory posits gender differences in personality will be smaller in nations with more egalitarian gender roles, gender socialization and sociopolitical gender equity. Investigations of Big Five traits evaluating this prediction have found, in almost every instance, the observed cross-cultural patterns o

A controversial study published in Psychological Science in 2018 claimed that a “gender-equality paradox” exists in countries that have greater overall gender equality but an underrepresentation of girls and women in STEM fields. This week, Psychological Sciences published two commentaries—one from the authors and one from outside researchers—that have intensified the debate over the role of sex differences and social conditioning in educational and career choices.

In the original paper, coauthors Gijsbert Stoet, a psychologist at the University of Essex, and David Geary, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, state that Finland is a country that “excels in gender equality,” with girls outperforming boys in science, reports Inside Higher Ed( in Poland, 43.63 percent of STEM graduates are women, which would place it fifth for representation of women in STEM out of the 45 countries included in Stoet and Geary’s analysis. Yet Stoet and Geary reported a value of 26.9 percent, ranking Poland 20th. Why?”In 2015, Algeria had 287,914 tertiary graduates, 62.7% of whom were female. Of the 180,554 female graduates, 26.66% (n=48,135) obtained a degree in STEM. Of the male graduates, 38.89% (n=41,752) earned STEM degrees. Thus, for Algeria, the percentage of women among STEM graduates was 53.55%. Stoet and Geary, however, added the percentages of female and male STEM graduates (26.66% and 38.89%) to make their denominator, and therefore reported a very different female STEM degree rate of 40.7%.  Stoet and Geary’s resulting numbers are lower than the percentage of women among STEM graduates across all nations by an average of 8.84% ). As such, Finland should have less of a gender gap in STEM fields, they argue, yet the opposite is true: Finland has one of the lowest proportions of women earning STEM degrees, along with Norway and Sweden, which also rank high in gender equality.

In Algeria, on the other hand, gender equality is low, but there are more women studying science and technology, according to Buzzfeed’s summary of the paper( [A Controversial Study Claimed To Explain Why Women Don’t Go Into Science And Tech. It Just Got A 1,113-Word Correction.Jordan Peterson & American conservative think tanks cited the study to argue women naturally aren’t interested in technical fields. But it presented a “contrived and distorted picture,” said an outside researcher](https:/

Context:

The Gender Equality Paradox refers to the fact that the more gender equality in a country, the fewer women in STEM. A standard explanation is that women in these countries are freer to follow their passions and thus gender differences in interest (people vs thing, etc.) come into play. In contrast, women in less gender-equal/poorer countries are more guided by financial imperatives and thus choose more financially rewarding fields like STEM. Scott referred to this paradox and this explanation in one of his popular posts.

What's new?

The Harvard GenderSci lab has just checked the data in the famous article by Stoet and Geary on the Gender Equality paradox and claims it doesn't show what it's supposed to show. The GenderSci lab states that some of Stoet and Geary's data are spurious and that the paradoxical correlation does not hold if we change the measure of gender equality.

Here is the meat of the critique on which I focus my comments, and the reply by Stoet and Geary (paywalled). A broader presentation of the criticism is available here, with the associated Slate article here, and the academic paper here (paywalled).

Comments from a layman:

For me, the most convincing critique is that BIGI, another measure of gender equality introduced by the same Stoet and Geary, does not correlate with STEM enrollment of women. The reply from Stoet and Geary acknowledges this but claims that BIGI is an indicator of sex-differences in well-being rather than of women's empowerment. W

I'm fairly new to his content (I've seen enough to know what he stands for) but I've noticed that he quite often mentions the Gender Equality Paradox study. He uses this study to make the point that as societies become more egalitarian, the more gender division we see.

So I looked into the study and found that the study analyses the Global Gender Gap, which is only measures the relative health, income etc, and he concluded that the job disparity must increase when men and women are more equal. But it does not consider the social/societal influences on a person, which is inherently a relevant factor for accurately coming to his particular conclusion from this study.

So I tried to debate Peterson fans on multiple videos to point out how the study was actually conducted and how there is an uncontrolled variable, which is of proven relevance in the study. Either I got no response or they just made an assumption that I'm a feminist and just brought up irrelevant anti-feminist arguments, or that social influences are negligible (with no real evidence to back up this claim) because Scandinavia is 'already feminist'. My main point in questioning the validity of the claim based on the study he's using was almost entirely ignored, and if I made analogies to bring attention to it they just found the analogies condescending (despite proving they needed it). Also Peterson himself mentions in an interview where he brings up this study that, this was conducted by 'leftists' or somewhere along the line of leftists having conducted this study so that it can't be biased. Which leads me to think that he was either somewhat guilty or trying to mask any dishonest led by political positioning?

I find it it incredibly ironic that these people supposedly interested in philosophy won't question anything that Peterson says or if it is questioned it is defended with maximum tribal identity/politics. Anyone had similar experiences? and what was debated?

Edit: to give more insight, I was trying to be respectful and neutral in debating (just so it's clear I wasn't being a provocateur). They were mostly not too hostile either, but they just spewed irrelevant topics, largely about how the feminists are shutting down the world lol.

On the official website for APA they claim that men and women, from a psychological perspective, are essentially alike and only really differ due to the pressures that society puts upon them. They claim this even though there are many studies which have found the opposite to be true and show that more egalitarian societies actually have differences between the genders. For instance the scandinavian countries, specifically Finland, have are claimed to be among the most, if not the, most egalitarian countries in the world and yet despite the increased choice for people of both genders they have even less women in STEM. This trend is even seen on the other side of the spectrum with a much less egalitarian society like Algeria having a much higher percentage of women in STEM. The study that found both of these, which was performed by Gijsbert Stoet and David C. Geary, was quite the large study too with 472,242 participants from 67 different countries/regions. This same trend that found is even backed up by many other studies.

Its not as if this idea seems to be unknown either with my college psychology textbook even touching the anomalous trend. While I understand that APA likely does this due to the fact that people when told their gender is better or worse at something often then perform more accordingly to that trend, but this does not seem like such a binary issue. None of these studies found that no women or all women worked in STEM just that the amount differed based on a trend that could be observed. The study by Stoet and Geary even addresses how women often perform better than men in STEM subject while in schooling which also seems to go against this notion that the genders are identical or that acknowledging such a fact would hurt one of the genders.

I am also aware that APA may not want to acknowledge such findings due to the controversy they may bring to the organization, but as a group dedicated to the advancement of a certain field of knowledge should they not also be willing to address these points which have such solid evidence. In addition, while discussing the topic of wanting to be accepting and encouraging to all people would this not also be seen as disrespectful to people of trans community as APA's stance also seems to insinuate that people who feel they are a different gender than what they were born are already almost only different by a small factor of their body parts rather than any other more complex issues rooted in the way pe

So yeah, I play with Gender Equality: All (GEA from now on) a lot. There are 2 major problems with this.

"Create new vassal" button. With GEA that button will have a 50% chance of spawning a female vassal...including temple vassals. If you click that button on a temple holding, it will still assign a female vassal. Since most religions do not allow women to hold temple holdings, these vassals will automatically become feudal baronesses. Leading to "wrong type of holder". There's no way to fix this other than assassinating the "priestess" before she has kids or revoking the title. When you're so spoiled with that button, inviting a male courtier and manually giving him that one title out of 40 becomes extremely tedious.

Another thing that isn't really game-breaking but still annoying is the inconsistency of absolute cognatic. Iqta strictly forbids women from existing, while GEA aims to remove gender inequality. It's also confusing when a muslim becomes basque, which enforces Absolute cognatic. This is more a confusing game rules conflict than a bug, but it's still annoying