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Misha Saul's avatar

Isn’t there a simpler framing that cuts through both Caplan and Perry:

Feminism is another kind of intra-elite conflict. Elite women resent the burdens of motherhood and the right tail representation of men. And that drives the whole thing

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Kristin's avatar

Your hypothesis - "I agree that men are over-represented in the high tail of status, but this seems to me less due to women being associated with children, and more to men just having higher variance, which seems a consistent pattern" - sounds reasonable to me.

However, the motherhood hypothesis might hold some water, perhaps via a different mediator: women are mothers, mothers are nurturing, women are thus expected to be nurturing, but in high status professions "nurturing" signals low status - thus the tightrope professional women must walk.

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