Rex Kerr
2 min readApr 20, 2023

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Edit: my first paragraph is too harsh, because John McMahon is working off data that actually does a decent job of supporting his 95% number, as long as you buy his view on what “makes civilization work”. I don’t, but nonetheless, as you read my paragraph below, keep in mind that I was unaware that any source of data showed a 95%/5% disparity for any substantial fraction of the economy, but as John McMahon points out in a comment, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows exactly that for some large categories! But, as my reply to his comment points out, other sources show different numbers for the same categories. Bottom line is: some of my reasoning remains accurate, but the stridency with which I repudiated the 95% number is unwarranted given the BLS data. It’s still wrong — the BLS category is not “work that makes civilization work” — but it’s not as outrageous as I had thought, if one believes BLS.

This is so badly wrong that I'm not even convinced that you mean this yourself? There are extremely few areas where the gender disparity is as much as 95%. Even in cases where men have substantial physiological advantages, on average, which haven't been obviated by technology (and those are decreasing all the time), it still isn't that high. Highway workers are around 90%, for instance: https://www.zippia.com/highway-worker-jobs/demographics/. It's great if men are finding ways to make particular use of characteristics they might disproportionately have, but we can do without the exaggerations. (Note also: some of these differences might be because men are actively making things unpleasant for women, thus lowering the quality of the work because you could have the worst of the men replaced by women who would do better if only it wasn't so unpleasant. But we can't tell that from the numbers. On the other hand, from numbers alone we also can't tell that it's not the case.)

Secondly, you can't make a civilization work without educating your children, and women are overwhelmingly taking on that responsibility. It is almost impossible to overstate how important this is. As just one of many examples.

So, really, even in a very generous interpretation of what you said, it's still rubbish.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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