Males are more systems-oriented

The argument

An ex-Google employee and engineer, James Damore, wrote a memo stating that the biological difference between men and women is why gender diversity shouldn't be a goal and why there are fewer women in the tech-field compared to men. Women are more interested in people and aesthetics, whereas men lean towards things. The male brain is the "systemizing brain," and the female brain is the "empathizing" brain. A man's brain is more suited for leadership. Men's brains are hardwired for achieving power, gaining expertise, and being good at tracking. Women experience more stress than men, so tech-related jobs, which are highly stressful, are not well suited for women. Men are overrepresented in tech because men are naturally more equipped for the challenges of the tech field.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Baron-Cohen's study lacked necessary controls against experimenter bias and was proven to be incorrectly designed. Male and female infants respond to objects and people equally, so the idea of experimenting with infants in their parent's laps to achieve an outcome such as that male have "systemizing" brains contradicts literature.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The systemising-empathising framework is contested within psychology rather than established: the average differences reported are small, heavily overlapping between groups, and measured largely by self-report, which cannot bear the weight of an explanation for an occupational gap of this size. [Rejecting P2] The claim also fails the test its own logic sets, since women's share of computing work has fallen sharply in some countries since the 1980s and varies widely between countries today — a pattern a fixed biological disposition cannot produce; and the stress claim reverses the usual inference, treating a documented consequence of working in a hostile environment as a reason for the underrepresentation it helps explain.