Men are the majority at the high end of the IQ / social success spectrum, and also the low end. At the low end are the homeless, the mentally ill, those in prison, those who drop out of school, and in each case the majority are men. If there is anything to be solved, it will be solved at both ends of the IQ / social success spectrum. I’d like to hear about efforts for gender equality at the low end as well as the high end. If I knew of even one, I’d mention it here. I don’t.
There are more homeless shelters where men can stay than where women can stay. The jail where I work is 90% male and thus a male inmate has access to classes, exercise equipment, outdoor space, and jobs that a female inmate can’t access.
It’s not clear that mental illness is gender-skewed overall. Particular illnesses tend to be more male or more female. Substance abuse is probably slanted male, but so is the research on the topic, and I don’t think men are being shortchanged compared to women in substance abuse services. I don’t know about services for high-school dropouts.
It summarizes recent research suggesting that the gap between boys and girls in math performance is largely cultural. This isn’t about IQ, but is closely related.
Men are the majority at the high end of the IQ / social success spectrum, and also the low end. At the low end are the homeless, the mentally ill, those in prison, those who drop out of school, and in each case the majority are men. If there is anything to be solved, it will be solved at both ends of the IQ / social success spectrum. I’d like to hear about efforts for gender equality at the low end as well as the high end. If I knew of even one, I’d mention it here. I don’t.
There are more homeless shelters where men can stay than where women can stay. The jail where I work is 90% male and thus a male inmate has access to classes, exercise equipment, outdoor space, and jobs that a female inmate can’t access.
It’s not clear that mental illness is gender-skewed overall. Particular illnesses tend to be more male or more female. Substance abuse is probably slanted male, but so is the research on the topic, and I don’t think men are being shortchanged compared to women in substance abuse services. I don’t know about services for high-school dropouts.
I’d be interested in reading citations on this, if you have any handy.
Citations suggesting men are over-represented at the low end of the IQ / social success spectrum.
Prison Population (2010) http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf Male 1,445,628 Female 104,629
Homeless (2011) http://homeless.samhsa.gov/ResourceFiles/hrc_factsheet.pdf 62% were male 38% were female
Mental retardation higher among males than females (2006) http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5501a1.htm
IQ test scores of males consistently have larger variance than of females (1995) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7604277
Boys are over-represented at the low and high extremes of cognitive ability http://web.archive.org/web/20120211085904/http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/spring06/mcguem/psy8935/readings/deary2003.pdf
Counter-claims and only-partially confirming claims can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_psychology
Awesome, thanks. I’ve got a lot of reading to do.
You should also give this blog post a read:
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/06/01/gender-gap-in-maths-driven-by-social-factors-not-biological/
It summarizes recent research suggesting that the gap between boys and girls in math performance is largely cultural. This isn’t about IQ, but is closely related.
You’ll want to search for things like ‘male variance’ or look at Baumeister’s Is There Anything Good About Men?.
Thanks, that seems like a good place to start looking.
Incidentally, if you question the claims about numbers of males successfully reproducing vs female, we’ve already tracked down the citations and jailbroken them in http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4e/differential_reproduction_for_men_and_women/
Not so much that I question the claims, more that I’d like to know more in-depth about the subject.