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Ireland has embraced the pursuit of gender equality with remarkable enthusiasm. Critics argue that feminist and critical theories of gender and race have become deeply embedded in Irish education and public life, often being presented not as one perspective among many, but as established truths.
The extent to which these ideas have entered mainstream education was illustrated by a question on the June 2026 Leaving Certificate Politics and Society paper, which asked students to “describe two ways we see patriarchy in the world today”.
These ideas increasingly shape public policy. Universities employ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) officers, devote substantial resources to obtaining Athena Swan accreditation, and run programmes designed specifically to advance women’s careers.
Large employers must publish Gender Pay Gap reports, public bodies operate under gender-balance targets, and political parties risk losing state funding if they fail to select sufficient numbers of female candidates. Few Western countries have implemented such an extensive range of measures aimed at reducing sex disparities.
Yet despite decades of activism, legislation, and public investment, many of the differences policymakers hoped to eliminate remain remarkably persistent. Engineering, construction, and senior corporate leadership remain predominantly male, while nursing, primary teaching, and caring professions remain overwhelmingly female. If sustained intervention has failed to produce equal outcomes, perhaps the problem lies not in insufficient policy, but in the assumption that men and women will naturally make identical choices once barriers are removed.
Critics argue that contemporary gender theory rests on a curious contradiction. In debates about differences between men and women, socialisation is often presented as the dominant explanation. Yet when discussing sexual orientation or transgenderism, many of the same thinkers insist that people are largely “born that way”. If society shapes almost every aspect of male and female behaviour, why would it not also shape sexual or gender preferences?
Few social movements have transformed Western civilisation as profoundly as feminism. Early feminists fought successfully for equal legal rights, educational opportunities, and political participation. Their achievements were extraordinary: women today enjoy equal legal rights throughout the Western world and have access to virtually every profession.
In many developed countries, women now outperform men educationally. According to OECD data, women account for a majority of third-level students and almost 60% of university graduates across the European Union. Yet while public policy increasingly focuses on female underrepresentation in elite occupations, men fare worse in several other domains.
In Ireland, men account for approximately 80% of suicides, 95% of workplace fatalities, more than 95% of the prison population, and around 84% of rough sleepers. Any serious discussion of gender equality should therefore consider these disparities as well.
Contemporary feminism, however, increasingly differs from its liberal origins. Whereas earlier generations sought equality before the law, many modern theories place greater emphasis on equality of outcomes. More radical strands interpret persistent disparities between men and women primarily through the lens of patriarchy and systemic discrimination. Consequently, whenever men dominate fields such as engineering, politics, or corporate leadership, discrimination is frequently assumed to be the principal explanation.
These assumptions have profoundly influenced public policy throughout much of the Western world and Ireland especially. But what if this framework explains only part of reality?
One of the most surprising findings in modern social science is that the world’s most gender-equal societies often display some of the largest occupational differences between men and women.
In 2018, psychologists David Geary and Gijsbert Stoet in a study in the journal Psychological Science analysed educational preferences among more than 470,000 adolescents across 67 countries. They found that sex differences in educational and occupational preferences were often larger in highly egalitarian countries —societies with strong commitments to gender equality and extensive equality policies— such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark than in less egalitarian societies. This phenomenon became known as the “gender-equality paradox”.
Despite decades of equality initiatives, women still account for around 90% of nurses across OECD countries, while female participation in engineering programmes in Scandinavia frequently remains below 30%. Across the European Union, women represent only around 19% of IT specialists.
If social barriers alone determined occupational outcomes, one might expect such differences to diminish as societies become more egalitarian. Instead, many persist. These findings suggest that discrimination cannot be the sole explanation and that biology, personal preferences, and individual choices may also contribute.
Psychological research consistently shows that men and women are more alike than different. Psychologist Janet Hyde described this as the “gender similarities hypothesis”, concluding that the sexes are similar across most psychological traits. Yet average differences do exist, and even relatively modest differences can produce substantial effects at the population level.
One of the most robust findings in psychology concerns vocational interests. A meta-analysis conducted by Richard Su, James Rounds, and Patrick Armstrong, involving more than half a million participants, found that men tend, on average, to prefer occupations involving objects, systems, and machines, whereas women tend to prefer occupations involving people and social interaction.
These differences are reflected in labour markets across the world. Women continue to dominate occupations centred on care and interpersonal engagement, including nursing, primary teaching, speech therapy, and psychology. Men remain heavily represented in construction, mining, offshore drilling, refuse collection, and other physically demanding occupations.
Sex differences also persist in highly meritocratic activities where formal barriers are minimal. Men continue to dominate elite chess, mathematics Olympiads, competitive video gaming, open-source software development, and entrepreneurial start-ups. These activities are generally open to anyone willing to participate, yet substantial differences remain both in participation rates and at the highest levels of achievement.
Most scientists today reject the idea that human behaviour is determined entirely either by biology or by socialisation. Instead, behaviour is increasingly understood as the product of a complex interaction between biology and culture.
For much of the twentieth century, many social scientists viewed human behaviour primarily through the lens of socialisation. Steven Pinker later described this perspective as the “blank slate” view: the belief that differences between men and women are largely products of upbringing and culture.
Over recent decades, however, findings from evolutionary psychology, behavioural genetics, endocrinology, and neuroscience have painted a more nuanced picture. While culture undoubtedly matters, biology also appears to play an important role.
Men and women differ biologically in ways that extend beyond reproductive anatomy. Men possess, on average, between ten and twenty times testosterone levels than women. At the population level, testosterone has been associated with greater competitiveness, risk-taking, status-seeking, and physical aggression. These biological differences are also reflected in physical performance. On average, men possess approximately 40-50% greater upper-body strength and around 30% greater lower-body strength than women.
Researchers have also identified greater male variability in certain cognitive and behavioural traits. According to the greater male variability hypothesis, males are more likely to be found at both the highest and lowest ends of some ability distributions. Some scholars argue that this may contribute to the overrepresentation of men both among elite performers and among those experiencing academic difficulties.
If biology clearly influences physical performance, critics ask, why should we assume that it has no influence on career preferences, competitiveness, or willingness to take risks?
Perhaps no statistic is cited more frequently in contemporary debates about gender equality than the gender pay gap.
Yet economists emphasise that the headline figure does not compare men and women performing the same job; rather, it measures average earnings across the workforce as a whole. Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin, in her book Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity (2021), argues that much of the remaining gap in developed countries can be explained by differences in occupation, hours worked, career interruptions, and childcare responsibilities.
According to Goldin, motherhood, rather than direct discrimination, accounts for a substantial share of earnings differences between men and women. Her work further suggests that fully closing the earnings gap would require not only more flexible workplaces, but also a more equal sharing of childcare and household responsibilities between men and women.
Recent research suggests that discrimination against women in hiring may be lower than is often assumed. A large preregistered meta-analysis by Schaerer et al. (2023), covering 85 field experiments and more than 360,000 job applications, concluded that discrimination against women in male-dominated occupations has largely disappeared and, in some contexts, has even reversed in favour of women.
Similarly, Birkelund et al. (2022), in a cross-national field experiment spanning six Western countries, found no evidence of discrimination against female applicants in hiring. In contrast, it found evidence of discrimination against men in some female-dominated occupations in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Specifically, male applicants received fewer callbacks for jobs such as receptionist, store assistant, and payroll clerk.
In academia, Williams and Ceci (2015) reported that female candidates for tenure-track STEM positions were preferred over equally qualified male candidates by roughly two to one. While discrimination undoubtedly persists in some settings, these findings suggest that contemporary labour markets are more complex than is often portrayed.
Thinkers such as Thomas Sowell, Charles Murray, and Jordan Peterson therefore argue that the underrepresentation of women in senior leadership cannot be explained solely by discrimination.
Critics contend that presenting the entire gender pay gap as evidence of sexism oversimplifies a multifaceted phenomenon, overlooking differences in career choices, working hours, family responsibilities, and individual preferences.
Virtually every developed country now experiences fertility rates well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. The European Union’s total fertility rate fell to just 1.34 children per woman in 2024, with countries such as Italy, Spain, and Malta recording rates close to or below 1.2.
By contrast, fertility rates remain substantially higher across much of Africa. The average fertility rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 4.3 children per woman, while countries such as Nigeria record around 4.5 births per woman and Niger more than 6. These striking differences suggest that economic factors alone cannot explain demographic trends and that culture and social values may also play an important role in shaping family formation.
Critics argue that contemporary Western societies increasingly prioritise careers and individual fulfilment over marriage, parenthood, and family life. Some further contend that modern feminism has contributed to this shift by encouraging women to place greater emphasis on professional success while attaching less social value to motherhood and caregiving.
Whether or not one accepts this argument, demographic decline is likely to become one of the defining social and economic challenges facing Western societies during the twenty-first century.
None of this implies that discrimination never occurs, nor does it diminish the historic achievements of liberal feminism. Almost all serious scholars agree that human behaviour is shaped by a complex interaction between biology and culture.
The more difficult question is why, despite substantial evidence from psychology, evolutionary biology, behavioural genetics, and cross-cultural research, so many educational institutions, researchers, and policymakers continue to interpret sex differences primarily through the lens of patriarchy and discrimination.
If biology and individual preferences matter, as a growing body of evidence suggests, should public policy continue to be based on the assumption that men and women will inevitably produce identical outcomes once social barriers are removed?
Critics argue that contemporary gender theory also contains a striking inconsistency. When explaining differences in occupations and behaviour between men and women, socialisation is often treated as the dominant force. Yet when discussing sexual orientation, many of the same scholars maintain that individuals are largely “born that way” and that social influences play only a limited role. If society shapes virtually all differences between men and women, critics ask, why would it not also shape sexual preferences?
If biology is widely accepted as influencing sexual orientation, critics ask, why should it play little or no role in explaining differences between men and women and their choices?
Policies designed to engineer identical outcomes may fail if they underestimate the importance of biology, personal preferences, and family choices. They may also divert attention from areas where men fare worse, while risking the replacement of equality of opportunity with preferential treatment based on group identity. Critics further argue that policies built on a rigid oppressor-victim framework risk fostering resentment rather than social cohesion.
A free society should guarantee equal rights and equal opportunities for every individual. Yet freedom does not inevitably produce identical outcomes, and public policy should be guided by evidence about human nature rather than by ideological assumptions about how men and women ought to behave.
References
Birkelund, G. E., Janz, A., Larsen, E. N., Petersen, T., & Polavieja, J. G. (2022). Gender discrimination in hiring: Evidence from a cross-national harmonized field experiment. European Sociological Review, 38(3), 337-354. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab043
Eurostat. (2025). Labour Force Survey Statistics. Publications Office of the European Union. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/
Geary, D. C. (2010). Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.
Goldin, C. (2021). Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity. Princeton University Press.
OECD. (2024). Education at a Glance 2024: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/3197152b-en
Schaerer, M., Ryan, A. M., Ziegler, C. N., et al. (2023). On the trajectory of discrimination: A meta-analysis and forecasting survey capturing 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(10), 1451-1473. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001124
Stoet, G., & Geary, D. C. (2018). The gender-equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Psychological Science, 29(4), 581-593. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617741719
Su, R., Rounds, J., & Armstrong, P. I. (2009). Men and things, women and people: A meta-analysis of sex differences in interests. Psychological Bulletin, 135(6), 859-884. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017364
W.M. Williams, & S.J. Ceci, National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112 (17) 5360-5365, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418878112
Birkelund, G. E., Janz, A., Larsen, E. N., Petersen, T., & Polavieja, J. G. (2022). Gender discrimination in hiring: Evidence from a cross-national harmonized field experiment. European Sociological Review, 38(3), 337–354.
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