A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
economist.com
economist.com
"We provide strong evidence for greater male variability in preferences. We find that men are more likely to have extreme time, risk, and social preferences, while women are more likely to have moderate preferences."
Literally no one serious says that there aren't strong existing cultural influences on how people view, interpret, and experience gender.
The PNAS paper you point to doesn't change that viewpoint, that I can tell.
Now, I haven't read the paper, only the abstract and supplementary information. Perhaps the paper does say something about gender essentialism? If you've read it, perhaps you can correct me?
I think it's unlikely because the PNAS paper citation #64 is Gneezy, et al. "Gender differences in competition: Evidence from a matrilineal and a patriarchal society" at https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w13727/w137... comparing the patriarchal Maasai in Tanzania and the matrilineal Khasiin in India:
> Similar to the extant evidence drawn from experiments executed in Western cultures, Maasai men opt to compete at roughly twice the rate as Maasai women. Interestingly, this result is reversed amongst the Khasi, where women choose the competitive environment more often than Khasi men, and even choose to compete weakly more often than Maasai men
This means that if the underlying papers in the meta-study primarily cover patriarchal cultures then it will primarily highlight cultural effects on gender, and not something essential to gender independent of culture.
Indeed, the SI shows 19 studies from the US, 11 from Germany, 22 from elsewhere in western Europe, and 2 from Australia.
By comparison there's 4 from China, 3 from India, 2 from each of Uganda, Turkey, and Tanzania, and 1 from each of Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, and Paraguay. Those combined are still fewer than the US.
The Gneezy et al. paper is cited for both India and Tanzania. Gneezy et al. write the Maasai "represent a textbook example of a patriarchal society", and were chosen for that reason, so this is hardly a random sample.
And Malawi is particularly known for its gender inequality, says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malawi .
The PNAS paper's one study from Indonesia concerns "1700 students destined for the private and public sectors in Indonesia", and not the Minangkabau people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minangkabau_culture#Matrilinea... comments the their matrilineal "traditions have allowed Minangkabau women to hold a relatively advantageous position in their society compared to most patriarchal societies."
Thus, this paper doesn't seem to have been constructed to disentangle culture from gender.
What evidence do you think this meta-analysis paper is giving, and why?