The cognitive differences between men and women
stanmed.stanford.edu
stanmed.stanford.edu
It's important to know that the existence of non physical systematic differences between male and female is as uncontroversial among scientists in the field as climate change is in that field.
It's easy to be "pro science" when science confirms what you already believe. When it says you're wrong is when you show how pro science you really are!
PS The mental and psychological male/female differences are all statistical with substantial overlap. Much like how men are on average about 5 inches taller than women, but there are many tall women and short men.
That's key. It's perhaps one of the main barriers to exploring this topic. I think it expresses itself mostly unconsciously. It can be terrifying to scrutinize differences and know whatever sub-type you happen to be (man, woman, black, white, etc.) could "come up short" according to some cultural ideal. It's even more terrifying knowing that the measurements and measurers sometimes rig the outcomes of said scrutinizations. I'd hope we'd just try to control and address these terrors rather than stop trying to objectively characterize our differences altogether.
In pair bonding species, sex-type differences are few. In the extreme end, some species can even switch gender depending on the local balance. Some fish even "keep track" of who went female/male last time, as eggs cost more energy to produce. Those that cheat are then shunned.
However we do have evidence that fewer men have reproduced than women. This means men have been under greater selection pressures than women, which would lead to specialization.
I think this is an outcome of the length of time that women are fertile relative to the time required to gestate and ween a child, plus the length of time that a man is virile. This introduces an asymmetry between the number of women who can mate and the number of men who can mate.
Your claim of sexual specialization may stand for more complex organisms which follow the mating pattern above, but I don't think there's necessarily a biological imperative to specialize the sexes, beyond the specialization in their reproductive systems.
Why wouldn't it? Other primate species are very sexually dimorphic, both physically and behaviorally. Why should humans be so fine-tuned that there are no sex differences at all in behavior?
I just think the top level post's claim should be reeled in a little bit to not imply that all species that manifest sex should result in sexual specialization beyond the reproductive system.
Why would anyone believe in this?
"Men, on average, can more easily juggle items in working memory. They have superior visuospatial skills: They’re better at visualizing what happens when a complicated two- or three-dimensional shape is rotated in space, at correctly determining angles from the horizontal, at tracking moving objects and at aiming projectiles."
From this article: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s...
"As it turns out, there is zero statistically significant gender difference in mental rotation ability after test-takers are asked to imagine themselves as stereotypical men for a few minutes. None. An entire standard deviation of female underperformance is negated on this condition, just as a man’s performance is slightly hindered if he instead imagines himself as a woman."
What gives?
https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/hidden-fig...
Money quote:
"Research on stereotype threat and women’s performance on math tests is one example where publication bias undermines the findings in a seminal study that produced a large literature of studies on gender differences in math performance. After correcting for publication bias, this literature shows very little evidence that stereotype threat has a notable and practically significant effect on women’s math performance (Flore & Wicherts, 2014)."
I think we need some meta-analyses here.
If an individual scientist cherry-picked interesting data the way publications cherry-pick results to publish, it would be called fraud.
https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/tag/does-stereotype-t...
3d rotation sex differences present themselves as early as infancy. https://www.google.com/search?q=infants+3d+rotation+sex+diff...
Sadly, racial and sex discrimination still exist leaving society stuck with imperfect solutions to deep rooted problems.
We should celebrate people displaying traits that are well-adapted to the situation at hand, not the traits they "should" have based on some immutable identity bit.
One of my favorite movie scenes is from the Matrix, where Neo is told, "Confidence, it means know thyself." This should be read as knowing both your strengths and your weaknesses so vividly, you can predict your performance and emotional state given a situation.
Practically, if you accept that you are sensitive [nothing wrong with that, a lot of talented artists and musicians are] and that your self-value is defined elsewhere that typical masculinity, then this whole discussion becomes pointless because your validation will come from within. If you're looking to define self-expectations by society and others, you'll struggle forever to be happy or confident.
The same applies with the genders reversed.
In fact this is a common form of sexual harassment - telling women they ought to make themsleves more attractive to you (smile, dress a certain way, etc) when you are strangers or colleagues.
You said:
> Being a sensitive man, an ambitious/aggressive woman, etc. is not and should not be treated like obesity.
My point is that being a sensitive man is treated like obesity, and I mentioned the most powerful driver behind men acting more stoic than they naturally would. Note that I have not made a single normative statement in this thread. I'll make the first one now: if you truly care about not reinforcing gender stereotypes, you should tackle the source not the symptom.
For example pointing out that people with darker skin, which strongly correlated with certain ethnic groups, are more protected from UV radiation shouldn't make someone from that same ethnic group feel shitty if they happen to have lighter skin.
I suppose I would agree that terms masculine and feminine are pretty subjective and more culturally defined so one could more easily take offense.
The main problem here is that when you celebrate stereotypical traits, you ostracize people from the group who don't have the stereotypical traits.
citation needed... When is the last time you saw an action hero movie with a man who was shamed for being too masculine? Western Culture as a whole views male masculinity as a good thing. Being non-masculine is viewed as weakness.
On the other hand, if a woman is masculine, she's assumed to be a lesbian, and otherwise shamed. As a result, women are stuck between trying to be what society claims to like (masculinity) and what they are supposedly good at, but society doesn't value highly (femininity).
CEOs and other officials are congratulated for making tough calls, being aggressive, taking risks, outsmarting and defeating their competitors. It's generally discussed in terms of battles, and the tone is almost always in rewarding the "masculine" approach. This is why startup culture is often in the news as very unwelcoming.
Doesn't the popularity of single income families where the woman stays home indicate that men value having their wives around so much that they're willing to effectively lose half their income?
Unfortunately I don't associate the two.
A "us and them" thinking is directly linked to our emotional reaction to security. Many (majority?) feel more insecure when isolated and surrounded by people they associated as "them", with the opposite feeling when surrounded by "us". "us and them" is involved in practically every war ever fought, and many conflict is resolved by having the distinction of "us and them" being erased, rather then embrace how different "them" are and later embrace it.
I would like to think that society can truely embrace how similar people are and start to perceive everyone as belong to "us".
We'll start perceiving everyone as "us" as soon as most people realize what I discuss there.
Freud and ... aliens. Yeah, right, sure.
But the author missed the golden opportunity to take a shortcut to the "us". Nothing will unit men and women like an alien hostile mining race!
PUT ASIDE ALL PETTY GENDER DIFFERENCES JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST THE MINER ALIENS THE WORLD NEEDS YOU!
> Many thousands of years ago a technologically advanced race of extraterrestrial beings came to planet Earth to mine metals
What's even less plausible is an alien visitor, having all the technology necessary to get to earth, somehow needing humans for the purely physical task of extracting metals. I mean we ourselves are now almost capable of automating mining yet haven't made it past our very own moon.
It is terrifying, difference has somehow become connected to the thought that one gender should be inferior.
Personally i don't care particularly much WHY the sexes are different, we are different that is enough knowledge for me in my life at the moment.
I do however care about people communicating facts that are not based on science.
It could be a result of how primates have evolved. For males increasing standard deviation in traits makes it more likely that they are among the few top males that can mate with multiple females. For female being more robust ensures maximum number of children.
Women have both glass ceiling and glass floor. There are far less successful women, but there are also far less women living in the streets.
Many biologists study sex and it's one of the most fascinating questions out there. The general theory is that producing males allows the organism to try out some really wacky stuff.
You can't play around too much with females. If your children are female and they can't reproduce then that's the end of your line. So the selective pressure on female offspring being good is high.
It's a different story for males. You only need one good male and you're set. So if you produce 10 males, 6 might be average, 2 exceptional, and 2 complete failures (in evolutionary terms). Those 2 exceptional specimens will pick up the slack for the others. Not only that, but those two exceptional specimens will reproduce more than any set of males that were all average (like a set of females). So not only is there no selective pressure to produce 100% "good" males, there is a strong advantage to producing a few exceptional males.
The trouble is, modern feminists only look at the few exceptional males (the CEOs, Nobel prize winners etc.) and whine about it. The other end of the spectrum, the men on the street or committing suicide, are completely invisible to them.
Latest studies into domestic abuse also hint that there is almost equal parity between men and women as both the victim and the abuser.
Not that emotional abuse is not a problem; I dare to say that we men are not sufficiently educated to cope with that, personally I got enough of 1980's "women do no wrong" feminism flavor. I started to see my father's POV when I became husband and father myself - big wake-up call. But physical violence is still more of a problem.
Buy a gun, learn how to use it, and carry it.
I don't mean to bring gun (control|rights) into this conversation lightly. I'm the father of two young daughters and I'm extremely cognizant of the fact that they will likely always be physically weaker than the men in their lives. Firearms make physical size almost completely irrelevant.
But, you're wrong. Far more men than women are perpetrators of domestic violence, and far more women than men are the victims of domestic violence. This is true for crimes of sexual violence, and for stalking.
Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization — National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid...
Intimate Partner Violence:
> The lifetime and 12-month prevalence of rape by an intimate partner for women was an estimated 8.8% and 0.8%, respectively (Table 6). Nationally, an estimated 15.8% of women experienced other forms of sexual violence by an intimate partner during their lifetimes, while an estimated 2.1% of women experienced other forms of sexual violence by a partner in the 12 months before taking the survey. The lifetime prevalence of physical violence by an intimate partner was an estimated 31.5% among women and in the 12 months before taking the survey, an estimated 4.0% of women experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. An estimated 22.3% of women experienced at least one act of severe physical violence by an intimate partner during their lifetimes. With respect to individual severe physical violence behaviors, being slammed against something was experienced by an estimated 15.4% of women, and being hit with a fist or something hard was experienced by 13.2% of women. In the 12 months before taking the survey, an estimated 2.3% of women experienced at least one form of severe physical violence by an intimate partner. The lifetime and 12-month prevalence of stalking by an intimate partner for women was an estimated 9.2% and 2.4%, respectively. Finally, an estimated 47.1% of women experienced at least one act of psychological aggression by an intimate partner during their lifetimes; an estimated 14.2% of women experienced some form of psychological aggression in the 12 months preceding the survey.
> Nationally, an estimated 0.5% of men experienced rape by an intimate partner during their lifetimes. However, the case count for men reporting rape by an intimate partner in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate. An estimated 9.5% of men experienced other forms of sexual violence by an intimate partner during their lifetimes, while an estimated 2.1% of men experienced other forms of sexual violence by an intimate partner in the 12 months before taking the survey. The lifetime prevalence of physical violence by an intimate partner was an estimated 27.5% for men, and in the 12 months before taking the survey, an estimated 4.8% of men experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. An estimated 14.0% of men experienced at least one act of severe physical violence by an intimate partner during their lifetimes. With respect to individual severe physical violence behaviors, being hit with a fist or something hard was experienced by an estimated 10.1% of men, and 4.6% of men have been kicked by an intimate partner. In the 12 months before taking the survey, an estimated 2.1% of men experienced at least one form of severe physical violence by an intimate partner. The lifetime and 12-month prevalence of stalking by an intimate partner for men was an estimated 2.5% and 0.8%, respectively. Finally, an estimated 46.5% of men experienced at least one act of psychological aggression by an intimate partner during their lifetimes; an estimated 18.0% of men experienced some form of psychological aggression in the 12 months preceding the survey.
Sexual violence:
> Results: In the United States, an estimated 19.3% of women and 1.7% of men have been raped during their lifetimes; an estimated 1.6% of women reported that they were raped in the 12 months preceding the survey. The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate. An estimated 43.9% of women and 23.4% of men experienced other forms of sexual violence during their lifetimes, including being made to penetrate, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences. The percentages of women and men who experienced these other forms of sexual violence victimization in the 12 months preceding the survey were an estimated 5.5% and 5.1%, respectively.
Stalking:
> In the United States, an estimated 15.2% of women (18.3 million women) have experienced stalking during their lifetimes that made them feel very fearful or made them believe that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed (Table 4). In addition, an estimated 4.2% of women (approximately 5.1 million women) were stalked in the 12 months before taking the survey.
> Nationally, an estimated 5.7% of men (or nearly 6.5 million) have experienced stalking victimization during their lifetimes, while an estimated 2.1% of men (or 2.4 million) were stalked in the 12 months before taking the survey
> Among female stalking victims, an estimated 88.3% were stalked by only male perpetrators; an estimated 7.1% had only female perpetrators. Among male stalking victims, almost half (an estimated 48.0%) were stalked by only male perpetrators while a similar proportion (an estimated 44.6%) were stalked by only female perpetrators.
But like I said - if you use funding to report violence against men, you won't ever get any more funding. So, you can bring out all the statistics funded for violence against women, but you have a systemic imbalance here. And there is sufficient evidence that it needs further investigation.
So far I'm the only one who's posted a link to a CDC study and it says precisely the opposite of what you've said.
While I agree than men are more prone to violent tendencies than women, as a group, I don't know that I agree that this predisposition is a weakness.
I read once that physical violence perpetrated by men upon women was actually NOT that common some centuries ago. Some say it is a reaction to urban/dull life; when life was more violent outside, everybody behaved inside the house. I take this with a huge grain of salt, but it an interesting hypothesis.
I'm a woman, and I don't want to be together with just a copy of myself that happens to have an extra collection of dangly bits in the pants ;-)
I acknowledge that there are physical/mental differences between us, and the goal should be to complement each other, not make men more "feminine" or whatever.
Actually men are more aggressive. The issue is you don't always get good things out of a particular trait. Violence is negative outcome of aggression.
On the positive note, aggression and its many forms can make you proactive, driven and a range of other things that are also very crucial for success.
* Trans people of Reddit, what was something you weren't expecting to be told, find out, or experience when going through your transition (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_t...)
So yes, even hormones by themselves make changes, going beyond cultural pressure and upbringing. Exposure for different chromosomes, and hormones, though all live (including prenatal development) may have even stronger impact.
"I was extremely egalitarian prior to my transition I staunchly didn't want to think there were any neurological differences between men and women, it became obvious over time to me begin on estrogen there were. It's just tricky to discern the difference. It was distressing to realize that it makes a big difference and my brain and mind were just playthings of my body."
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_t...
For the reactionary crowd, please note I said "minor differences" and "slightly better". There's a ton of overlap and much more similarity than difference. Also I want to be clear to separate biological differences from culturally trained differences. The things we do and are exposed to growing up certainly have an effect on brain development, just as they do on the rest of the body.
To further that last point, IMO it is almost certain that culturally assigned gender roles have played a part in our evolutionary biology. So this is not a discussion that can really be separated from the role of culture.
I hope that continuing research in this field helps educate people to see that men and women are far more alike than different.
I think it is worth exploring the effects of culture on gender, but I honestly think the simpler answer is one of neuroplasticity and the brains adaptation to selection, hormones and environmental stress. When you stop thinking in diametrically opposing ways of being, you realize humans on the whole (men and women) are far far more alike than we let on.
Nothing in this article screams controversial to me. I also don't see a problem with wanting to hire more women in tech. These differences outlined do not all appear advantageous or otherwise disadvantage one gender over another and lend better credence to being a great engineer. Anything that makes that claim is conflating a false narrative on extremely weak grounds.
Having said that, the memo is a trigger for people on multiple extremes. The reaction from both sides of this reminds me of forums on parenting nature vs nurture.
Sorry, I think perhaps to me his writing style came off as amateur at best to me. It seemed rushed, wavering, and made irrelevant arguments without proper build up or context. It wasn't until the very end that he even decided to state the context of mountain view to begin with. Reading it made it sound like over generalizations and frankly just a long reddit rant.
Reading through this article linked here, nothing came off as especially controversial to me. Seeing that the author of the memo seems to have some professional background in the field of biology I would of expected better; at least check for typos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa
Deviations are not tolerated.
For more details, see Pinker (who then debunks this): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate
People don't argue for common knowledge, it is common knowledge.
Here is a interesting case:
https://econjwatch.org/file_download/943/SternSept2016.pdf?m...
The paper is titled "Undoing Insularity: A Small Study of Gender Sociology’s Big Problem" and it's core theme is that gender sociology insulates itself from ideas that are contrary to status quo. Do give it a read.
It's like taking a male that you have treated emotionally bad and you tell him thru all his life he can't do this and that and a male where you tell him he must be strong, he must do this and that. Boths are males and I bet you will find the same differences between these two males and between a male and a female.
It will be a very interesting experience...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewon...
The ones leftover from 19th century pseudoscience?
Can you point me to a science paper that shows a genetic basis for these so-called races?
Not, notably, working back from genes to crazy theories. I could genetically detect ginger haired people, or people with green eyes, that doesn't make those races.
So what defines your races?
No one denies that there are genetic differences between races, but the categorizations are completely arbitrary. Someone who is one-quarter black is more genetically similar to a typical white person than a typical black person yet they are still classified as black. That is what is meant by race being a social construct.
EDIT: in reference to my "Google guy" remark. I think this fight is ultimately about growth vs fixed mindsets. My hunch is self proclaimed "conservatives" have a fixed mindset. Meaning they think people are born a certain way and can't grow.
No. The google author never claims anything of this sort. In one of his minor points, he argues that why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech may be explained through biological causes, backed by statistical studies. He never claims men are better at software, that's something you made up.
His core point, is actually he wants to promote diversity, as in the author believes certain viewpoints (specifically conservative ones) are suppressed at google which prevents honest discussion. He argues this suppression is causing an ideological echo chamber.
To me it seems like you responding to what you think his point is, not his actual point. The original document has now been leaked, the author's views are clearly explained in the tl;dr section http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-div...
> For example currently those trying to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences.
He clearly believes men are better at the kind of programming google is promoting and believes google shouldn't change because it's bad for business.
He thinks women should be casually in the game like doing part time work in programming. Read it again
>Philosophically, I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principles reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with Google’s diversity being a component of that. For example currently those trying to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep in mind that Google’s funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally acknowledged.
That quote does not, in any way, show he "clearly believes men are better at the kind of programming". That section is about the belief that those who work hard should be rewarded, and he does not want Google's culture to change that.
>He thinks women should be casually in the game like doing part time work
This is just plain false. In the actual quote, he says he wants to make Google's culture more inclusive by "endorsing part time work [because it] can keep more women in tech". This does not mean he believes "women should be casually in the game". He is suggesting changes to Google's culture that could support woman's needs (for example, part time would support mothers who want to devote time caring for their children).
Why do you see the need to defend your position with obviously false interpretations? It only takes a casual glance to dispel them. You are reinforcing my point that you are arguing against a phantom of your own invention, not the Google's authors arguments.
Question to you is how do you interpret what he said?
But that's not the author's conclusion, that's your conclusion. You are imagining what the author's thought process is and claiming your resulting conclusion is his resulting conclusion. How do you know how that's actually how he thinks? You don't have the ability to say that.
What the author does say, is that statistical evidence shows men and women have differing goals and life outcomes. Researchers have found that Men have a higher drive for status, which in the author's words "leads men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership". The author argues this could explain why we don’t see women in top leadership positions.
Nowhere does the author believe "women can't work as hard." He suggests that men are more willing than women to take stressful positions, which may explain sex differences in top leadership positions.
> how do you interpret what he said?
Honestly, I feel like you are focusing on minor nitpicks and ignoring the core points of the treatise. I view core goal of the treatise is to improve diversity of opinions at google. It's covered in the tl;dr section, which I did copy below.
* Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
* This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
* The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
* Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
* Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
* Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
I do think it is easier for a critic to nitpick rather than address the author's core argument.
To me, it seems like you aren't able to respond to his claim (suppression of views at Google), therefore you won't do so.
>It's like phrenology all over again
Comparing modern science to phrenology is a false equivalence, because phrenology was invented 200 years ago before the implementation of established scientific protocols, statistical sample sizes, and significance testing, peer review before publishing. The same issue applies to psychoanalysis, it's not backed up by statistics.
>He's using statistics an research as a tool for making excuses for the current situation.
The glaring problem with your view is that these scientific studies:
* Are performed using well established scientific methods
* Have very large (N>500,000) sample sizes
* Meet the standard for statistically significant by orders of magnitude
* Were subject to peer review
* Passed peer review and were published in reputable scientific journals
* Are replicated in other studies done by independent scientists using their own sets of data
I.e. they're well done and follow the modern science method, the same methodology we use to find drugs that cure diseases or report the discovery of new atomic particles. It's extremely well established, and agreed upon by tens of thousands of scientists. And if you do read the scientific papers, they do strongly support the conclusions of sex-based differences in the brain.
His position is backed by science. Yours is not, and you now you have resorted to claiming the science is irrelevant. It's very sad to see educated people make science-denial claims like yours.
200-year-old research on phrenology was supported by dozens of data points. Today's research on cognitive sex-differences is supported by billions of data points.
>little [sic] evidence to back it up
And where is the evidence you've brought up that disproves the current scientific consensus? That is, where is your evidence disproving our massive trove of data showing cognitive differences between men and women?
His position is backed by evidence from thousands of scientific studies performed over the past century. Yours is not.
>[something about you predicting the future]
Now you've dropped below rational discourse and resorted to name calling. Do you see how trivial it is to turn your own argument against you?
You don't think in 100 years we won't laugh at people like you who ignore reality to justify certain ideological views? Your logic is flawed because you have a fixed mindset, which I believe is a logical dead end with little evidence to back it up. You are on the wrong side of history, and I make that opinion strongly.
And what might his conclusion be? You don't even bother stating what his conclusion is. You don't even bother providing evidence as to why it is a "gross misunderstanding" of research.
Do you have any evidence to back up this claim? You make a lot of assertions that I think these guys scientific experiments refute.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_cognition
The parent's post is based on a reasonable heuristic: Programming is an activity with challenges that require a broad set of skills both technical and social. If such work requires a sufficient diversity of skills to be done effectively, differences in individual skills are less important than the proficiency of the group as a whole.
Heuristics are the only thing that can guide here. How many studies are there that bridge the gap between basic cognitive tasks and something as complex as creating software at a company?
More freedom is not always a good thing. Studies show that with more rights women are actually less happy today than they were 40 years ago.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14942874 and marked it off-topic.
My experience on HN is that there exists a small minority of users who might shout you down, but I've never seen or heard of a user being banned for discussing something like this in good faith.
I've seen this repeatedly on HN.
2) Those sex-differentiated characteristics tend to be a mosaic in the brain [1].
3) Despite being a mosaic, statistics can still differentiate sex based on individual brain characteristics [2].
4) Therefore the current social structures that differentiate the roles men and women play in society are biologically derived /s /s /s /s
A long time ago, it was decided that women and men had their place because god ordained it. When that fell out of fashion (still fashionable in many places), shallow thinkers used sed to make it seem more respectable.
Putting this into the context of the recent discussion about the role of sex/gender in the tech industry, let's suppose that biological differences influence a person' career choice. Let's also acknowledge that until the last 60 or so years women were basically barred from pursuing technical work in great numbers by social obstacles. The question is, when did those social obstacles become so negligible that only biological factors are left as plausible reasons for gender disparities in, say, programming?
Very few people disagree with the idea that society should treat people equally irrespective of their gender. There's just a contingent of people who say that such social parity has already been achieved (or maybe we've gone too far), and another contingent who say that parity has not been achieved. If we're already in an egalitarian society, then clearly the only reason for significant differences in the division of labor and social participation between different genders must be of biological origin.
In other words, the contentious issue of biological differences between men and women isn't contentious because of the biology, but because of the assumptions that need to be made in order to correlate those differences with the structure of society.
There also is a contingent of people who say that equal treatment will not lead to social parity.
The former is a noble goal; the latter will likely lead to tyranny if implemented fully - or require tyranny for full implementation. (cf. Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron)
By the way, Harrison Bergeron was a critical satire of the position you're describing.
Of equality-by-outcome? Yes, that was exactly why I cited it.
It's really hard to see how people miss this subtext when the main character of the story declares himself the emperor that all must obey and defies gravity. It's so cartoonishly heavy handed!