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Anatoly Karlin's avatar

One interesting question I long ago noticed on these charts is why is math such a sharp deviation for women?

If left to guess many would say medicine, I suspect.

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Sebastian Jensen's avatar

This is data from the 70s, so it might not be indicative of what women want to do now, though I can't say for certain.

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Darwin survival's avatar

Has it ever occurred to you that men are slightly more intelligent than women in terms of standard deviation?

That's why they're over-represented in disciplines that require a high level of cognitive ability.??

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Darwin survival's avatar

Men are over-represented in highly cognitively demanding fields because they have a higher standard deviation...

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Sebastian Jensen's avatar

check edit

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Ratty's avatar

It would be interesting to know whether men and women have equal career satisfaction in the cognitively demanding fields of physics and engineering, etc. Are the smarter women driven by prestige or is it a genuine interest in "things"?

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Reinformer's avatar

In higher-IQ mayors, are men more intelligent than women?

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Lapin Michel's avatar

Hello, what do you think of Sasha Gusev ?

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Lapin Michel's avatar

Hello, what do you think of Sasha Gusev ?

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Sebastian Jensen's avatar

Talented but wrong.

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Lapin Michel's avatar

Do you have an article that refute one of his claims ? Except Kirkegaard one.

Thanks

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Dejected PhD's avatar

I am not a social scientist but a physical sciences PhD and I've found this article quite flawed.

OP is comparing average IQ of the EIGHT females against that of the 336 males who study physics.

it's an absolute fact that males like studying physics way more than females.

the males that study physics will include many of the lower and mediocre of the crop compared to the extreme, absolutely top of the crop from the females that study physics.

that just drag the average IQ down for the males.

now, a more fair comparison would be to find out what is the top percentage of the EIGHT females that study physics compared to normal female population, then compare that against the same top percentage of the general males population that also study physics.

I'm pretty sure you'll find the average IQ of that male population much much higher, my guesstimate is 135+ IQ or so.

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Sebastian Jensen's avatar

I mean, you can check the rest of the categories if you want. There is a very clear difference in the lower tier majors, where the women are smarter than the men on average.

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Rat Patrol's avatar

Interesting, appreciate your attempt to prove your point.

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BWS92082's avatar

I'm still not clear on this--how can women be considerably overrepresented in low-IQ majors without being low-IQ themselves (when there is potentially only a small overall male advantage in IQ)?

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letsgetthisoverwith's avatar

Because male preferences do not look just like female preferences? As an analogy, how many women of similar attractiveness etc. of Arnold Schwarzenegger would mate with someone that looks like Patty Baena (Arnold's baby mama)? Barring large sums of money or certain exogenous chemicals entering the equation, few I reckon. In the same way the things that drive women's choice in major have significant differences with those that drive that of men. Perhaps high-IQ fields lack the same level of appeal to women as men.

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Efterblive's avatar

Because more women go to college, a lot more in fact.

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BWS92082's avatar

Significantly more women in college is a relatively recent phenomenon, but I believe women have always preferred the same majors, haven't they? Were today's low-IQ majors not low-IQ in the past when there were fewer women?

I guess it all depends on how big the low-IQ major pool of students is. If it is a relatively small pool, then most women could also be over-represented in the (larger?) average IQ majors and mathematically it would balance out.

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Antel's avatar

you should consider the microcultures which shapes all this mess. people tend to choose disciplines and study accordingly unfer the very effect of their surroundings, belonged microcultures

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