G
I would love to see verbal ability taken as seriously as we fixate on these math tests. Lord but the story of things would be different. And code is made of words! Reading is a huge part of coding! I can't stand how simplistic these stories are
This isn't even touching the problems (which are many) with thinking we've assessed these aptitudes in the first place
My God I'm talking myself into writing yet another piece that would be the social equivalent to walking onto the highway
I link this piece all the time, but: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/math-intensive-fields-have-a-gender-problem-the-men-are-worse-at-math/
Besides which, scores of high math ability do not in fact particularly associate with gating an eng/science major for men; the barrier to entry to these majors is quite low for men, achievement-wise.
you have to be willing to roll your sleeves up and truly pore over econ and assessment data at scale to really get this, which I am, and which approximately a billion thinkpieces on this apparently are not
I'm sorry I'm not trying to turn Thanksgiving 2025 into Thanksgiving: The Gender Controversy, but this "oh, you have to be in the far upper right tail of the math ability distribution to go into engineering" is laughable on its face as soon as you look at real assessment data at scale
Men at lower-scoring tiers of engineering/math/science majors enjoy THE SAME EARNINGS BENEFITS as men at the upper tiers and women do not!
Again: flashing neon light pointing to "social effects"