Predisposition implies a genetic characteristic, not cultural. In any case it’s likely that the definition of success is shaped by centuries of patriarchal culture 
And a women exhibiting traditionally male attribute will often be dismissed (it’s classic in corporate environment, women will be perceived as aggressive while their men counterparts are just exhibiting confidence, nobody asks men to smile more, etc.)
There may be “some” biological factors that moves a man to choose certain careers and a woman others. There are as well a lot of social pressure, and really high pressure as well. Now that may or may not lead to differences in wealth and the definition of “successful” (which should not be linked to personal wealth tbh).
A typical example of social pressure is part-time work. A mother working 80% raises eybrows and leads to the typical question “isn’t a bit too much? poor children”, a man working 80% is a cool, modern dad that takes “some” time for the family.
most weirdly, this social pressure comes from men and women as well.
And in today’s world, working only 60-80% de facto kills all your chance to a career, being a mother or a father. But a combination of social pressure and maybe even a part of instincts in most cases leads the mother to choose a career where she can work 40-60%. Men are not even given an option. I studied engineering because I liked it, and only now I realize is extremely difficult to find an 80%, and impossible a 60%. Even if I wanted to be a 40% dad,60% engineer, is basically impossible. So the men are already funneled in professions where then it becomes impossible to be a true part-time dad. And women instead think already about these things when they are 20, and a lot of them consiously pick a profession with part time possibilities.
I’m sure they bumped into each other totally by accident.
The reverse seems (though largely unknown or forgotten in western societies) to be true for countries that arguably have less gender equality - or institutional measures in place to encourage equality.
One just needs to look up the Female Share Of Graduates From Science, Technology, Engineering And Mathematics (STEM) Programmes, Tertiary:
Sweden doesn’t actually fare that bad, in comparison (ca. 35%), while Germany and France are hovering around 27% and 31%, respectively.
The variability hypothesis, if true, doesn’t imply that men are “better” on average. It would mean that men are both at the very bottom and the very top of many traits.
These graphs explain nicely what the general idea of the hypothesis is:
[Note: This is a model and not based on actual data. The particular study the picture is from actually doesn’t find evidence for the hypothesis.]
This schematic representation obviously doesn’t represent the real world. In the real world the differences of the shape of the curve and the average is most likely much smaller. But even statistically relatively tiny differences the shape of the distribution could lead to the top 100 self-made billionaires to be mainly of one sex.
I read a study on these results a while back, can’t find it right now, but essentially the study I read, said that these differences can have a financial background, in poor countries women will tend more to choose a STEM degree over more social or artsy degrees, to ensure financial independence after graduation.
So Morocco (“poor”) has a higher STEM females:male ratio than Switzerland or Sweden (“rich”).
When I graduated in Chemical Engineering in mid-nineties in South Africa we had 40% females, in the top 5, were 3 or 4 ladies.
From personal experience, STEM was pushed at school for all those with good enough marks, because that’s what a developing nation needs.
I doubt that happens in CH.
For the past 5 years, in my extended engineering group (40 engineers) at a big Pharma company in Switzerland there is/has been one female (3%). I really can’t understand that, and there is a loooong way at to go.
I assume you base this wish on the belief that women are equally capable of being great CEOs (and having the desire to become them). Because otherwise it would be like saying half of Real Madrid’s footballers should be women.
No aggression from me. I’m just skeptical about marriage. You often hear stories about how the woman usually gets the kids in case of a divorce, plus the man gets screwed financially.
But why? In case of inheritance, it’s usually in the will of the original owner to pass on his business. Nobody gets screwed. In case of marriage, you really don’t know how much the wife contributed to her husband’s success. If my own relationship should be any example, there is zero support from my gf.
The explanation for this may lie in personal decisions of both sexes. For example, my gf from high school had super high grades, very smart and organized person. After graduating I went to pursue career in IT/finance and she went to study medicine. It is said that men are in general more into things, and women into people. Of course, they are very similar, but there are small differences, which add up on the macro scale.
Oh, and have you considered how this forum is mostly men? Have the women been somehow disadvantaged to find this forum, or do they simply find endless discussions on finance and investing boring? 
It’s also worth noting that women live a few years longer than men and it’s not entirely clear why. Who knows, maybe by playing it safe they give themselves a few more years to live, maybe that’s eventually the smarter way to play this game?
Yes they totally should have a mixed soccer team and competition. And yes there are soccer playing women as good as men and they would love to play for real madrid, so your analogy doesn’t make sense, or are you implying that women are less capable in soccer and have no ambition to play for Real Madrid?
Again, women suffer from tremendous pressure to be there for the kids. A lot more of them would work 100% and become CEO if she could, but in today’s world it requires a particular strong woman to work 100%, because she is going to be insulted and belittled for not being home for their kids. Sometimes from their own mothers or grandmothers. It could be easier if women without children would be completely accepted with not even a single remark/question, but wait that’s exactly what it does not happen.
How society and your own family/friends treats a 45 year old male without kids and a 45 year old woman is completely different. The easy way out (which is a cool one as well!) is simply to conform and have kids and work part-time to at least not die of boredom at home.
Or even if they’d find it, they’d be put off by the micro aggressions claiming they wouldn’t be capable of e.g. being a great CEO.
Well, you can force a team to be mixed, but no team with a free choice of players will choose to play like this.
I am not implying this, it’s a fact of life that teenage boys easily beat female world champions.
But they have you to defend them 
You like to twist my words, which I find tiresome. Let me write it for you in plain English: I believe women can be great CEOs, investors, programmers. But some studies suggest that the majority of women will not pursue that career, if given free choice.
This is a technically true statement that is completely misleading. And I think you know it.
Yes, there are some women who play football very well and thus better than most men.
Yes, they would like to play for Real Madrid.
No, there aren’t any women who even come close to being able to play with or against Real Madrid’s male team.
[Side note: Some of them can also play for Real Madrid, in their women’s team.]
Seems kind of counterproductive to argue that women are equal in playing football (which they aren’t) as a reason why they should be equal in being a CEO (which they quite likely are).
Great then, I guess you can correct the earlier post that mixed desire and ability? “I assume you base this wish on the belief that women are equally capable of being great CEOs (and having the desire to become them).”
There is definitely evidence that there might be different desire (form the article quoted earlier):
In fact, one recurring finding in sex difference research is that in cultures seen as more egalitarian, differences in preferences between men and women become more pronounced. With more opportunity, says one hypothesis, men and women are more likely to follow their respective blisses.
This doesn’t imply that it would be innate rather than cultural, or that they would be less skilled at it. In most culture, kids of different gender are treated differently from an extremely young age.
I meant generally. I am surprised (no) how aggressively judgemental are people when a woman gets money through divorce. Sure (some) women screw their husband financially, do not care about their own kids.
Can we then also talk about how glad are (some) men when their wife stay at home (bye bye career & financial independance) while they can damn quietly advance their carrier in good conditions ? And then hear these men complain when the divorce involves sharing money?
Please, let’s stop these kind of stereotypes, every situation is different.
I do not know if/how Gates’ wife contributed to his success, and ultimately, we shouldn’t care, as long as we do not care when people inherit money or a business from family.
Side note: hopefully people also demonstrate empathy when a wife inherits bad debts from the husband…
Well, we don’t know. I’m saying: I’d like fair treatment regardless of sex and whatever the gender split turns out to be in the end, is irrelevant. I will not strive for a 50:50 split in every profession. Football is a very obvious example where this 50:50 split level will never naturally occur, so in the CEO profession it could be 60:40, or 40:60, or 51:49, but there is very low chance that it’s exactly 50:50.
They naturally mix. Skill comes from motivation.
Here’s an interesting read on why top chess players are mostly men.
Males on average may have some innate advantages in developing chess skill due to previous differing evolutionary pressures on the sexes. Females may have greater talent on average in other domains, however. If the male predominance in chess was due just to social factors it should have greatly lessened or disappeared by now. Indeed, some researchers now recognize that many psychological sex differences are due to complex interactions between nature and nurture.
This conclusion is unpalatable to many but it is best to acknowledge how the world actually is.
When you inherit money/business from your family you also do not necessarily deserve it, do you? What has meritocracy to do with inheritance ?
I really do not understand your point - really trying to, though
To your relationship: I guess if your partner did not directly contribute to your success, i am sure she at least does not prevent you from advancing your career as you wish to; probably she is there for you and listening etc and to me, this is an awesome contribution from your gf. If you cannot see that, well it looks very sad to me… no one is completely self-made, Bojack
and greece won an euro against all expectations. Things happens. You can’t take one friendly in this precise moment of time as a “it’s a fact of life”. It may happen now and then now (sometimes is the women that win), but is still not a fair comparison. Wait for the moment where there are a pool of women players as big as the men, with dedicated academies and training program to crop down to the pure talent and then put that team against the U15 boys.There will be no competition.
of course if pitted against same age men, I do believe there is going to be a physical advantage for the men’ teams. And you could argue that a mixed soccer team may be a slightly inferior product. Nevertheless, it may be the right thing to do.
I actually never said that right now there are. But there is the potential and the ambition.
I have two daughters. It took me that to realize how ingrained the society is in pushing expected behaviour to women. It’s maddening. My daughter of five came home telling me that her schoolmates (5 aears old) told her that “girl suck at sports” and “girls should not play soccer”. There is a lot of prejudice going around, very often transmitted as part of family values.
I never said that. It’s a complex equation of who contributes to our success and by how much. There may be people who are mean to us but unintentionally they push us to be better.
There are many more examples from almost any sport. Like tennis and battle of sexes where retired 50+ male player beats top female player, or ski jumping where girls jump from 8 gates higher to be able to reach the same distance as guys. But I don’t want to focus on sport. Sport is just a bright manifestation of differences between sexes. If they exist in sport, they clearly can exist in other professions. I don’t know why we have to argue about it.
I think Switzerland fares pretty poorly in terms of gender equality. Here is common practice that the mother stops working or works part-time after giving birth, I guess one reason being the costs of childcare (even when a child can go to the public kindergarten at 4, it’s not for the full day). And when did women first vote in Appenzell? Like in the 1990’s!
Not sure how it is for women in general in Poland (though I know women have been fighting lately for their right to abortion there…), but I guess the engineering departments there are similarly male-dominated as they are here.
Girls are being taught from the very beginning that adults expect different things from them than from their male peers. E.g., it’s pretty common to comment on a little girl’s beauty while focusing on a boy’s technical skill. Some of these differences in treatment and expectations might very well have a large impact on how many women become billionaires without having to marry and divorce one…
Chess is not a good example, it’s a field where there did not seem to have much progress in term of gender equality and opportunity, the article quoted above cites 5% women. But the article doesn’t reflect at all on what the experience of women playing chess is, how that would affect their journey. If a field is rife with sexism it surely impact how long people will stick around or their willingness to persist and improve (e.g. see Chess Player Says She Dealt With More Sexism Than 'the Queen's Gambit' for some people’s experience).
Hopefully the netflix hit will change things for the better and bring more diversity and girls/women will feel more welcome (and I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point it becomes a lot more equal).
But anyway those things are more or less the Damore’s memo argument and they have been throughly discussed, it’s pretty clear there is a strong cultural component:
All these things change as culture changes. In 1990, Hyde published a meta-analysis on sex differences in mathematical performance among high school students and found significant deficits in girls’ abilities. When she did the same analysis in 2008, the difference had disappeared. In the 1980s, “girls in high school didn’t take as many years of math as boys did,” Hyde says. “Today that gap in course taking has closed. Girls take as many classes as boys do, and they’re scoring as well. What we once thought was a serious difference has disappeared.”