The wikipedia page you linked uses this source for the androgen claim
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3270350/ which is the same one referenced earlier that is covered by the meta-analysis paper I linked. Your source does include this section, though:
"Socialization Effects on Spatial Ability
Several types of evidence suggest that spatial abilities are influenced by social experiences. Sex differences in spatial ability have been seen to depend on socioeconomic status (SES), with differences apparent in children from middle and high SES backgrounds, but not in children from low SES backgrounds (Levine, Vasilyeva, Lourenco, Newcombe, & Huttenlocher, 2005). SES effects were suggested to result in part from access to experiences that facilitate spatial ability.
The experiences most often suggested to contribute to spatial ability include play with boys’ toys (e.g., construction sets, videogames) and engagement in boy-typed activities (e.g., sports) that encourage manipulation and exploration of the environment (e.g., Baenninger & Newcombe, 1989; Connor & Serbin, 1977). The link between spatial ability and aspects of sex-typed activities is weak-to-moderate (e.g., Newcombe, Bandura, & Taylor, 1983), with some variability and inconsistency that likely reflects methodological and conceptual issues (Baenninger & Newcombe, 1989; Voyer, Nolan, & Voyer, 2000). Nevertheless, correlations are not evidence of causation: engagement in boy-typed activities might enhance spatial ability or instead reflect that ability, that is, children with high spatial ability might be attracted to toys that allow manipulation and exploration, or a third factor (such as early hormones or gendered socialization) may influence both of them. Some longitudinal data suggest that the causal path is from abilities to activities rather than the reverse (Newcombe & Dubas, 1992).
It is, therefore, important to note direct experimental evidence that spatial ability can be enhanced by experience. In particular, spatial ability can be improved through practice and training, with generalization beyond training stimuli. For example, playing an action video game was seen to improve both spatial attention and mental rotation ability (Feng, Spence, & Pratt, 2007). Training benefits both sexes, with women sometimes benefiting more than men, so that training may eliminate a sex difference (Lawton, 2010).
Finally, stereotypes that emphasize women’s cognitive inferiority appear to impair their performance. This has been demonstrated in experimental studies of both math and spatial abilities, in which test-taking conditions are manipulated to emphasize or de-emphasize cognitive sex differences and their malleability. Women who were told that sex differences in math have genetic causes performed worse on math tests than those who were told that the differences have experiential causes (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2006). Women who were told that men outperform women on spatial tasks performed worse on a mental rotations test than women who received neutral information, and the poorer performance of the group given negative stereotypes appeared to reflect increased emotional load (Wraga, Helt, Jacobs, & Sullivan, 2007). The effect of stereotype information on spatial sex differences has also been seen in judgments of line orientation (Campbell & Collaer, 2009)."
It is one thing to claim there's a discrepancy, it is another thing entirely to dishonestly claim we know there's a biological mechanism that accounts for it, because we simply do not--as it turns out you can make those differences disappear altogether in a controlled experiment (which REALLY makes biological explanations tenuous):
"I think it’s important to acknowledge the very rightful discomfort that arises when scientific studies attempt to trace such differences to biologically determined origins.
Yet, across decades of research, no biological cause has actually been identified as a suitable explanation for the spatial reasoning discrepancy. Studies regarding testosterone and mental rotation, for example, found inconsistent or absent effects across cultures, prompting inquiries into “differing cultural values” to account for the results. And gaps between men’s and women’s scores on some spatially-geared tests have significantly shrunk in the past few decades, which is interesting because noticeable evolutionary or nature-based development might take thousands of decades to take effect. (“Nurture”-based conditions are of course rapidly changing.) Still though, the gap has lingered, and a satisfying and empirically-supported explanation as to “what gives” was not achieved until 2008, when researchers eliminated the performance gap under a single simple condition.
In a now-famous study, psychologists at the University of Berlin falsely told participants that they had been selected to participate in a series of tests “to measure the ability to put oneself in someone else’s position” - a fabrication devised to avoid confounding factors in their real study on gender identity priming. They prepared a text describing a day in the life of a “stereotypical woman” who takes care of her family, works part time, and is insightful, helpful, and agreeable. They also prepared an equivalently-structured text outlining the activities of a stereotypical manly man who is tough, risk-taking, and does weight training after work. Subjects were randomly given one of the two texts, and then asked: “If you were the person described in the text, which adjectives would you use to describe yourself?”
Soon after participants described themselves with either the male- or female-associated traits, they were asked to take a mental rotation test presented as independent of the first part of the study, supposedly to measure their personal spatial aptitude.
On this mental rotation test, women who were “primed” with the female identity scored an average of 3.86 on the exercise, compared to the female-primed males’ average of 5.14. Okay, expected. But then when primed with the male text, women scored an average of 5.49, while men scored 5.53… wait a second, what?
As it turns out, there is zero statistically significant gender difference in mental rotation ability after test-takers are asked to imagine themselves as stereotypical men for a few minutes. None. An entire standard deviation of female underperformance is negated on this condition, just as a man’s performance is slightly hindered if he instead imagines himself as a woman. (well then.) Although this study is of course not a logically definitive answer to all things “nature versus nurture,” it does add a tremendous structural asset to the growing mountain of evidence that “natural” ability differences are confounded by identity and subconscious self-stereotyping. Demographic expectations may be subtle or overt, but they are omnipresent, and they are likely much more powerful than most of us have ever considered."
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry...eotypical-male
https://link.springer.com/article/10...199-008-9448-9
The whole androgen / extreme male brain theory / autism / systematizing / things over people link also seems to fall apart:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27460188 :
"There is a marked male preponderance in autism spectrum conditions. The extreme male brain theory and the fetal androgen theory of autism suggest that elevated prenatal testosterone exposure is a key contributor to autistic traits. The current paper reports findings from two separate studies that test this hypothesis.
METHODS:
A parent-report questionnaire, the Childhood Autism Spectrum Test (CAST), was employed to measure autistic traits in both studies. The first study examined autistic traits in young children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a condition causing unusually high concentrations of testosterone prenatally in girls. Eighty one children with CAH (43 girls) and 72 unaffected relatives (41 girls), aged 4-11 years, were assessed. The second study examined autistic traits in relation to amniotic testosterone in 92 typically developing children (48 girls), aged 3-5 years.
RESULTS:
Findings from neither study supported the association between prenatal androgen (testosterone) exposure and autistic traits. Specifically, young girls with and without CAH did not differ significantly in CAST scores and amniotic testosterone concentrations were not significantly associated with CAST scores in boys, girls, or the whole sample.
CONCLUSIONS:
These studies do not support a relationship between prenatal testosterone exposure and autistic traits. These findings augment prior research suggesting no consistent relationship between early androgen exposure and autistic traits."
And finally:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...es-us-smarter/
https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...the-workplace/
https://www.cio.com/article/3191607/...d-results.html
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-fu...ersity-matters
http://medicieffect.com/
https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter
https://blog.capterra.com/7-studies-...the-workplace/
https://www.ft.com/content/4f4b3c8e-...7-00144feabdc0
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/da...-soup-0513.pdf
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