Here We Go Again
Like a certain university president, New York Times columnist John Tierney has decided that he knows "what women want," as the title of his column today puts it.
Tierney wants to know whether, if you could eliminate all the social factors in the workplace and evaluate men and women based solely on merit, would women make as much as men?
For insight, he turns to a social science experiment that seems interesting but hardly definitive. (It's a little byzantine to explain here; if you're interested, go to the link.) The test aspired to determine each gender's appetite for competition.
The researchers' conclusion? "Even in tasks where they do well, women seem to shy away from competition, whereas men seem to enjoy it too much," Professor Niederle said.
Here's where Tierney gets into trouble, to my mind: "You can argue that this difference is due to social influences," Tierney says, "although I suspect it's largely innate, a byproduct of evolution and testosterone."
So far as I know, Tierney has no particular expertise in the field of biology, sociology, genetics, sociobiology, or any other field that might allow him to pronounce on why men seem more competitive in one experiment than women are.
So why does he jump to the conclusion that this apparent difference between the genders is genetically based?
Because, I think, the vogue of sociobiology in recent years has given people who like to dabble in this material just enough information to say dumb things that they think make them sound smart.
Also, it's just easier for some men to downplay the impact of socializing; genetics is a one-stop answer shop. If you really start to consider the impact of socialization on U.S. socioeconomic structure, the world as we know it starts to look very shaky, and just about everything we thought we could take for granted, we can't.....
