The Nuzzo Letter

(*Don’t forget to scroll to the end to see more interesting photographs!)

Today, there exists much concern about women’s representation as participants in exercise research. I have covered this topic in essays such as “History Didn’t Start at Title IX,” “Men: The Martyrs of Medicine,” and “Is There a Bias Against Women in Research?”

To the extent that women have been less frequent participants in certain types of research published in specific journals in certain years, this does not then necessitate a conclusion of discrimination against potential female participants. For one, participation in research is not always desired. Some research is boring, confronting, discomforting, invasive, or carries health risks. In fact, our survey revealed that men are generally less worried about such things when contemplating whether to participate in a study.

Discussions about these aspects of research – the tests and interventions administered and how they are viewed by potential participants – are often lacking from papers that espouse gender bias or discrimination as the sole or primary cause of female participant “underrepresentation.” Yet, discussions about the nuisances of research procedures and processes are critical for understanding men’s participation in certain types of research and what their participation has meant for society, including for women. Counterfactuals, or mental simulations, can be useful for facilitating such an understanding.

Consider what would be said today if the historical record were to show that women were 70% of participants in early medical research. Early medical research would have been the riskiest and the most likely to not involve ethics board approval or informed consent. Thus, one can reasonably predict that contemporary gynocentrists would not express glee at this 70% representation, though they should based on their current real-world frustrations about the supposed historical exclusion of women from research. Instead, they would reframe this counterfactual 70% female representation in a way that maintains female disadvantage or victimization. They would state that early researchers, under patriarchal influence, were using women’s bodies for experimentation. In academic papers and books, they would detail this traumatic history and say that these women were brave, heroic, and the martyrs of science.

This mental simulation is intended to highlight an issue with the female underrepresentation narrative and to provoke thought about why we do not extend such considerations to the men who were often participants in the earliest and riskiest research. In part, this lack of consideration might stem from a lack of information available on the history of experimentation, particularly within the fields of exercise science, physical education, physical therapy, and applied physiology.

I recently filled one of these information gaps with a paper published in the Journal of Men’s Health titled “Bibliometric guide to photographs of male participants in early exercise and physical medicine research.”

The purpose of my research was to create a bibliometric list of papers that include photographs of boys and men participating in early exercise science, physical education, physical therapy, and applied physiology research. The list can then serve as a quick reference for educators and researchers who are trying to find photographs to be used in course lectures, university textbooks, and academic papers on the history of research participation. By showing audiences such photographs, educators and researchers can humanize men, showing their contributions to society via participation in early experimental research.

Methods

For the analysis, I searched the entire archives of three of the most historically relevant journals: Research Quarterly (1930-1979), Journal of Applied Physiology (1948-1979), and Medicine and Science in Sports (1969-1979). For these journals, I downloaded their digital archives and opened each individual paper to identify photographs of research participants. I also searched my own personal digital library of articles associated with my previous historical research. My analysis ended in the year 1979, in part, to coincide with my other historical research.

Results

I found a total of 304 papers published before 1980 that included photographs of boys and men participating in early studies on exercise and related topics. Forty-four percent of the papers were published in Research Quarterly. The papers included a total of 733 photographs of 46 boys and 475 men. The earliest paper was authored by Henry Beyer in 1894, and photographs from that paper are shown below.

In my paper, I list all 304 papers in tables. The tables include descriptions of the experimental procedures depicted in the photographs and links to where the papers are located online. Often, photographs depicted boys and men performing tests of muscle strength, muscle endurance, and motor learning skills. Men were also frequently photographed having their oxygen consumption measured at rest, during physical exercise, and during exposure to altered environmental conditions. Another common type of photograph was that of male body build and posture. Sometimes, these men were photographed naked.

Many of the procedures that men were shown performing or undergoing are similar to those that women of that era also performed or underwent, including being photographed naked. However, there also appear to be sex differences in the types of procedures completed during this era of science. Examples of such procedures can be found at the end of this post, where I show some of the most intriguing and informative photographs from my research. In my paper, I briefly explain the sex difference:

“Photographs in the current bibliometric list illustrate what men’s historical participation in exercise physiology has entailed. These photographs show men participating in a range of physiological and medical procedures. It is difficult to imagine women being more likely than men to volunteer to undergo many of these procedures. Some examples include exposure to high gravitational forces or other environmental conditions that cause “blackouts” or increase the risk of losing consciousness [23, 37, 53, 324]; exposure to gasses that cause itchiness and damage to the skin of the face [87]; sitting on an apparatus designed to induce motion sickness [16]; and standing on one’s head while cardiorespiratory outcomes are measured [31, 35, 65]. In another study, men who were deaf or who had trouble hearing were dumped into a swimming pool to try to better understand human proprioception [172]. Finally, two papers on the bibliometric list include photographs of men sitting on moving cars, while holding gas collection bags, which are attached to a man who is running next to the moving car [79, 94].”

Conclusion

Historical naivety and ideological bias are clouding interpretations of the history of male and female participation in exercise and physical medicine research. My recent paper in the Journal of Men’s Health is intended to help educators, researchers, and students see through these clouds. The discovered photographs show boys and men partaking in a range of experimental procedures, thus providing a basis for educating students about the nature of the type of research that men frequently participated in.

Women also served as participants in much early research.…

Recently, in a piece titled, Men Putting the Brakes on Exercise Science Degrees, I explained the results from my research on numbers of exercise physiology degrees earned in the United States (U.S.).

For the research, I collated data on degrees earned in exercise science since 2002. I presented the data in a sex-segregated way such that separate trend lines are shown for male and female degree earners. The analysis revealed that the field has experienced substantial growth over the past 20 years and that the number of women earning bachelor’s degrees in the field has exceeded the number of men earning bachelor’s degrees every year since 2002. In the 2021-22 academic year, which was the last year from which data were available, women earned 59% of all bachelor’s degree in exercise science. Interestingly, across all academic majors in the U.S., the proportion of female degree earners is also 59%.

One the most unique findings from the analysis was that around the 2016-17 academic year, the number of male exercise science graduates started to plateau and has remained the same since. On the other hand, the number of female graduates has continued to rise, such that the continued growth in the field is due to increased numbers of female not male graduates.

In the Discussion of my paper, I put forward potential explanations for the significant difference in numbers of male and female graduates at U.S. universities. This list of explanations included males having lower high school grade point averages than females, males having higher high school dropout rates than females, males having poorer reading and writing skills than females, males having less access to financial aid and scholarships than females, and fewer initiatives designed to increase male enrolment in areas of study where they are less represented than females.

I also mentioned that men might believe that they are better off financially by entering the workforce directly after high school and that perhaps they do not want to enter a feminized academic culture where they are bombarded with messages about gender identity, “male privilege,” and “toxic masculinity.”

My paper was well-received by the two reviewers who assessed it. However, after the paper was published, a group of four authors wrote a letter to the journal’s editor challenging the conclusions that I reached about men and education. The four authors were Nisha Charkoudian of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Jill Barnes of the University of Wisconsin, Sandra Hunter of Marquette University, and Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic. The full-text of their letter is shared below, and I encourage everyone to read it.

Before I continue with my reply to the authors, I want to first say some positive things about two of the authors.

In the current climate of academic cowardice, both Michael Joyner and Sandra Hunter deserve praise for many of the papers that they have published – often together. This includes reviews on the biological basis of sex differences in performance published in the Journal of Applied Physiology and Exercise and Sports Science Reviews. This also includes an important case study, which showed that after two years of taking feminizing hormones, a male swimmer’s relative ranking in the female category of sport was still higher than his previous relative ranking in the male category of sport.

Michael Joyner also deserves credit for his legal battle against his employer, the Mayo Clinic, who suspended the doctor without pay based, apparently, on comments he made about transgender athletes and COVID-19. According to the Mayo Clinic, Joyner “failed to communicate in accordance with prescribed messaging,” which the institute said, “reflect[ed] poorly on Mayo Clinic’s brand and reputation.”

Sandra Hunter, whose research interests significantly overlap with mine, also deserves kudos for her impressive scientific resume over many years, particularly her research on the neurophysiology of muscle strength and fatigue. Hunter has been one of only a handful of female exercise scientists who have had the courage to publish on the biological basis of sex differences in performance and their implications for men competing in women’s sports. For that, Hunter deserves a tip of the cap. However, Hunter has also been a part of the “female underrepresentation” movement in exercise science, whereby she and others suggest that the primary driver of fewer female than male participants in exercise studies is bias or discrimination against women. This view is problematic on a few different fronts, and I have rebutted it in academic papers and in essays on Substack.

Regarding Charkoudian and Barnes, I had not heard of them prior to receiving their letter. So, I will not comment on them or their research.

Before the letter from the four authors was published in the journal, I was sent a copy of it and invited by the editor to write a 500-word response. This is standard practice in academic publishing. A researcher whose ideas are challenged is given the opportunity to defend his work. The letter and letter reply are then published together, which allows readers to easily see the intellectual exchange of ideas.

I accepted the editor’s invitation, and I submitted a letter reply titled “Anti-Male Bias in Contemporary Academia: A Reply to Charkoudian et al.”

I was then surprised to receive an email from the editor a few weeks later informing me that my letter reply had been sent out for peer review, and based on the reviewers’ comments, would not be published.

“What?!” I said to myself. “Are you joking? You invited me to submit a reply, then sent my reply out for peer review, and then rejected it? What the hell are you thinking?”

So, that everyone can make their own judgments on this exchange, I have attached a copy of the editor’s and reviewer’s comments below.

There are multiple reasons why the decision to reject my letter reply was inappropriate.

First, I was invited to submit the reply.

Second, there is no reason to send letters, particularly letter replies, out for peer review. Both letters and letter replies are addressed specifically to the editor (not peer reviewers), and a letter reply is an author’s only chance to defend their work. So long as the author’s reply is at least somewhat coherent and does not involve repeated cursing or personal attacks, then it should be accepted for publication.

Third, letters and letter replies are largely opinion pieces. Thus, why is the reviewer’s opinion (of my work) given priority over my opinion? The fact that letters and letter replies are brief opinion pieces is why the threshold for accepting them for publication should always be lower than for original research articles.

Fourth, even if a reviewer and editor identify issues with the opinions expressed in a letter reply, this does not necessitate a decision of rejection. By virtue of the context that letter reply was invited and is an opinion piece, the author should, at minimum, be given the opportunity to edit their work or tell the reviewers why their opinion is incorrect. I was afforded no such opportunity.

Importantly, my views on letters – how they should be handled by editors and what their role is in science communication – is not simply the result of one bad experience at a journal. I have been involved in many letter exchanges over the years, including others on sex and gender issues that were handled poorly. I have also published four papers on the topic of letter exchanges and their importance in science. These papers have included examinations of sex differences in letter writing, assessments of the types of arguments made in letters, assignments for students to learn about letters, and an overview of the importance of letters in scientific communication and how letters should be indexed more consistently in PubMed.

So, given this background, what did I say in my letter reply that made th…

A significant amount of data on sex differences exists. Over several decades of research on human psychology and physiology, thousands of studies have been conducted regarding men’s and women’s unique and overlapping preferences, behaviors, and abilities. Moreover, in recent years, government agencies and academic journals have advised that data, when acquired in studies that include both male and female participants, be segregated by sex. Fair enough.

Given this long history of sex differences research, and the continued and proper emphasis on segregating future scientific data by sex, I have remained perplexed at the difficulty in tracking down sex-segregated results on one topic in particular: viewership of women’s sports.

I say “perplexed” because the world consists of thousands of researchers and data scientists, thousands of academic journals, a vast array of online survey platforms, and millions of people willing to participate in survey research. Yet, with all the focus on women’s sports in recent years, and with university researchers and professors writing about every piece of academic minutia imaginable, one is hard pressed to find a simple survey study, published in an academic journal, that presents data on the proportion of men and women who watch women’s sports.

Normally, studies of this type, fall into one’s lap during daily browsing on social media. If such incidental discoveries do not occur, then relevant keyword searches in Google Scholar will almost certainly discover the data that one is looking for. Yet, data on sex differences in viewership of women’s sports has historically escaped me both in terms of casual browsing on social media and in active searching within scholarly databases.

However, earlier this week, this changed. I was motivated to have another look for such data after listening to a segment on The Bryan Madigan Show that focused on sports journalist Roz Kelly’s comments about female athletes not being paid enough money. I encourage you to watch Madigan’s segment.

Unlike my previous attempts at tracking down sex-segregated data on women’s sports viewership, this time I expanded my search to include any survey online, including those published by data analytics companies or by think tanks or other non-profit organizations.

Here is what I found:

YouGov Poll

In 2023, YouGov published results of a nationally representative online survey in the United States about sports viewership. One of the questions asked to the survey takers was: “In the last month, have you watched any professional women’s sports, either broadcast or in person?” Over 10,000 men and women who were 18 years of age or older responded to that question.

The percent of men who responded that they had watched professional women’s sports in the past month was 31%. The percent of women who responded that they had watched professional women’s sports in the past month was 22%. Thus, women were found to be less likely than men to watch women’s sports.

Parity Poll

A second survey, published in 2024 by an organization called Parity, also found that women are less likely than men to watch women’s sports. Survey respondents included 14,000 persons living in Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In each of the seven countries, more men than women reported watching women’s sports “at least a few times a year.”

In the United States, 73% of men and 70% of women reporting watching women’s sports a few times a year. In Australia, 82% of men and 78% of women reporting watching women’s sports a few times a year. In France, the country with the largest sex difference in women’s sports viewership, 80% of men and 69% of women reported watching women’s sports a few times a year.

The Parity poll also included a second question that asked about daily and weekly consumption of women’s sports. Here, the sex difference in women’s sports viewership widens. Across all countries, 23% of men and 15% of women said that they watch women’s sports daily or weekly. The country with the largest sex difference in daily and weekly viewership was Australia, where 28% of men and 15% of women say they watch women’s sports daily or weekly.

A Potential Feminist Reframe

If the data from the YouGov and Parity surveys would have shown that fewer men than women watch women’s sports, I have little doubt that feminists would endorse a shaming campaign against men for their lack of appreciation of women’s athletic skills. This shaming campaign would then probably coincide with school programs designed to encourage young boys to like girls’ and women’s sports more.

Unfortunately for feminists, and thankfully for the rest of us, the data have simply reflected objective reality: women, not men, are the ones least interested in watching women’s sports.

This result puts feminists in an intellectual quagmire. Because they largely believe that women are social constructions of their environments, lacking agency or free will, they must then misconstrue the results in some way to ensure that women are not held accountable for choosing to pass on watching women’s sports.

The first way that this might be accomplished is by simply refraining from conducting such research in the future. This strategy would prevent results like those from the YouGov and Parity polls from ever entering the public consciousness, allowing doubt to be cast toward anyone who suggests that there might be a sex difference in viewership of women’s sports.

A second strategy might involve aggregating male and female responses to mask sex differences in viewership. This data processing practice would run contrary to recent calls for more sex-segregated data made by the Office of Research on Women’s Health and many other researchers. However, feminism operates from a standpoint of “By whatever means necessary,” and thus does not mind throwing out its own previous recommendations if doing so helps to advance the moment’s female cause and relieve women of responsibility for their actions.

That so little data are available on women’s sports viewership, and that even fewer data are available in a sex-segregated format, suggests that these first two strategies of hiding the realities of women’s disinterest in watching women’s sports are already being practiced to some degree.

A third way that feminists might attempt to distract from female viewer accountability is to present results in a sex-segregated manner but thenreframethe results to look unfavourably uponmaleviewers. For example, in the YouGov survey, respondents were also asked about their viewership ofmen’ssports. The results showed that 58% of men said that they had watched professional men’s sports in the past month, whereas 31% of men responded this way for viewership of women’s sports. This represents a 46.5% drop in male viewership from men’s to women’s sports. The drop for female viewers from men’s to women’s sports was not as big. For the female survey takers, 33% said that they had watched professional men’s sports in the past month, whereas 22% responded this way for viewership of women’s sports. This represents a 33% drop in viewership from men’s to women’s sports for female viewers. Thus, because the drop in viewership from men’s to women’s sports was greater for male than female viewers, feminists could attempt to hide women’s disinterest in watching women’s sports by presenting sex-segregated data in relative change terms rather than absolute terms.

Conclusion

In 2019, a male journalist, Skye Merida, published a piece at CNN titled, “Men who don’t watch women’s sports don’t know what they’re missing.” At the end of the piece, after reflecting on his own endeavour into watching women’s sports, Merida concluded: “So, if you’re one of those guys who hasn’t been interested in women’s athletics, it’s time to reconsider.”

What we have learned from the YouGov and Parity polls is that if Mr. Merida is going to call out only one sex for not watching women’s s…

In December of last year, I wrote a paper titled, “Exercise physiology degrees in the United States: an update on secular trends.” The paper, which is an update of my previous analysis from 2020, was published in the journal Advances in Physiology Education. Advances in Physiology Education is the education journal associated with American Physiological Society.

The reason I examined the number of degrees earned in exercise science is because such information is not monitored by professional exercise science organizations in the U.S. Consequently, whether the exercise science field is growing, stagnating, or retracting remains unclear.

For the research, I acquired data on degrees earned from spreadsheets published annually by the National Center for Education Statistics. The spreadsheets contain data on degrees earned for all academic majors. Two of the majors listed in the spreadsheets are “exercise physiology” and “kinesiology and exercise science.” Little difference exists between these two majors, so I summed them to represent the field of exercise science or exercise physiology. I examined the data by student sex and by academic school year. Relevant data were available from the 2002 to 2021 academic school years.

The data show that the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in exercise science plateaued starting in 2017 before increasing again in 2020. In the 2021-22 school year, over 31,000 bachelor’s degrees were awarded in exercise science, representing the highest yearly total on record. In 2021, exercise science degrees amounted to 1.5% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in the U.S.

The data also show that the increase in the number of degrees awarded in exercise science has been driven by increased numbers of female graduates. In the 2021-22 school year, women were 59% of bachelor’s degree earners in exercise science. The number of male graduates plateaued starting in 2016.

For master’s degrees, the number of degrees awarded in exercise science has increased fairly linearly over the past 20 years. Record highs in numbers of master’s degrees earned in the field were established in 2020 and 2021. In the 2021-22 school year, women made up 51.6% of master’s degree earners in the U.S.

For doctorate degrees, the number of degrees awarded started to plateau in 2013. The annual numbers of doctorate degrees earned in exercise science since 2013 has ranged between 245 to 300. In the 2021-22 school year, women made up 52% of doctorate degrees earners in exercise science in the U.S.

The results of greater percentages of female than male degree earners in exercise science are roughly consistent with sex differences in degrees earned across all academic fields combined. In the U.S., across all academic majors combined, women make up a greater proportion of degree earners at all levels. In the 2021-22 school year, women earned 59% of all bachelor’s degrees, 63% of all master’s degrees, and 57% of all doctorate degrees.

Men’s education

In the original version of the paper that I submitted to the journal, I provided minimal interpretation of the reasons whysubstantially fewer men than women are now earning university degrees, including in exercise science. In my minimal interpretation, I wrote one sentence about men potentially distancing themselves from higher education because university staff sometimes depict men in inaccurate and demeaning ways, such as when they teach or publish on topics such as “male privilege” or “toxic masculinity.”

One of the peer reviewers of my paper found my interpretation interesting, stating that they believed such factors might be “fairly important.” However, the reviewer felt that my comment “came out of nowhere.” They wanted more information.

So, in the revised and final version of my paper, I expanded on this point. I mentioned that concepts like “male privilege” and “toxic masculinity” are largely inaccurate and do not reflect the lives that most men live. I also explained that the field of exercise science is not immune to these misguided ideas. For example, followers of The Nuzzo Letter might recall that last year, we challenged a group of academics in Australia who claimed that “men’s socially determined privilege” is a cause of violence against women and that exercise science students should be taught about this supposed “gender-based violence” in their courses. In our letter exchange with the Australian authors, we summarized results from numerous studies on violence in intimate partner relationships and in sporting environments. We showed that not only was the Australian authors’ story full of holes, it was missing an entire half of the abuse and violence pie. In sports environments, for example, results across 12 studies have shown that men and women are roughly equally likely to be victims of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. What man would want to sit through an exercise science course where his professor lies about such realities and attempts to indoctrinate him into the idea of the original sin of being born male?

Thus, the point that I made in the discussion of my paper was that some men are likely rejecting the zeitgeist of the contemporary Woke, therapeutic, and feminised university system.

Nevertheless, this is not the only reason why fewer men than women are now entering higher education and completing university degrees. In my paper, I listed some of the other potential reasons that might help to explain this societal trend:

1. Males have lower high school grade point averages than do females, and this will negatively impact the ability of males to get admitted into a university

2. Males have higher high school dropout rates than do females, and this will negatively impact the ability of males to get admitted into a university

3. Males have poorer readings skills than females

4. Males have poorer writing abilities than females

5. Fewer initiatives exist for increasing male university enrolment. For example, “women in STEM” initiatives are common, but initiatives for “men in psychology,” “men in nursing,” “men in occupational therapy,” and “men in early childhood education” are practically non-existent

6. Less financial aid and sex-specific scholarships are offered to men than women

7. Men might believe that they are better off financially by entering the workforce directly after high school rather than spending money on a postsecondary education

To summarize, the primary aim of my research was to update information on degrees earned in exercise science in the U.S. over the past few years. Embarrassingly, professional exercise science organizations in the U.S. do not monitor degrees earned in the field nor do they generate large-scale graduate destination reports. There is also currently little understanding of whether the thousands of exercise science students churned out by universities each year aligns with market demand for the services they can provide with their knowledge and skills. My hope is that my research in this area will motivate professional exercise science organizations to monitor and report such information in the future.

Along the way of describing the number of degrees earned in the field, I also discovered that men are putting the brakes on exercise science degrees while women pushing the accelerator. These findings in exercise science are broadly similar to those observed across higher education, whereby women now constitute a substantially larger percentage of degree earners. Remarkably, university officials and policymakers continue to express little concern about the trend of men’s relative disengagement from the universities.

Many factors likely contribute to fewer male than female degree earners in the U.S. If one of these factors is that young men are choosing not to participate in the university system because they would rather invest their time and money where their lives are better understood and appreciated, then good on those men. Their self-esteem will be better for it.

In closing, I …

Curtin University is one of 42 universities in Australia. It is a public university located in Perth – the city where I reside. Total student enrolment at Curtin University is approximately 60,000.

Earlier this year, Curtin University advertised a job titled STEM Outreach Officer. According to the job advertisement:

“The Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University is excited to be expanding the Girls Engineering Tomorrow program, and we are looking for a dedicated and passionate STEM Outreach Officer to join our team and help inspire the next generation of STEM superstars! This role is all about connecting and empowering girls and non-binary students in their early high school years and inspiring them to explore study and career pathways in STEM disciplines, particularly engineering.”

In the advertisement, the university listed responsibilities of the prospective STEM Outreach Officer. Some of these responsibilities include:

• “Assisting with the delivery of the Girls Engineering Tomorrow program…”

• “Mentoring students, advocating for gender equity in STEM and inspiring future STEM superstars.”

• “Promoting STEM pathways for school-aged students, particularly girls, through outreach initiatives.”

In the advertisement, the university states that to be hired for the position the applicant must have a “strong commitment to gender equity and creating equal opportunities for all students in STEM.”

Sex discrimination

The purpose of the STEM Outreach Officer at Curtin University is to increase the number of students of only one sex: females. Curtin University does not appear to have positions or initiatives dedicated to increasing the number of male students in programs where men are fewer in number, such as psychology, education, nursing, and occupational therapy. Therefore, Curtin University is engaging in sex discrimination.

When I posted about this discrimination on X, an astute follower responded with a link to the website of Curtin University’s Gender Equity and Inclusion team. According to the team’s website, their mission is to “build and nurture inclusive, socially just, culturally responsive and safe values driven communities within the University.” An additional aim of the team is said to be to “eliminate gender-based discrimination and identify and challenge cultural, social and institutional norms and barriers to achieving gender equity.”

According to the website, the leads of the team are Associate Professor Samantha Owen and Ms. Elizabeth Baca, and they are advised by a group of individuals who are shown in the photograph below. This advisory group appears to consist of 10 women and one token male ally.

Ironically, the university’s Gender Equity and Inclusion team states that one of its aims is to “eliminate gender-based discrimination.” Yet, the team, and the university more broadly, regularly engages in gender-based discrimination against men. The STEM Outreach Officer embodies such discrimination. What’s more, Curtin University already enrols significantly more female than male students. As shown below in the university’s publicly available data table, there were 34,987 female students enrolled at Curtin University in 2023 compared to 25,910 male students.

The data from 2023 are not an aberration. As the data table shows, each year between 2019 and 2023, there were 7,000 – 10,000 fewer men than women enrolled at Curtin University. Over this five-year period, the number of male students enrolled was fairly constant, whereas the number of female students steadily increased. The STEM Outreach Officer will cause the size of this sex difference to widen further.

Curtin University’s lack of explicit interest in male students is not new. Followers of The Nuzzo Letter might recall my piece from September 2023 titled, “Australian research grant for equity in higher education ignores men.” In the piece, I discussed a call for grant applications advertised by Curtin University’s National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education. Recipients of the competitive grants could use the funds to “address equity issues across the entire higher education student lifecycle.” However, projects that received funds were to target at least one of six target groups. One of the target groups was “women in non-traditional areas” (code for women in STEM). Neither men in non-traditional areas nor men broadly speaking were considered a target group, though men comprise 42% of the student body at Curtin.

So much for “gender equity.”

Shaming Curtin University for its selective equity

In 2024, there was a campaign in Australia, organized by the federal government’s gynocentric Workplace Gender Equality Agency, to publicly shame Australian businesses who had the highest “gender pay gaps.” This shaming appeared in pieces published at major news outlets including The Guardian, Australia’s ABC News, and The Western Australian.

If, by the gynocentrist’s own standard, shaming is an acceptable strategy for inducing societal change, then perhaps it is time to give them a taste of their own medicine. Perhaps universities that institutionalize discriminatory “gender equity” practices, and express little interest in men, should be publicly shamed for their biases. During this process, Curtin University would be called out for its philosophical inconsistency, when it says that the STEM Outreach Office will be “committed to gender equity and creating equal opportunities for all students.”

Equity and equal opportunity are incompatible. They reflect two different beliefs about how humans ought to be treated. Equal opportunity, which is already enshrined in Australian law, says that all persons are to be treated the same under the law. Equity, on the other hand, says that equal opportunity laws and policies should be circumvented to achieve equal results between demographic groups via social engineering.

Curtin University clearly does not fully embrace equal opportunity yet saying that is a stalwart of equity is also somewhat misleading. Curtin University is not trying to achieve equity full stop. Curtin University, like many other universities in Australia, is instituting selective equity. Its policies and initiatives are aimed at improving results for specific groups of people, namely any group that is not white heterosexual men.

Little evidence exists to suggest that once equity proponents achieve their aims of equal outcomes that they will stop the momentum associated with their unidirectional reshaping of society. If equality of outcome were indeed the true guiding principle of the equity movement, then institutions like Curtin University would take action to increase male enrolments. But the equity and inclusion apparatchik do not do that because their aims are to dismantle laws, rules, and traditions; make themselves look and feel important; and gain as much power as possible.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Curtin University is engaging in sex discrimination. It is purposely recruiting female students and not male students, and this is occurring over a consistent backdrop of approximately 10,000 fewer male than female enrolments each year. To my knowledge, no initiatives exist at Curtin University for attempting to increase the size of its male student body.

One might think that some man in the Curtin University professoriate or administrative hierarchy – such as the token male on the Gender Equity and Inclusion committee – might say something about the university’s biased and unethical behavior.

You might think that such a man would tell the university that they could simply take the excessive $85,000 salary for the STEM Outreach Officer and divvy it out each year in the form of student scholarships, which would incentive enrolment of talented students who are in financial need, including the female students who the University so desperately wants to enrol.

You might also think that such a man would speak up on behalf of himself and the boys and men in his life.

Unfortunately, this is…

On December 19, 2024, the United States (U.S.) Bureau of Labor Statistics published their annual press release on fatal occupational injuries. The release, which amounts to a brief report, is 10 pages long.

In the first sentence of the report, the Bureau states that there were 5,283 fatal work injuries in the U.S. in 2023. The Bureau then displays the results in a bar graph, labelled “Chart 1.” Chart 1 shows the number of fatal work injuries in the U.S. each year from 2014 to 2023. From the graph, one learns that the average number of work fatalities per year since 2014 has been about 5,000.

On subsequent pages of the report, the Bureau discusses the results in various contexts. One context is “Worker Characteristics.” In this section, the Bureau informs readers of the race and age of the individuals who sustained fatal work injuries. Via two bullet points, the Bureau also discusses the sex of the fatally injured workers. In one bullet point, the Bureau states that “[w]omen accounted for 8.5 percent (447) of all fatalities, but accounted for 18.3 percent (84) of homicides in 2023.” In a second bullet point, the Bureau says that “[w]omen had the highest number of fatalities in the private health care and social assistance industry sector (63) followed by the retail trade sector (59).”

In this section of the report, the Bureau said nothing about male workers. In fact, a word search of all 10 pages of the report produces only one hit for the words “male” or “men.” The one hit occurs toward the end of the report in Table 1.

In Table 1, the Bureau presents the number of men and women who died in 2023 due to occupational injuries. The number of male fatalities is listed as 4,832. The number of female fatalities is listed as 447.

In Table 1, the Bureau also lists the number of men and women who were fatally injured at work in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Each year, the number of male deaths is 10-12 times higher than the number of female deaths, with roughly 4,500 to 5,000 men dying each year from injuries sustained at work compared to approximately 440 women per year. Yet, nowhere in the text or graphs of the Bureau’s report are male deaths emphasized or reported separately.

Here, my purpose is to highlight the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report on fatal occupational injuries as an example of gamma bias and to discuss some implications of this bias.

Gamma bias is a cognitive distortion that involves magnifying or minimizing a story or result based on the sex of the individual(s) involved in the story or result. One part of the gamma bias matrix predicts that women are more likely than men to be seen as victims, even when the surrounding circumstances of the victimization are equal between the sexes or favour greater male victimization.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report represents gamma bias because it emphasizes the fatal occupational injuries of women, and it minimizes the substantially higher number of fatal occupational injuries of men. This biased or opaque presentation of data on fatal occupational injuries is problematic for a few reasons.

First, when these data are presented in a sex-segregated way, they instantly reveal a key difference between the lives of the average man and woman: the average man’s work is more dangerous than the average woman’s work. Understanding this reality then helps to combat misguided ideas like “male privilege,” which suggest that male loggers, male construction workers, and male taxi and truck drivers are more privileged and advantaged than female English professors.

An appreciation of the average man’s work also helps to facilitate a broader understanding of what men contribute to society. By filling most jobs that are hazardous, men inadvertently safeguard women from being exposed to the same risk of death. This is one reason why, for example, the observance of International Women’s Day but not International Men’s Day is misguided and prejudicial. Both sexes contribute to society in mutually beneficial ways.

Moreover, in his book, “Why Men Earn More,” Warren Farrell has argued that men’s more frequent employment in dangerous occupations is one reason why men earn higher salaries than women. Consequently, when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not present fatal occupational injury data in a sex-segregated way, this prevents readers from being able to see occupational risk as a possible contributor to the “gender pay gap.”

Second, some workplace deaths can probably be prevented through worker education, advancements in technology, and modifications in work protocols and environments. Though focusing on the occupation is more likely to bring about positive results in reducing fatal occupational injuries than is focusing on worker sex, worker sex and occupation are not mutually exclusive in terms of common approaches to resolve health issues. For example, if the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were to call for grant applications for projects intended to extend male life expectancy, a project that focuses on worker safety in hazardous occupations, or a project that advances the use of technologies to reduce common causes of occupational death, such as self-driving vehicles to reduce work transportation deaths, would be one indirect pathway by which men’s health could be addressed.

Gamma bias impedes awareness of men’s health issues because qua cognitive bias it makes those issues harder to see. According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that focused exclusively on female deaths from intimate partner homicide there were 3,991 women in the U.S. who were victims of intimate partner homicide between 2018-2021. Intimate partner violence and homicide are serious issues. Consequently, they receive large sums of government funding, and they are given a great deal of attention among activists, academics, the media, and public health officials. Often, these groups frame (incorrectly) intimate partner violence as a “gendered” issue that primarily impacts women. Even if this were true, why then are fatal occupational injuries also not explicitly declared a “gendered” issue? In fact, the number of women killed by their intimate partners in the 4-year period from 2018-2021 was not even equal to the number of men who succumbed to fatal occupational injuries in 2023 or in any other year between 2019 and 2023. According to Table 1 in the Bureau’s report, a total of 23,887 men and 2,164 women died from fatal occupational injuries between 2019 and 2023.

Accidental injuries sustained at work are not the same as intentional homicides of intimate partners. Nevertheless, given the sizeable difference in numbers of deaths from these two causes, why is one framed as a “gendered” issue and promoted extensively by academics and public officials, while the other is not widely discussed as a sex-specific health issue? If the data were reversed, and women were the ones primarily dying as a result of fatal work injuries, we would almost certainly see a heightened focus on the sex of the fatalities, which would then cause activists, academics, and public health officials to call for immediate action on labour laws and occupational health and safety polices. Yet, when the dead are primarily men, no one blinks an eye, including the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In closing, fatal occupational injuries are never going to be zero unless people stop working. Men and women should continue to work and have the freedom to self-select into whatever every occupation they want, assuming someone is willing to hire them based on their knowledge and abilities. Moreover, given both the biological basis for sex differences in work preferences and skills, and the diverse risk profiles for various jobs, one should not expect the same number of occupational deaths among men and women.

Nevertheless, government agencies can do better when it comes to men’s health. Moving forward, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ought to present data on fatal o…

On December 4th, Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare (UHC), was purposely gunned down in Manhattan outside the New York Midtown hotel. The alleged assassin, who is now in custody, is Luigi Mangione.

Taylor Lorenz is a former Washington Post journalist, who is known for making various irrational and unhinged remarks about social and political issues. A few days after the murder of Thompson, Lorenz participated in a panel discussion about the case on Piers Morgan Uncensored. During the discussion, Lorenz said that she felt “joy” and “certainly not empathy” after hearing the news of Thompson’s death.

Lorenz was not alone in showing a lack of empathy toward the father of two. Others within the media-academia nexus commented favourably or in strangely non-empathic ways regarding Thompson’s death. For example, a skit on the Jimmy Kimmel Show made light of the incident by focusing on the good looks of Thompson’s assassin.

Many commentators have already highlighted the immoral nature of Lorenz’s comment and Kimmel’s skit, as well as, the broader problematic thinking about capitalism and healthcare adopted by Lorenz, Kimmel, and Mangione.

Here, using a counterfactual example, I want to highlight one aspect of the Thompson murder that has received little attention: the gender bias underlying the joyful reactions of Lorenz and her ilk.

Of the 11 companies listed on the widely circulated graph showing the percentage of claims denied by each company, three of those companies have female CEOs.

Would Lorenz have felt and then articulated the feeling of joy if the individual murdered by Mangione would have been Sarah London (CEO of Ambetter), Kim Keck (CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield), or Gail Boudreaux (CEO of Anthem)?

I doubt it, and scientific evidence supports this supposition.

For many years, researchers have repeatedly shown that men are less likely than women to be seen as victims, that male victims of various types of violence and abuse receive less empathy than female victims, and that male victims of violence are viewed more negatively than female victims of violence. This lack of empathy has sometimes been referred to as the “male gender empathy gap,” and it is part of a gender bias matrix known as gamma bias. One aspect of the definition of gamma bias is the minimization of the concept of gender in situations when men are victims, and an amplification of the concept of gender when women are victims.

Gamma bias and the male gender empathy gap explain, in part, the response of Lorenz and others to Thompson’s death. These concepts, or psychological states, also help to explain why social commentators typically do not think to encourage people to put on their “gendered lenses” when examining such crimes. To do so, would reveal circumstances that do not align with common feminist narrative. These “gendered lenses” would reveal that men, not women, are more often the victims of homicide, and that Thompson’s death is another example of this. These “gendered lenses” would reveal that in 2019, for example, 4,716 men were victims of homicide in the U.S. compared to 1,857 women. They would also reveal that 89% of male homicides are perpetrated by other men and that perhaps health officials and policymakers might want to start paying more attention men’s mental health.

Yet, whereas recommendations for considering gender were not made in Thompson’s murder, such recommendations would have almost certainly occurred had the counterfactual case of a female CEO assassination occurred. Such a murder would have been used by feminists to propel narratives about “gender-based violence.” UN Women would have declared the assassination an act of femicide and used it to support its narrative that “nowhere is safe” for women. Feminist commentators would have told us that the murder was motivated by misogyny and men’s supposed hatred for strong, career-minded women and their entrepreneurial successes. Academic journals would have published editorials and commentaries calling for millions more dollars being put into initiatives to address “toxic masculinity” and violence against women. Governments, particularly those that lean to the left, would have likely followed these recommendations, as has been the case in Australia in recent years.

Healthcare systems in all countries need continued re-examination. But irrespective of one’s views on healthcare in the U.S., the murder of Thompson was an immoral act. The reactions of Lorenz and her ilk were themselves immoral. They were also irrational and reminders of the strength and pervasiveness of gamma bias, misandry, and the de-humanization of men.

Such reactions should be called out publicly for their shocking lack of empathy. Counterfactual scenarios in which the sex of the victim is reversed can be useful for highlighting this anti-male bias.

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On October 13, I received an email from a master’s student of exercise science at the Shanghai University of Sport in China. The student’s name was Mingyue Yin.

Mr. Yin invited me to co-author a consensus paper about minimal dose exercise training. Minimal dose exercise training, which I have discussed previously at The Nuzzo Letter, is an amount of exercise that does not meet recommended exercise guidelines but that still has the potential to improve health and function. I was likely asked be a part of the consensus paper because of a review that colleagues and I published on minimal dose resistance exercise earlier this year.

I was not the only other researcher invited by Mr. Yin to co-author the consensus paper. The email was sent out to approximately 40 researchers. A couple of the names on the list were familiar to me. They were exercise researchers in Australia and the United States. However, most of the names, particularly the Asian and presumably Chinese names, were unfamiliar to me.

Mr. Yin’s invitation was collegial. His email provided clear instructions on what would be expected from invited authors to allow them to be co-authors on the paper. Mr. Yin’s email included attachments of the completed paper and a graphical abstract for the paper. The paper, including all tables, figures, and references, was 158 pages. Clearly, Mr. Yin had already done all the heavy lifting. He was merely asking invited authors to provide ratings of agreement with the summarised results and to review the paper more broadly.

In the minds of most researchers, irrespective of their academic rank, saying yes to Mr. Yin’s invitation is a no-brainer. Being an author on a consensus paper has many benefits. First, to be asked to part of a consensus paper is itself an achievement. It means that the invited author is being asked, based on their expertise, to help set the foundation for future thinking and practice related to the paper’s topic – in this case, minimal dose exercise training.

Second, being part of a large consensus with many international authors shows that the invited author has the potential or capacity for international collaboration – something that is highly valued by grant giving agencies and university employment committees.

Third, the consensus paper will be published in a leading journal. As Mr. Yin also stated in his email, he intends to submit the paper to Sports Medicine or the British Journal of Sports Medicine – two of the highest ranked journals in exercise and sports science. Publishing the paper in one of these leading journals will result in media attention and will also look good on the invited author’s CV and grant applications.

Fourth, because the paper is a consensus statement that will be published in a high-ranking journal, this means that the paper will be cited frequently. Frequent citation will then increase the invited author’s h-index, and the h-index is often included in job and grant applications.

Finally, the amount work and time that is required from the invited author, particularly in light of all the benefits just mentioned, is minimal. In fact, the tasks requested of co-authors by Mr. Yin can probably be completed within one day.

So, I accepted Mr. Yin’s invitation, right?

Having A Moral Compass

China, where Mr. Yin and his colleagues reside, is governed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Communism is a sociopolitical system that rejects individual liberty, including freedom of speech and assembly. In addition to its lack of recognition of basic human rights, such as in Hong Kong, the Chinese government has been accused of stealing intellectual property from other countries for many years, and it has not been transparent about the origins of COVID-19.

As an advocate for individual liberty, I do not want to be associated with communism, the CCP, or its members, nor do I want the Chinese government to benefit from use of my name or expertise or to try to win influence over me or my employer in some way. Consequently, my willingness to accept the invitation that Mr. Yin extended to me hinged upon his research team’s affiliation with the CCP. As you will see in the screenshots provided, I responded to Mr. Yin’s invitation by asking him if he or his labmates were members of the CCP.

Initially, Mr. Yin tried to avoid my question, or perhaps he did not fully understand it. He asked if his answer would impact my willingness to be part of the paper. I told him, yes, though I did not tell him in what direction my decision would go. I asked Mr. Yin a second time if he was a member of the CCP.

In broken English, Yin eventually replied: “I am a glorious Chinese Communist Party. I joined the glorious Communist Party of China in the third year of undergraduate, and I am very proud of it. Thank you!”

Decision Background

I rejected Mr. Yin’s invitation because he is a communist, and I do not want to collaborate on research with communists. My decision was also influenced by observations that I have made of China in the academic publishing space, including China’s unclear relationship with the Journal of Sport and Health Science and with MDPI journals. My decision was also influenced by a recent conversation that I had with a Taiwanese researcher about China and also by Salvatore Babones’ chapter on China’s influence in Australian higher education in his book, “Australia’s Universities: Can They Reform?”

Let us start with Babones.

China’s Influence at Australian Universities

Salvatore Babones is an American. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology who lives in Australia and works at the University of Sydney. In 2021, Babones wrote a book titled, “Australia’s Universities: Can They Reform?” The book, which I highly recommend, is a critique of Australian higher education and how it can be reformed to better serve the Australian public interest.

One of the chapters in Babones’ book is titled, “Have Australia’s universities been corrupted by China?” In the chapter, Babones argues that Australia’s interests and values are at-risk by the current relationship between Aussie universities and China. Babones says that the relationships themselves do not imply “misbehavior on the part of the scientists involved” or “malpractice on the part of their universities.” Instead, Babones believes that the current relations between Chinese and Australian researchers create “structural risks” for Australian universities and thus the broader Australian community. More specifically, Babones argues that these relationships generate “strong incentives for Australian universities to acquiesce in Chinese practices and comply with Chinese demands.” Babones continues, “The real risk isn’t that China will steal Australian science. It’s that Australian universities will compromise their values in order to retain access to Chinese science.”

In his interview with John Anderson, Babones also explained that he believes that Australian universities will continue to police themselves as to not upset China. What might this mean in practical terms? Perhaps it means a university will be less likely to hire a professor who is critical of China or perhaps it will mean that a university will be quick to squash any campus activities that are critical of China.

Babones’ argument is intriguing and compelling. In recent years, I have also made observations that have caused me to be sceptical toward China in academia, particularly in the space of academic publishing. One of these observations involves the Journal of Sport and Health Science.

Journal of Sport and Health Science

The Journal of Sport and Health Science is becoming a prominent journal in the field of exercise and sports science. It was founded in 2012, and it is published by Elsevier – a major publisher of academic articles.

I discovered the Journal of Sport and Health Science several years ago when looking for a home for one of my research articles. At that time, I noticed something unusual about the …

On October 28, I shared data at The Nuzzo Letter showing that substantially fewer men than women vote in elections for United States (U.S.) president. This has been the case dating back to at least 1964. Each election, women make up roughly 53.5% of those who vote, while men make up the other 46.5%. In 2020, 68.4% of the adult female population voted compared to 65% of the adult male population.

Nevertheless, I did not previously discuss why fewer men than women vote in U.S. elections. In fact, that fewer men than women vote in elections seems somewhat contradictory at the surface given that men are more likely than women to report being interested in politics, read Washington news, work as political journalists, and study political science and government at university, though that specific trend has changed in the past couple of years.

Here, I present six factors or reasons that help explain why fewer men than women vote in U.S. elections. Note, this list is not necessarily exhaustive nor is it necessarily presented in order of importance.

Reason #1. Fewer men than women are registered to vote

Being registered to vote is the first step in being able to fill out an election ballot. As can be seen in the graph, fewer men than women have been registered to vote since at least 1980. During the 2020 presidential election, 79.3 million men were registered to vote compared to 89 million women – a sex difference of nearly 10 million voters.

Source: Center for American Women and Politics. Gender Differences in Voter Turnout. 2024.

Reason #2. Men are more likely than women to work full-time jobs

Even when men are registered to vote, additional factors will make it more difficult for them to cast their ballot. One of these factors is employment status. Men are more likely than women to work full-time jobs, whereas women are more likely than men to work part-time jobs. In 2020, 67.9% of men worked full-time year-round compared to 57.8% of women. By contrast, 22.4% of women worked part-time compared to 11.5% of men who worked part-time. Consequently, the average man will have less time than the average woman to visit a voting centre on election day. Moreover, a man who works full-time will also have less time to register to vote in the first place.

Reason #3. More men than women commit felonies and are in jail

Committing a crime can impact a citizen’s ability to vote. If a man or woman is convicted of a felony, their right to vote will be restricted for at least some period in most states. The extent of this restriction depends on the state. Some states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, automatically restore voting rights after release from prison. Other states, like Colorado and New York, automatically restore voting rights after prison and parole. For states like North Carolina and Texas, voting rights are automatically restored after prison, parole, and probation. Yet, in other states, restoration of voting rights depends on the type of conviction and/or if an individual petition or application to the government is approved. Maine and Vermont are the only states whose resident-citizens retain their right to vote while incarcerated for a felony.

These laws are more likely to impact the male than female electorate because more men than women are charged of serious offences and then later convicted of felonies.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice. Federal Justice Statistics, 2022. 2024.

Moreover, putting aside the type of crime committed, being physically in jail makes voting more difficult. This scenario applies to men more than women because men account for 92% of the U.S. prison population. In 2022, 1.6 million men were serving time in prisons or local jails compared to 174,000 women. When considering the total population supervised by the corrections system via incarceration, parole, and probation, 4.4 million men are supervised by this system compared to 947,000 women.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice. Correctional Populations in the United States, 2022 – Statistical Tables (NCJ 308699). 2024.

Reason #4. Men are more likely than women to be overseas in military

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 82.5% of activity-duty members of the U.S. military are men. Some of these members will be serving overseas. According to USA Facts, approximately 220,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in foreign countries as of September 2023, with roughly 168,000 listed as active-duty troops. Thus, even if a man is registered to vote, getting his ballot sent to and from Japan, Germany, South Korea, Italy, and the United Kingdom will be a barrier to his voting participation.

Reason #5. The Lifespan Gender Gap

In 2021, male life expectancy in the U.S. was 5.8 years shorter than female life expectancy. Some people call this the “lifespan gender gap.” The lifespan gender gap is due to earlier male than female death due to a myriad of causes such as suicide, drug overdose, occupational injury, and drowning.

Source: Arias E, Xu JQ, Kochanek KD. United States life tables, 2021. National Vital Statistics Reports; vol 72 no 12. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2023.

Shorter male than female life expectancy then leads to fewer males than females being alive to vote. This is confirmed by data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The Bureau provides data of the percentage of males and females in the U.S. at each age, though not all these individuals will be citizens eligible to vote. Between 1 day to 17 years old, males make up a slightly greater percentage of the population than do females (11.12% versus 10.64%, respectively). However, when considering individuals who are of voting age (i.e., 18 years of age or older), there are fewer males than females in the population. More specifically, women who are 18 years of age or older make up 39.92% of the U.S. population compared to 38.37% of men. If we estimate that the U.S. has a population 250 million persons over the age of 18, then these percentages amount to an adult female population of about 100 million and adult male population of about 96 million. Thus, there are approximately 4 million less men of voting age alive to even cast a ballot.

Reason #6. Men have lower education levels than women

Women have been earning more university degrees than men in the U.S. for many years. In the 2021-22 academic year, women made up 58.5% of bachelor’s degree earners (graph).

Education level correlates with voting participation. According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, individuals with at least some college education are more likely to vote than individuals with a high school degree or less. For example, in the 2022 midterm elections, individuals who did not have any university education made up 43% of non-voters and only 25% of voters.

Various factors are likely to correlate with why someone with a university education is more likely to vote than someone without a university education. For example, someone with a higher level of education is likely to be more engaged with political news and ideas, more likely to know the steps necessary to register to vote, and less likely to have a felony conviction.

Conclusion

In the past couple of months, in the lead up to the 2024 U.S. presidential race, much attention has been given to the role of sex and gender in the election. However, these discussions have mostly centred around the topic about how men and women tend to vote differently, with men leaning more to the political right and women leaning more to the political left. I am unaware of discussions about the consistent phenomenon of fewer male than female voters. The lack of media attention given to this phenomenon is likely linked to the lack of acknowledgement of the sex-specific nature of the phenomenon’s underlying causes.

As I have just shown, the phenomenon of fewer men than w…

“I would not want to be president and would not vote for a woman president. A woman cannot reasonably want to be a commander-in-chief. I prefer to answer the question by outlining what a rational man would do if he were president.”

That was Ayn Rand’s answer to an article-interview question that asked her and 15 other prominent women in 1968 about what they would do if they were President of the United States (U.S.).

Ayn Rand moved from Russia to the U.S. in 1926. She was the founder Objectivism – a philosophy that integrated reason and logic as the cognitive tools necessary for understanding the world, rational selfishness as the basis for ethics, individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism as the most moral and humanly beneficial approach to politics, and romantic realism as the type of art best suited to fuel man’s need to survive.

Rand is perhaps best known for her novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), but she also authored numerous works of non-fiction, including a 1969 essay titled, “About a Woman President.” The essay was later published as part of a small collection of Rand’s writing called, The Voice of Reason.

Rand said many things over her career that were misunderstood and mischaracterized. Her essay on a woman president is one example. In fact, in her opening remarks in her essay, Rand said that she decided to write it because she received letters from students of Objectivism, who wanted her to clarify her answer from the1968 article-interview.

Other than when Hillary Clinton ran for the office of U.S. President in 2016, the topic of a woman president has never been more relevant. In the coming weeks, most U.S. voters will choose between two candidates for the country’s highest and most important office: former president Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris.

Here, we will revisit Rand’s 1969 essay to clarify her views on a woman president.

Rand said that she would not want to be president and that she would not vote for a woman president. However, Rand’s view was not based on a belief that women are inferior to men or that a woman could not do the job.

“It is not an issue of feminine ‘inferiority,’ intellectually or morally; women are not inferior to men in ability or intelligence; besides, it would not take much to do a better job than some our recent presidents have done.”

Instead, Rand’s view was based on what she believed to be the basic psychological need of rational women – “hero worship.”

“I do not think that a rational woman can want to be president. Observe that I did not say she would be unable to do the job; I said that she could not want it. It is not a matter of her ability, but of her values…The issue is primarily psychological. It involves a woman’s fundamental view of life, of herself and of her basic values. For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero worship – the desire to look up to man. ‘To look up’ does not mean dependence, obedience or anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration…the object of her hero worship is specifically his masculinity…”

The specific nature of the duties of U.S. president were integral to Rand’s view. Rand believed that serving as the country’s highest authority and as commander-in-chief of the military would be a psychological nightmare for a woman qua woman.

“This, for a rational woman, would be an unbearable situation…To act as the superior, the leader, virtually the ruler of all the men she deals with, would be an excruciating psychological torture. It would require a total depersonalization, an utter selflessness, and an incommunicable loneliness; she would have to supress (or repress) every personal aspect of her own character and attitude; she could not be herself, i.e., a woman.”

Rand then projected what she believed would become of a woman exposed to this inner torture:

“By the nature of her duties and daily activities, she would become the most unfeminine, sexless, metaphysically inappropriate, and rationally revolting figure of all: a matriarch.”

Some readers might interpret Rand’s position as implying that a woman should not want to hold any leadership roles. However, this was not Rand’s belief. Rand was clear that her view was specific to the job of U.S president. Her view was based on the specific nature of that job and the psychological harm that she believed carrying out that job’s daily activities would do to a woman qua woman.

Rand was not a sexist. She was not against impressive women. She was an impressive woman herself, and she depicted impressive women in her novels. In fact, at the beginning of her 1969 essay, Rand mentioned that she thought her earlier comments would have been understood based on the female characters that she depicted in her novels – for example, Dagny Taggart, who, in Atlas Shrugged, was Vice President in Charge of Operation at Taggart Transcontinental.

For Rand, a key difference between the position of country president and other leadership roles was that the president is superior to all individuals he interacts with, whereas a business leader continually deals with people who are not inferiors but instead are customers, suppliers, competitors, and so on.

“Women may properly rise as high as their ability and ambition will carry them; in politics, they may reach the ranks of congresswomen, senators, judges, or any similar rank they choose. But when it comes to the post of president…do not ask, ‘Could she do the job and would it be good for the country?’ Conceivably, she could and it would – but what would it do to her?”

Rand conceded that there might be exceptions to voting for a woman president. Combinations of factors like laws, policies, natural disasters, pandemics, wars, and assassinations can all potentially impact the pool of individuals who are available as political candidates at a given time. Rand recognized such possibilities, and she stated that there might be certain historical contexts or national emergencies when a woman might temporarily assume the role of president if there were no men willing or able to assume the position. Here, however, Rand posited a rhetorical question that has much contemporary relevance:

“But what would this imply about the character of the men at that time?”

Rand then referenced the U.S. founding fathers – a group of men who were broadly virtuous, brilliant, and talented, and led the country when circumstance required it:

“Normally, the best and ablest among men do not necessarily have to seek the presidency, but in an extreme emergency, they would have to – as did the founding fathers.”

Phil Donahue Show in 1979

Confusion about Rand’s position on a woman president was not limited to the students of Objectivism who read her 1968 article-interview. In 1979, 10 years after Rand wrote her follow-up essay, she appeared on the Phil Donahue Show. During the question-and-answer period, a woman in the audience, who presumably had never read Rand’s essay, asked Rand how she would feel about a woman being the head of the White House one day.

Rand responded bluntly, “I wouldn’t vote for her.”

A combination of shock and laughter rained down from the audience. Rand’s reply had been so quick and assertive that audience members were left cognitively scrambling, trying to make sense of what they had just heard: “Did she really just say that in this era of women’s empowerment?”

Donahue, who laughed at Rand’s response in a friendly way, asked her to clarify her position. Rand, perhaps knowing that she would not have enough time to fully explain her position, answered by encouraging the audience to read her 1969 essay. But moments later, a second woman in the audience asked Rand a more specific and hypothetical question. The woman asked Rand if she would you still not vote for a woman president even if the female candidate was better qualified than the male candidate?

To Rand’s detriment, she paused before answering. Her hesitation made her seem somewhat naïve, as if she…