Not op, but what difference between men and women would justify such a gap, if not a cultural one ?
We can't know for sure what's the right split, But I'd argue it's as unlikely to be 50/50 than it is to be close to 100/0 in fields where women aren't at a physical disavantage.
There is a slight biological bias in favour of men (105 men for every 100 women at birth) and that, combined with the whole womb thing, give women a lot of short term say over the circumstances where families are established.
It is enough of an imbalance to cause fierce competition amongst the men. Assuming a nuclear family and sensible family planning, it is highly likely that a bunch of men will not get to have families.
The men working hard to make money are in a fairly high-stakes game to break into the gene pool, biologically speaking. It isn't surprising to me that the men take working a lot more seriously. Every generation nature is roughly planning to cull ~1 man in 20 before life even starts. Individually it might not get acknowledged but that is a mighty biasing force over even 2 generations of cultural development. Being the lowest status man in the room has an implicit evolutionary threat in the way that being the lowest status woman doesn't.
> Being the lowest status man in the room has an implicit evolutionary threat in the way that being the lowest status woman doesn't.
What perceptible "evolutionary threat" could there possibly be in a 105:100 imbalance, which is so low as to be pretty much unknown to everyone who doesn't follow demographic data?
I know far more than 20 young men. Believe me, their larger worries at this point are securing a stable job and finding housing, not some sort of "evolutionary disadvantage reality".
And yet, mysteriously, their two larger worries are direct markers of what they'll need to do to find a partner and establish a family. If it wasn't, their genes ain't going to make it to the next generation (which isn't exactly a problem, I suppose).
Rank them by the security of their relationship with their girlfriend or wife. The first few without a partner (the marginal ones) would in all likelihood have partner if they were an equivalent girl. There is a lot of incentive to behave competitively.
1 in 20 don't usually die of COVID-19, but nearly a third of Americans never marry. I think it's obvious why the effect is much less noticeable in one case, notwithstanding that one literally ends up with people dead.
I don't study this, but as far as I'm aware there are biological differences between men and women on average that are neither physically advantageous nor disadvantageous. This appears to be supported by this study[0].
