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An article was recently published which found that the reason women aren't as represented in leadership roles as much as men are is that they simply do not aspire to leadership roles as much. I cannot describe how annoyed I am at this. Over the past, say, 10 years, the notion that sexism is infused into corporate structures has dominated and been a key battle cry, and it was said that evidence for this was clear using an equity lens (that, simply put, women are proportionately less present in leadership roles which necessarily means that the structure is sexist). How the fuck did no one think to ask 'could it be that women simply do not aspire to leadership roles?' This strikes me as a real face palm moment for feminists. At the outset, it's a valid criticism that the research just hadn't been done prior. But
A. it's a widely known and uncontested fact that testosterone promotes status seeking behaviors. Why was that not the null hypothesis?? I'm not an academic researcher, but I question the intellectual integrity of anyone performing research in this area that failed to extrapolate out such a basic and widely known fact, even at a superficial level.
B. Given that women are, naturally, the most ardent students/researchers in academic studies, how the fuck did none of them, when thinking about the reason there are less women in leadership positions, think to observe the basic fact that they themselves do not aspire to a leadership position??
I think this really highlights the inadequacy of identity lenses and equity as an analytical tool, as they systematically and by design fail to consider endogenous factors. This is a perfect example of why causal forces cannot be easily inferred based on inequitable outcomes. Reverse causation is a serious and, at least conceptually, easily avoidable flaw. This really highlights the risk of low quality research for bodies of thought driven by identity and ideology.
I hate to have this ranty tone, but this is quite literally someone railing against the system for years and years claiming it is corrupt because it will not give them something, while failing to disclose that those people actually don't really want that thing.
It is not a valid criticism that the research hasn't been done prior, since there has repeatedly been research into women and leadership roles which has found little to no evidence of bias against women. This is in politics, not management roles, but it's very similar in focus.
The authors of the book "Sex as a Political Variable" compared the success rates of the men and women who were candidates in general elections for state legislatures in 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, and 1994 and for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and governor from 1972 to 1994. They find that "Women's success rates were extremely similar to men's over all the years covered in this study".
The book notes on page 85 that "Our research clearly shows that women do as well as men in general elections. It also shows that the reason there aren't more women in public office is that not many women have run. Women have made up a very small percentage of candidates in general elections, particularly at higher levels of office."
https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Sex_as_a_Political_Variable/QmDYbi49p_AC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
And no, it's not a face palm moment for feminists at all, since their refusal to accept female choice as an explanation is entirely wilful and informed by their ideology. My experience is that no matter how much you bring up these types of evidence to them, they repeatedly try to explain away these findings asserting that discrimination exists at other levels.
One of the arguments that I see levelled a lot is that female candidates are often treated worse than male candidates in the press and by the electorate, and the claim is that this differential treatment makes running for office more complex and complicated for women than men, even if it does not ultimately preclude their electoral success. However:
"Our examination of media coverage and voters’ evaluations of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives reveals no systematic gender differences. The detailed content analysis of newspaper coverage during the 2010 midterms found not only that news outlets devoted a comparable number of stories to men and women running for office, but also that those articles looked the same. Male and female candidates were equally likely to receive mentions of their gender and they were associated with the same traits and issues. Our analysis of Cooperative Congressional Election Study data indicates that voters were just as unlikely as journalists to assess candidates in traditionally gendered terms. Instead, partisanship, ideology, incumbency, and news coverage—long identified as important forces in congressional elections—shaped voters’ evaluations. Candidate sex did not. These conclusions emerged from a study of unusual depth and scope, encompassing media and survey data from nearly 350 House districts involving more than 100 female and 500 male candidates."
The authors of the study claim that these results conflict with much of the existing literature, but in fact there is a fairly large body of research which has been largely ignored that is in line with the findings of this study.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/nongendered-lens-media-voters-and-female-candidates-in-contemporary-congressional-elections/C4867845111ABCBA0921E4E0B933914F
Full text: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1017/S1537592714003156
Another claim which gets made repeatedly is that women are not encouraged enough into political office and that this is the reason why they run less. Of course, this is an argument that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Is men being more encouraged to run for political office causing men to be more interested in running than women? Or is men demonstrating a greater interest in running causing them to be encouraged to do it more? I think the latter is more likely - people typically don't encourage others to pursue a certain career if they don't seem cut out for the role or express disinterest in running in the first place.
The assumptions regarding the direction of the causation seem to be based on absolutely nothing, and the more you delve into the topic and refute their claims about discrimination against women, the more they appeal to a Patriarchy Of The Gaps: regardless of how much evidence there is of the gap being caused by female choices, there is still something lurking in the social fabric causing oppression.
The fact that feminists have neglected female-choice explanations for the disparity is no accident at all, it is ideologically-driven. They're invested in a narrative of female oppression, and contradictory results that suggest oppression is nowhere to be found don't matter to them.
Female hypoagency at its finest. And that is not intended as a smear against women, only that it appears that our society often fails to assign agency to women whereas men are seen as hyperagentic.
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The problem is not that ideologues are ideological, the problem is that ideologues are being relied upon as experts and primary sources, and their expertise is being used to alter institutions at a structural level.
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