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Comment by jwmhjwmh | Hacker News Reader

If, in a vacuum, men and women are equally viable as members of parliament, then a 50/50 split in parliament should be about the average in a society without bias on the part of the system or the people.

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Except the world does not operate in only black and white - not everybody goes to vote, not everybody becomes a politician, not everybody has the same political views etc. This can be seen in gender equality/feminist "success" countries where when people are more or less free to choose, the distribution is not 50/50 and some groups of people simply don't want to agree to the fact that men and women can be different and want different things in life.

But I don’t know if any broad studies that would indicate that being a politician is something that suits males on some biological level. If anything politics seems like a very female endeavor(stereotypically), since you’re organizing a community and highly communicating complex sociological ideals with peers of various education levels.

That’s extremely wishy washy. Women may be more socially oriented than men when it comes to work, for example, but the nature of this social disposition and inclination is different than the kind that is fruitful in politics. The motive and the end matter.

Right, it should be "men and women were equally likely to seek political office and ..." to account for the sexes seeming to prefer different occupations.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that in my comment. In any case, I think there are many countries where the lower number of women in parliament is largely/partially due to systemic/social factors, as opposed to biological factors.

EDIT: To support my position, here are some non-biological factors which affect the proportion of female politicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_government#Challenges...

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