One slight (odd) detail: the human population isn't split 50-50. Normally, I believe that male births slightly outnumber female births (105 or 106 males for every 100 females according to a source I'll cite in a minute.)
However, there are complications. First, for a long time, the actual number of females in the world doesn't match the 105/6 to 100 number above. This has been described by Amartya Sen as the "missing women" problem. (That is, quite a lot more women should be on the planet than are.) Second, I've seen some more recent articles suggesting that the larger number of male births is shrinking. I don't know enough to say much about that.
I'm very much in agreement with your overall sentiment and arguments though. (There should be more women in positions of power. Who could argue with equality and why would they do so?)
"""(There should be more women in positions of power. Who could argue with equality and why would they do so?)"""
Saying there ought to be more women in positions of power isn't equalitarian, it's sexist against men. There ought to be an equal way for anyone to get to said positions of power, but not to force the answer to come out any particular way all the time.
Who would argue against equality? Someone who doesn't think men and women are the same ( but without one being better or worse ) - see the below link for a discussion about how and why men and women are different - if men are better at wide and shallow relationships and business thrives on wide and shallow relationships then it's less surprising if men and business go together, and it's not a conspiracy by men against women necessarily. Equal pay for equal work? Yes. Equal chance to apply for jobs and the best fit gets it without gender prejudice? Yes. Forcing a 50:50 split to give a public image of equality? Maybe not.
I did not mean equality of outcomes should somehow be regulated. I didn't say nearly enough to clarify my position, so that's my fault. However, nothing I did say suggested or implied any kind of quota or regulation. That is your assumption - perhaps reasonably based on past experience.
When I say "There should be more women in positions of power," I mean that even if we assume a great deal of biological, inescapable, gender-based differences in psychology and physiology, the number of women in positions of power seems staggeringly low (and staggeringly low across time and space). Given that, and given what I know about history, I believe that another factor is at work here: sexism.
I also seem to be in the minority here insofar as I find most evolutionary arguments that attempt to explain modern-day human psychology to be entirely wrong-headed. I wont try to have that debate here, but for an idea of why I believe this, see this article by Jerry Fodor (nb: the link is to a pdf): http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/faculty/Fodor/Fodor_Against_Darwini...
I wasn't asking for both. I would be very happy if the world were moving towards equality of treatment. That's my focus. (Full disclosure: I work at an all-girls school, and I also have a wife, mother and sister. So perhaps I'm biased in favor of getting those people equality of treatment.)
> Isn't that statement predicated on the assumption that men and women, in a general statistical sense, have equivalent ambitions and abilities as men?
Yes. Nobody has ever given me sufficient reason to believe otherwise. (The only argument I've ever heard that has any pull is simply the one that points to the world as it is. That is, someone will say "Women's ambitions and abilities must be different from those of men. Look at how few women are presidents." But of course that argument begs the question.)
Incidentally, even if there were no information showing that abilities/ambitions were different, it would not be reasonable to assume they were the same until proven otherwise.
But we're not doing this a priori (unless you're some kind of cave-dwelling hermit who'se never seen another man or woman). I certainly haven't noticed any detectable difference in male/female intelligence in my own experience.
In general I try not to use a sampling of people different from the general population, filtered through my own personal biases, to draw conclusions like this.
Further, your inability to see a detectable difference might simply be due to a lack of a margin between the two groups. Humans are great at separating groups, they are not so great at detecting small differences between groups.
We're just talking about default assumptions here, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. Of course my default assumptions based on my own personal experience might be wrong; that's why they're just defaults.
>Humans are great at separating groups, they are not so great at detecting small differences between groups.
Is this actually true? It seems like a bit of a sweeping statement, and I'd be surprised if you have any hard evidence to back it up. Also, the observed inequalities between men and women are currently quite large, so it seems unlikely that very small differences between men's and women's abilities could explain them.
Yes. Nobody has ever given me sufficient reason to believe otherwise.
You know a lot of men whose "ambitions and abilities" include dropping out of the workplace every few years to bear children, in what would otherwise be the prime of their professional lives?
However, there are complications. First, for a long time, the actual number of females in the world doesn't match the 105/6 to 100 number above. This has been described by Amartya Sen as the "missing women" problem. (That is, quite a lot more women should be on the planet than are.) Second, I've seen some more recent articles suggesting that the larger number of male births is shrinking. I don't know enough to say much about that.
I'm very much in agreement with your overall sentiment and arguments though. (There should be more women in positions of power. Who could argue with equality and why would they do so?)
Here's a link to a Sen article about missing women: http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/gender/Sen100M.html