There is a difference between acknowledging a difference exists, and acting on that difference in a discriminatory manner.
Women and men are wired differently. That much is a fact. The obvious, those of reproductive organs, are visible and nobody would deny them. Those in the head, are invisible and so somehow made into a sensitive issue, but significant differences exist. Women have a larger corpus callosum than men; one could suppose then, that their hemispheres talk faster with each other: efficient multitasking. There is nothing wrong with this step: it is the same kind of reasoning that you apply to saying that giraffes have long necks to eat food in trees.
The problem about discrimination is what happens after this step: a man is unable to multitask. A giraffe is unable to eat food that is not in trees.
But these are two things. And most knee-jerk antidiscriminationist rhetoric lumps them into one. Also, I am not calling you one :)
The problem about discrimination is what happens after this step: a man is unable to multitask. A giraffe is unable to eat food that is not in trees.
We are in agreement, and I give you credit for explaining the point better than I did.
I also probably should have been more specific when I said it's dangerous to believe that "women [are] wired for different work than men". I'm not arguing that women and men are the same in every way. Clearly there are differences. I'm saying it's unfortunate to take a problem like the low number of women founders and to use Darwinian theory to say "women just aren't wired for this type of intellectual work." This makes it all too easy to overlook other causes of the problem and, as you point out, can lead to discrimination in various forms.
Indeed, someone just posted this timely article on HN today about a study showing that "boys are not innately better at maths than girls, and any difference in test scores is due to nurture rather than nature."
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2283083,00....
Women and men are wired differently. That much is a fact. The obvious, those of reproductive organs, are visible and nobody would deny them. Those in the head, are invisible and so somehow made into a sensitive issue, but significant differences exist. Women have a larger corpus callosum than men; one could suppose then, that their hemispheres talk faster with each other: efficient multitasking. There is nothing wrong with this step: it is the same kind of reasoning that you apply to saying that giraffes have long necks to eat food in trees.
The problem about discrimination is what happens after this step: a man is unable to multitask. A giraffe is unable to eat food that is not in trees.
But these are two things. And most knee-jerk antidiscriminationist rhetoric lumps them into one. Also, I am not calling you one :)