Feminist Heresy at the Globe, Heads Will Roll!

I was pleasantly surprised by this article in Sundays' Boston Globe, about why there are fewer women than men in the computer field and in physical sciences:

"When it comes to the huge and persistent gender gap in science and technology jobs, the finger of blame has pointed in many directions: sexist companies, boy-friendly science and math classes, differences in aptitude."

"Women make up almost half of today's workforce, yet hold just a fraction of the jobs in certain high-earning, high-qualification fields. They constitute 20 percent of the nation's engineers, fewer than one-third of chemists, and only about a quarter of computer and math professionals."

"....Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else."

Like working fewer hours, working with other people, and with living, organic things.  Ahhh, but what about countries with higher numbers of women engineers?   

"In her (Susan Pinker's) controversial new book, The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap, Pinker gathers data from the journal Science and a variety of sources that show that in countries where women have the most freedom to choose their careers, the gender divide is the most pronounced."

I can almost smell the acrid smoke coming out of feminists' ears as they read this.

"The United States, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom, which offer women the most financial stability and legal protections in job choice, have the greatest gender split in careers. In countries with less economic opportunity, like the Philippines, Thailand, and Russia, she writes, the number of women in physics is as high as 30 to 35 percent, versus 5 percent in Canada, Japan, and Germany."

" 'It's the opposite of what we'd expect,' says Pinker. 'You'd think the more family-friendly policies, and richer the economy, the more women should behave like men, but it's the opposite. I think with economic opportunity comes choices, comes freedom.' "

As a commenter asked at Dr. Helen, can Larry Summers get his job back?