The Left wants you to believe that all differences between men and women come from harmful stereotypes created by society. We are all blank slates, the liberal thinking goes, perfectly equal in our wants and skills until the evil patriarchy pushes women into occupations that, in a truly equal society, they would never choose.
Like everything else the Left believes, the blank slate is completely false. Boys and girls are just wired differently, on average, at birth, and they are going to have preferences that match their gender, on average, throughout life.
Many studies have already established these facts, but researchers from the University of Missouri and Essex University recently published a new study showing which types of professions the two genders, on average, seem to prefer.
Psychology professors David Geary and Gijsbert Stoet looked at nearly a half-million responses from the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment that asked 15- and 16-year-olds from 80 nations, “What kind of job do you expect to have when you are about 30 years old?”
The professors then classified the responses into three categories: things-oriented (such as welding and programming), people-oriented (such as teaching and healthcare), and other (such as lawyer and accountant).
In every country, boys were more likely to choose things-oriented professions, and girls were more likely to choose people-oriented professions. The differences were pretty stark. The average for all countries was that four boys preferred things-oriented jobs for every one girl who did, and about three girls preferred people-oriented jobs for every one boy who did.
But there was some variation among the countries, but not in the direction you may think. It turns out that the more liberal countries with more equal gender norms (such as Sweden and Norway) had bigger gender differences than countries where the patriarchy is very much dominant (such as Morocco). So, for example, in Morocco, there were only 1.5 boys for every girl looking for things-oriented jobs, while in Sweden, the ratio was 4.8 boys to every one girl.
The researchers speculate that women in patriarchal countries are more interested in making money, hence the bigger focus on things-oriented occupations, while women in more gender-equal countries were freer to choose an occupation that truly interested them.
Again, all of these findings are on average, so there is nothing abnormal about a woman who wants to be a welder or a man who wants to teach. But unless we want a bunch of unhappy female mechanics and disgruntled customer service representatives, we should probably stop trying to force equal gender participation in every profession.
