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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.
If you follow the links in your link, the article is here. It is behind a paywall, but note that the abstract does NOT say that bias is not a major contributor to discrepancies in leadership roles, and it does NOT say that differences in preferences is a larger contributor than bias. All it says is that differences in preferences contribute in some degree to the differences in leadership roles. Indeed, the finding, as stated in the abstract, is quite modest: "there is a small but significant gender difference in the predicted direction."
So, unless the body of the article says something more, it might be a bit premature to get that upset.
How dare you actually read the
paperabstract instead of participating in the circle jerk? Hilarious that the one comment actually superficially discussing the content of the paper gets fewer upvotes than a half-dozen substanceless posts.We need to do better.
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