Men and women have slightly different “cognitive toolboxes,” Charles Murray notes (in Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class), but they also have different interests, with women more interested in people and men more interested in things. For instance, men aligned with the following:
- “The prospect of receiving criticism from others does not inhibit me from expressing my thoughts.”
- A merit-based pay system
- Having a full-time career
- Inventing or creating something that will have an impact
- A salary that is well above the average person’s
- believe that society should invest in my ideas because they are more important than those of other people in my discipline.”
- Being able to take risks on my job (–0.41)
- Working with things (e.g., computers, tools, machines) as part of my job
- “The possibility of discomforting others does not deter me from stating the facts.”
- Having lots of money
And women aligned with the following:
- Having a part-time career for a limited time period
- Having a part-time career entirely
- Working no more than 40 hours in a week
- Having strong friendships
- Flexibility in my work schedule
- Community service
- Having time to socialize
- Giving back to the community
The men and women surveyed weren’t typical though:
The results I just presented came from members of SMPY’s Cohort 2, born in 1964–67, who at age 13 had tested in the top 0.5 percent of overall intellectual ability: the top 1 in 200.
[...]
The SMPY women were about twice as likely to take STEM majors as the general population of female undergraduates, but this was true of the men also, and so the male-female ratio in STEM degrees among the SMPY sample (1.6) was fractionally higher than the ratio in the general undergraduate population (1.5).
[...]
Even gifted women who are attracted to STEM gravitate toward the life sciences (People-oriented), not math and the physical sciences (Things-oriented). It was not a subtle tendency. Proportionally, males outnumbered females by almost two to one on the Things-oriented sciences, and females outnumbered males by almost two to one on the People-oriented sciences.
Good summary of paper on male-female differences. Paper (linked) is worth a read.
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-biggest-sex-differences.html