The Gender-Equality Paradox Is Part of a Bigger Phenomenon: Reply to Richardson and Colleagues (2020)

In this Reply to Richardson and colleagues (2020), we elaborate on their question, “Is there a gender-equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)?” We agree that there are different ways to express the proportion of women who choose STEM degrees. In our view, it is important to control for differences in the overall number of women and men who attend college, which varies from nation to nation. Accordingly, in our original article (Stoet & Geary, 2018), we chose a calculation method that adjusts for this potential confound.

Algeria provides a good example of such a confound, where 53% of all STEM graduates are women. At face value, Algeria has established gender parity in STEM graduates. However, the absolute percentage does not tell us about the sex difference in the propensity to pursue STEM when we consider that 62.7% of all Algerian college students are women (Richardson et al., 2020). Of all Algerian women graduating from college, 8.9% pursued a degree in a STEM field, compared with 13.0% of men. Thus, absolute parity is achieved only because there are many more women than men in college. We are interested in the propensity of women and men to choose STEM and therefore use a calculation that provides the percentage of women among STEM graduates when the total numbers of women and men in college would be equal (8.9/(8.9 + 13) × 100 = 41%).

That said, our specific approach has no bearing on the conclusions. Even taking the absolute percentage of women STEM graduates among all STEM graduates (e.g., 53% in Algeria), we still find the same negative correlation between women in STEM and the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI; r_s = −.42, p = .002 compared with r_s = −.47, p < .001 in Stoet & Geary, 2018, p. 587). Further, although we analyzed only the countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment, including all nations for which graduation and GGGI data are available (n = 145) still results in a clear gender-equality paradox (rs = −.36, p < .001).

Further, we agree with Richardson and colleagues that our recently published Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI; Stoet & Geary, 2019) does not correlate with the STEM graduation gap (unlike the GGGI). The BIGI provides a simplified measure of sex differences in well-being but does not focus on women’s empowerment (e.g., participation in politics or the labor force). We believe that there is no theoretical reason to expect a relation between BIGI scores and the propensity of women to pursue STEM degrees, given the hypothesized importance of empowerment on gender equality, which dates back many decades (de Lauretis, 1987; Moghadam, 1990); we will return to this point at the end of this Reply.

With respect to the issue of how much an international indicator such as the GGGI can tell us about sex differences, we note that the GGGI is frequently used in the psychological and social sciences and that it is the only annually reported independent gender-gap index (e.g., Bleidorn et al., 2016; Else-Quest, Hyde, & Linn, 2010; Falk & Hermle, 2018; Guiso, Monte, Sapienza, & Zingales, 2008; Hyde & Mertz, 2009; Mac Giolla & Kajonius, 2019; Machin & Pekkarinen, 2008; Prewitt-Freilino, Caswell, & Laakso, 2012; Zentner & Mitura, 2012; Zuckerman, Li, & Diener, 2017).

Moreover, the gender-equality paradox is consistent with a much broader literature, in which sex differences for many traits are larger in more egalitarian countries. Costa, Terracciano, and McCrae (2001) were (to the best of our knowledge) the first to point out that sex differences in basic personality traits are larger in more egalitarian countries. They concluded that “gender differences in self-reported personality traits are largest in prosperous and healthy cultures where women have greater educational opportunities” (Costa et al., 2001, p. 328). They called this a “surprising” finding. This result has been expanded on by Schmitt et al. (2017) and Schmitt, Realo, Voracek, and Allik (2008), who called their own similar findings seemingly paradoxical.

Indeed, the findings are surprising and paradoxical in the well-established traditional feminist view that “if certain basic circumstances in women’s lives are changed, the broad differences between men and women resulting in sexual inequality (according to some, the most significant inequality in America today) will change too” (Berger, 1976, p. 48). In contrast, Schmitt and colleagues (2008) proposed that “personality traits of men and women [are] less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in developed nations. In less fortunate social and economic conditions, innate personality differences between men and women may be attenuated” (p. 168). More recently, Falk and Hermle (2018) came to a similar conclusion in regard to personal interests.

The different results for the BIGI and GGGI, as noted by Richardson et al., raise the question of what is driving the gender-equality paradox. We believe that equality in empowerment (as measured by the GGGI) and equality in well-being (as measured by the BIGI) can deviate considerably, which is why we developed the BIGI (Stoet & Geary, 2019). The BIGI assesses the extent to which people of a particular nation can live a long and satisfying life and does not capture the core argument that sex differences would diminish as women’s social, political, and economic opportunities expanded (Berger, 1976). Perhaps the GGGI does not fully capture this argument, but it is still the measure that most closely does so.

We hypothesize that men are more likely than women to enter STEM careers because of endogenous interests (Su, Rounds, & Armstrong, 2009). Societal conditions can change the degree to which exogenous interests influence STEM careers (e.g., the possibilities of STEM careers to satisfy socioeconomic needs). But when there is an equal playing field and studying STEM is just as useful (balancing income and career satisfaction) as a degree in other areas, people are better able to pursue their interests and not simply their future economic needs. This means that the relatively large sex differences in occupational interests become more clearly expressed in countries where occupational choices are less constrained by the financial incentives to study a STEM subject. We are optimistic that future studies will help to confirm or reject such a theoretical account.