Reporter's Headline: Gender Differences in Muscular Ability Appear to be Nurture

Hypothetical Study abstract:

Women remain significantly underrepresented in the construction, furniture moving, and bounty hunting workforce. Some have argued that muscular ability differences, which represent the most persistent gender differences in the biological literature, are partly responsible for this gap. The underlying forces at work shaping the observed muscular ability differences revolve naturally around the relative roles of nature and nurture. Although these forces remain among the most hotly debated in all of the sciences, the evidence for nurture is tenuous, because it is difficult to compare gender differences among biologically similar groups with distinct nurture. In this study, we use a large-scale incentivized experiment with nearly 1,300 participants to show that the gender gap in muscular abilities, measured by maximum bench press, disappears when we move from a patrilineal society to an adjoining matrilineal society. We also show that about one-third of the effect can be explained by differences in sports participation. Given that none of our participants have experience with weightlifting and that villagers from both societies have the same means of subsistence and shared genetic background, we argue that these results show the role of exercise in the gender gap in muscular abilities.

It's politically desirable to minimize the role of biology. Finding other factors relevant implies biology is less important, well and good. But for a study that implies both biology and culture important to be cited as simply showing culture important would be misleading.

If patriarchy helps men/hurts women, why wouldn't matriarchy help women/hurt men? If it's because of biological differences, there's our biological difference. If it's because the cultures were not symmetrical, OK, though that seriously weakens the study and prevents us from being able to compare a given sex across the cultures.

It appears that patriarchy gives men an advantage over women, yet matriarchy does not give women an advantage over men. This seems akin to saying men's moderate exercising makes men stronger than women, yet women's moderate exercising makes women as strong as men. A conclusion is that exercise is important for strength, although there is something fishy about simply saying that when asked how important exercise and genetics/gender are for strength.