The GenderSci Lab Takes On the Gender Equality Paradox Hypothesis: Introduction and Primer

Artist credit: Brianna Weir, 2019

Author: Heather Shattuck-Heidorn

Is the feminist project to bring about parity for women and men in traditionally male fields doomed? Recent headlines trumpet that "The more gender equality, the fewer women in STEM." The American Enterprise Institute proposes that it is futile to fund efforts to increase women in STEM fields, given that, “as paradoxical and counter-intuitive as it seems, female underrepresentation in STEM may actually be the result of the great advances in female empowerment, progress, and advancement that have taken place in recent decades, and not the result of systemic gender discrimination.” Meanwhile, men's rights activists exalt new findings as evidence that women just naturally don’t prefer science.

These bold claims stem from the “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis, which is simply this: Some of the countries with the highest gender equity scores on internationally-comparable indices also show the largest average sex differences in prefrences for STEM careers. In other words, in countries with more gender equality, like Norway and Sweden, fewer women choose to enter STEM fields than in countries like Algeria or Turkey. 

The “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis regards this non-intuitive finding as demonstrating the persistence of sex differences in even the most gender-equal of circumstances. And this is taken as evidence that these differences are innate. That is, in the most gender-equal societies, which are also often highly developed economically, people are free to follow their interests and strengths in choosing career paths - which naturally differ between men and women.

In itself, the observation that women go into STEM fields more often in Tunisia and Egypt than in Finland is not a new finding. For example, sociologist Maria Charles, featured in a GenderSci Lab Q&A in an upcoming post, describes her decades of analysis of how occupational preferences and gender beliefs vary across time and space and has even written a prize-winning paper on the subject, published in 2009. ¹ Charles interprets the variation she uncovers as reflecting how stereotypical cultural norms and gender essentialist beliefs are entrenched even within societies with an outward commitment to gender parity. As this simple example of an alternative interpretation of the same data demonstrates, the Gender Equality Paradox is only a paradox if you start with particular assumptions. Yet it has received widespread attention and deserves close analysis.

Over the past year, the GenderSci Lab has been engaged in a critical analysis of the “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis and its accompanying assumptions and implications. Two outcomes of our efforts are a Corrigendum issued on the original paper ² and a peer-reviewed Commentary, “Is there a gender equality paradox in STEM?” in the journal of Psychological Science.³ In the commentary, we share our reanalysis of some of the data used by Stoet and Geary (2018) and argue that their findings are likely spurious. In this blog post series, we expand on these contributions and offer a thorough consideration of the “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis and its theoretical and methodological underpinnings and the assumptions required for it to operate.

“The Gender Equality Paradox is only a paradox if you start with particular assumptions. ”

Stoet & Geary’s “The Gender Equality Paradox in STEM”

Aiming to understand how STEM ability and degree completion correlate with gender equity, psychologists Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary’s 2018 paper, “The Gender-Equality Paradox in STEM” compares national-level sex differences in adolescent STEM achievement scores and tertiary STEM degree completion with a nation’s gender equity score (using the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI)).⁴ Stoet and Geary find a negative correlation between a country’s GGGI score and women’s “propensity” to complete a tertiary STEM degree (figure below).

Scatterplot of women among STEM graduates vs a nation’s score on the Global Gender Gap Index (y-axis), from Stoet and Geary, 2018, preprint available at http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/4753/6/symplectic-version.pdf

This negative relationship is not, they find, due to competency in STEM subjects - girls outperform boys in STEM in most countries. Rather than competency underlying the relationship, Stoet and Geary propose that there are sex differences in the sense of efficacy and joy that males and females feel in STEM domains relative to reading. Though girls are just as good at math and science as boys, girls tend to be even better at reading, while boys tend to have better scores in STEM than in reading. Therefore, it is relative efficacy and enjoyment that matters, rather than absolute academic strength.

This is not a new argument. As girls’ test scores in STEM subjects have steadily improved over the last several decades, the blunt argument that women don’t enter STEM fields because they simply lack the technical chops is fading - and the argument of relative strengths has emerged as a naturalized explanation of why, despite demonstrating capacity, women still lag behind men in entering STEM fields.

Stoet and Geary’s second interpretation of the observed relationship comprises the heart of the “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis. They claim that the relationship between gender equality and STEM degrees can be explained by female vs. male STEM efficacy and enjoyment coupled with economic security within a given country. Less gender-equal countries are also often poorer, and females within them may be more motivated by economic pressure to pursue STEM careers, despite finding less enjoyment in STEM. In contrast, many of the most gender-equal countries are also richer. In these nations, women are often less bound by economic security concerns and can express their natural preferences (and pursue their relative strengths) towards other careers.

Stoet and Geary aren’t the only researchers presently exploring how gender equality indices relate to preferences and personality traits. Falk and Hermle have found fewer sex differences in personality traits like risk-taking, altruism, and trust in less gender equal countries.⁵ In contrast, Lippa reports relatively stable sex differences in extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and occupational preferences in relation to national gender equality.⁶ Other researchers are investigating traits like benevolence and self-direction.⁷

We focus on the Stoet and Geary paper in this blog series because it has received the widest attention and is closest to the heart of our collective expertise on sex/gender and STEM. But we expect that many of the points we make are broadly applicable to similar uses of gender equality indices to examine sex differences in preferences. This body of work shares common assumptions and methodologies - particularly in using the international metrics of gender equality as a stand-in for gender-neutral cultural environments.

The Gender Equality Paradox is the new vanguard of innate sex difference champions

The “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis is widely referenced to support the view that, no matter the efforts, women will not achieve parity in STEM fields in the US and similar countries.

Alessandro Strumo, the physicist who in 2018 surprised the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) with a manifesto of complaints about “gender in physics” (and was promptly suspended from CERN), used the Gender Equality Paradox in arguing that women do not go into STEM because they prefer relational disciplines and just aren’t smart enough. Writers on the self-styled “intellectual dark web” blog Quillette cite it when explaining the lack of women in computer science. Jordan Peterson, the academic champion of the men’s rights movement, references the Gender Equality Paradox in explaining the ways in which women and men are naturally different. Discussions on internet sites like reddit link the paradox to biologically determined differences between men and women, inscribed in our genes by evolutionary pressures.

“The Gender Equality Paradox is interpreted by these advocates as providing new support for a very old idea: women aren’t fit for, and do not like, the sciences”

The Gender Equality Paradox is interpreted by these advocates as providing new support for a very old idea: women aren’t fit for, and do not like, the sciences. But despite being routinely cited as if it falls in line with prior arguments on why women are not fit for STEM fields, there are actually significant conceptual differences between the paradox and prior iterations of this position.

A shifting ground: From cognitive abilities to preferences to aspirations; from fixed nature to environmental context

Artist credit: Brianna Weir, 2019

Champions of the notion that males and females exhibit deep, thoroughgoing sex differences in abilities, preferences, and aspirations used to stake their claims on differences in cognitive abilities. After all, on average, women reliably scored lower on STEM tests as recently as a few decades ago. They could also point to sex differences throughout the entire STEM realm - from medical degrees to astronomy, women were underrepresented in the STEM fields.

Of course, this has all radically changed in the last several decades. Girls and women now outperform boys on STEM tests in many countries, leaving little basis for a blunt cognitive capacity claim. And the so-called STEM fields have been reduced to a mere sliver of their former male dominance, as women increasingly approach parity or become the majority of graduates in disciplines such as Agriculture and Natural Resources, Architecture, Biological Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, and Physical Sciences (National Center for Education Statistics) - at this point, it’s really Computer Science and Engineering that lag behind.

In response to this shifting terrain, those looking to nature to explain the lack of women in fields like computer science have moved from capacity to preferences, arguing that women simply do not like these fields.⁸ This is often short-handed as “people vs. things,” with women preferring to work with people, while men prefer to work with things. With the emergence of the notion of relative strengths, the argument shifts yet again - from natural preferences of women for people and men for things, to the idea of relative ability in different domains, self-efficacy, and aspirations.

Even more radical than the shifts from ability to aspirations is the shift from sex differences as innate and fixed to sex differences as contingent on the environment. The Gender Equality Paradox completely concedes that behavioral differences can be radically altered by the environment. At face value, the Gender Equality Paradox finds that women have just as much potential to be engineers or computer scientists as men - indeed, they are the majority of degree earners in some countries.

But issues with the Gender Equality Paradox go far beyond logical inconsistencies of men’s rights activists in using it to bolster a failing position of women’s innate inferiority in STEM fields. There are deep methodological and theoretical issues at work in this field of research.

Over the coming days, we will be publishing each of these posts, unpacking the questions we pose below. Links will be added when posts are live!

Blog Series

Gender Equality Paradox Monkey Business: Or, How to Tell Spurious Causal Stories about Nation-Level Achievement by Women in STEM

This post is our data-heavy unpacking of how, through attempted replication and sensitivity analyses, we came to be skeptical of how Stoet and Geary measure women in STEM and the implications their measure has for their hypothesis. GenderSci lab director Sarah Richardson and public health epidemiologist Joe Bruch have fun exploring other strong correlations with women in STEM, and talk a little about some of the issues inherent in the study design and the claims produced.

Measuring Gender Equality: Why the GGGI is Not the Right Measure for Gender Equality Paradox Research

Here, we turn our attention to Gender Equity Indices and how they are used to measure gender equality. The Gender Equality Paradox hypothesis presumes that the Global Gender Gap Index is the right tool for measuring cultural gender equality. But is it? In this post, measurement expert Marion Boulicaut unpacks measurement as a concept and considers whether the GGGI is up for the task it has been given.

Gender Equality Is Not Gender Neutrality

Having a gender-sensitive way to compare development within and across countries is wonderful - but how useful are GEIs as a measure of neutrality of gender roles within a country? It is routinely assumed that a high score on a nation-level gender equity index is synonymous with a more gender-neutral cultural environment, relatively free of bias against women in career choices and personality development. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of gender as a sociocultural construct. Here, psychologist Nicole Noll explains how attitudes, stereotypes, and norms relate to gender, and why gender equality in domains like political representation wouldn’t necessarily predict gender equality in other domains.

Gender Stereotypes, Gendered Self-Expression, and Gender Segregation in Fields of Study: A Q&A with Professor Maria Charles

Sociologist Maria Charles - who has been researching global patterns in gender segregation for nearly 30 years  - generously agreed to be interviewed for this series. Here, we discuss her research, how fields are segregated by gender, and her take on the Gender Equality Paradox hypothesis.

If Not a Paradox, Then What?  7 Alternative Explanations for the Inverse Correlation Between the Global Gender Gap Index and Women’s Tertiary Degrees in STEM

Finally, after our deep dives into the data, assumptions, and analytical choices used in much of the Gender Equality Paradox hypothesis work, we turn to biological anthropologist Meredith Reiches to consider other explanations for observed national-level data on women in STEM. For instance, could some Nordic and Western European countries have specific histories of bias against women in STEM? Or could a lurking variable such as gender differences in education-related out migration explain some of the observed patterns?

In conclusion - we’re not sold that the Gender Equality Paradox hypothesis offers anything beyond a splashy, counter-intuitive headline. And we think that after you review the evidence, you’ll agree.

Authorship Statement:

This blog series on the Gender Equality Paradox emerged from collective GenderSci Lab discussions. Each author outlined and drafted their own piece. GenderSci Lab members offered comments and authors integrated these revisions. Brianna Weir developed original artwork for the series. Maria Charles authored and approved the final version of her interview answers and provided images and figures for our use. Tyler Vigen developed a “women in STEM” spurious correlations widget for us and provided permission for the use of his findings in this blog series. Juanis Becerra and Nicole Noll assisted with formatting the blogs for the website. Heather Shattuck-Heidorn oversaw the blog series development, review, and publishing process. For the Psychological Science paper, Sarah Richardson drafted the manuscript. Meredith Reiches and Joe Bruch performed the data analysis. All authors (Richardson, Reiches, Bruch, Boulicault, Noll, and Shattuck-Heidorn) provided critical revisions and approved the final version of the manuscript for submission. Action editor Tim Pleskac shepherded the Corrigendum and Commentary through the peer review process at Psychological Science. We thank the anonymous peer reviewers and Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary for their contributions. 

Recommended Citation:

Shattuck-Heidorn, Heather. “The GenderSci Lab Takes On the Gender Equality Paradox Hypothesis: Introduction and Primer,” GenderSci Blog, February 11, 2020, https://genderscilab.org/blog/the-gendersci-lab-takes-on-the-gender-equality-paradox-hypothesis-introduction-and-primer

Endnotes:

[1] Charles, M., & Bradley, K. (2009). Indulging our gendered selves? Sex segregation by field of study in 44 countries. American journal of sociology, 114(4), 924-976.

[2] Corrigendum: The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education. (2020). Psychological Science, 31(1), 110–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619892892

[3] Richardson, S. S., Reiches, M. W., Bruch, J., Boulicault, M., Noll, N. E., & Shattuck-Heidorn, H. (2020). Is There a Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)? Commentary on the Study by Stoet and Geary (2018). Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619872762

[4] Stoet, G., & Geary, D. C. (2018). The gender-equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Psychological Science, 29(4), 581-593.

[5] Falk, A., & Hermle, J. (2018). Relationship of gender differences in preferences to economic development and gender equality. Science, 362(6412), eaas9899.

[6] Lippa, R. A. (2010). Sex differences in personality traits and gender-related occupational preferences across 53 nations: Testing evolutionary and social-environmental theories. Archives of sexual behavior, 39(3), 619-636.

[7] Schwartz, S. H., & Rubel-Lifschitz, T. (2009). Cross-national variation in the size of sex differences in values: Effects of gender equality. Journal of personality and social psychology, 97(1), 171.

[8] Pinker, S. (2003). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature New York: Penguin.