Gender at Princeton

Gender lives… at Princeton. Link here.

In a resounding repudiation of the gender neuterdom that the educational system has been forcing them to accept, Princeton University’s class of 2016-- rising Sophomores, if you like-- has very often chosen majors by gender.

With the exception of molecular biology and astrophysics males predominated in STEM majors. Females were the vast majority of most  Humanities majors, like art history, English and comparative literature. Females were also severely over-represented in the psychology department.

Apparently, these latter have become pink ghettoes.

Men with a more humanistic bent choose to major in philosophy… perhaps the department’s emphasis on analytic philosophy is more congenial to the male mind.

Among those departments with an equal distribution of men and women were history—the most popular major— classics, music and astrophysics.

When Steven Pinker linked to this article on Twitter he noted:

Huge gender differences in many majors, but which hypothesis is unmentionable?

Clearly, he was thinking about gender difference, not merely in reproductive function, but in brain function. You know, the difference that is not a social construct.

True enough, socio-psychological realities do matter. Once a field gains a certain number of female concentrators, most men avoid it.

Gender parity is a nice idea, but once a profession or a field of study reaches a tipping point that makes it appear to be feminized, men will no longer find it an appealing career path. Of course, the tipping point is well below 50%.

It is also worth noting that the field of psychology is becoming a pink ghetto. Does this tell us that in the future the work of psychotherapy will be divided into masculine and feminine sides, with the more manly group handing out prescriptions while the more womanly group is offering empathy?