aseow

I don't buy that at all. As long as the argument is based on science, there's no reason you can close your ears to other fields of study that could affect your own.

Keeping your mind open to other fields as a researcher doesn't mean, nor is reliant on, having to accommodate casual opinions over dinner.

Do a search for the Swedish gender equality paradox.

I've read about it, I'm not convinced. If gender equality overall was the main culprit for gender inequality among professions we should see a difference between similar European countries with different levels of equality. According to the figures on the web page of the book popularizing the theory, the UK is far less gender equal than Sweden. Yet, the UK seem to have a lesser percentage of female engineers than Sweden. Just to name one example.

What seem more plausible is that inequality tends to correlate with development. The less time a country has been "developed", the less gender equality there is. But being "developed" recently also mean that you have less cultural baggage.

Sweden is an old engineering culture dating back to at least Alfred Nobel (of Nobel Prize fame). Ericsson was formed in 1876, ASEA in 1883, Volvo in 1927 etc. It also avoided the second world war, when women in other countries "got their break" in technology. And has since the 80s had one of the strongest informal computer cultures in the world. This is obviously quite different from an emerging economy were much of the industry has formed in recent decades.

Chances are this didn't have so much to do with open debate as making a faux pas.

1. Scandinavian society is largely based on that biology isn't a good enough justification for inequality. Unless you're being very specific you also end up making an argument against Scandinavia equality. Which is something that many Scandinavians would obviously disagree with. (the argument, not necessarily the arguing).

2. Scandinavians, compared to other people, have few things in modern history to be ashamed of. Unfortunately eugenics is one of those few things. [0]

3. Presenting a casual theory to someone in the field is generally not a good idea. Maybe especially so if it's in a social setting, if your theory states the importance of a competing field and/or if you are part of the historic majority addressing the historic minority. Since them not being taken seriously can be an issue.

4. The research of biological traits doesn't seem to support the large gender difference in technology. The overlap between men and women is large, the correlation between gender traits and e.g. intelligence is weak and differences to other fields seem hard to explain. Even if you accept the idea that women don't like x and technology has a lot of x it's hard to explain why technology must have a lot of x. Other than being dominated for a long time by people who like x. At least while establishing causation, or even correlation, between the factors.

[0] http://www.economist.com/node/155244