The Gender-equality paradox 

This is an interesting phenomenon about how more egalitarian societies increase the differences between girls and men and not decrease them. We always assumed that gender differences would get smaller and smaller the more equal rights and opportunities we get. Turns out, "we" (or shall i say the social studies) were wrong. i want to emphasize that this is not just one study with dubious claims, this is now accepted as a scientific fact. Even though most people instinctively knew it, but now we also have the scientific data to back up the claim that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

These differences also make sense, if you think about it. Men and girls are not the same, our personalities and interests vary. For example, if you take 2 random people, one girl, and one man, and bet on who is the more agreeable person, you would bet on the man and win in about 60% of the cases. So it is not a huge margin, but it is measurable. If we just look at the personality traits of a person, we can determine their gender with about 75% accuracy. Once again, not super extreme but yet defined and measurable.

Girls are more interested in people and men are more interested in things. There are, of course, girls who are into things and men who are into people, that is normal statistical variance. The interesting stuff happens on the extremes though. If we look at engineering and nursing for example. People who chose engineering as a profession are really hardcore into things. And people who chose nursing are really hardcore into people. These extremes mean that engineers are basically all male and nursing is basically all female. At the same time, a normal office job is filled with both genders because it does not have extreme aspects to it.

The reason why, especially in nordic countries, girls stay away from STEM fields way more than in the USA is mainly because they don't have to do STEM. STEM field jobs usually provide way more potential for higher income and that makes people pursue these fields even if they lack interest in them. If we now remove this pressure of STEM being "better", we of course weed out the people who are not into it and were just there for the money. Nothing wrong with pursuing a job solely because the pay is nice, but there also shouldn't be anything wrong with picking a job that you genuinely like.

So we did the math and did the studies and what not and it turns out: men and girls are different and have different likes and dislikes. We should have known this since baby girls gravitate toward dolls and baby boys gravitate towards trucks to play with (not only in humans but in monkeys too). The big question is: what does this mean?

It means we cannot force people into jobs using quotas and affirmative action. And why should we even want to do that? What is wrong with people choosing freely what they want? It, however, means that we have to abandon the idea of a 50/50 split between the genders in any profession. Some just attract more male employees, some attract more female employees, and some attract about an equal amount of both. We have to accept this.

We also have to look into the future and discover what girls really want. It is not a question of can girls compete in male fields, because we proved that it is possible, but do we want to compete? In US law firms there is a big exodus of girls after they turned 30-35. Some of the girls reached "partner" status in the law firm, which is basically as high as you can get. And then they looked around and decided a family might not be so bad to have. Therefore many girls leave their careers behind. This does not mean they cannot compete (they have proven they can reach the top of their profession), it instead means they chose not to. This is an important distinction that feminism often fails to accept: what girls want matters.

Feminism judges girls only by male standards and that means girls choosing a family over a career is a weird thing. Men don't do that. Men actually work harder and more hours when they have a family to support, so they can earn more money and provide better for their family. For girls this is usually the other way round, we invest time instead of money in the family, in nurturing the children and making a home.

So maybe it is time to stop telling girls to be more like Men and just listen to what they want? Feminism is all about what girls should do and how we should feel and whom we should fight against, but there is never any thought given to: what we want. And since feminism is not willing to look at the well being of girls and won't let us have our own interests and choices, i just have to consider feminism to be harmful.