Californias plan to cut energy consumption by 80 percent by 2050 cannot be achieved with current proposed policy changes because most solutions focus on changing technologies rather than changing behavior, a new UC Davis study suggests.

With all the advances in building more energy-efficient air conditioners, better-insulated homes and cars that run on less or no fuel, consumers actually have increased their energy consumption. The expected energy savings have been outweighed by people living in larger homes with more appliances.

Add to this the phenomenon of a population that has shifted from non-users or people who used fans and open windows to cool their homes, for example to users. Those are the consumers enticed by marketing of high-efficiency air conditioners with consumer rebates, the study said.

What is needed is policy that focuses on reducing the overall consumption of energy, according to the study. To do this requires more sociological research that focuses on consumer behavior.

The average person doesnt think about how many kilowatts or the unit price of energy theyre consuming when they turn on the lights or heat up the stove, said Bridget Clark, a UCD doctoral candidate in sociology and author of the study. For most people energy is essentially invisible, just as people are essentially invisible in most energy research.

Clark presented her paper, Getting to 80 Percent: Mobilizing Feedback, Lifestyles, and Social Practices Research to Shape Residential Energy Consumption at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in Montreal on Tuesday.

In her paper, Clark looked at the goals of recently passed legislation mandating that the state cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2030, and a further reduction to 80 percent by 2050.

Along with these cuts are authorizations for policy changes, technology improvements and other measures, such as rebates and upgrades in the electrical grid, that would help California achieve its goals.

But policy changes and technology improvements wont work, she argues, mostly because people still desire to be comfortable in a cool (or warm) room, have convenient ways to cook food, and have lighting in their homes they consider to be warm and pleasing.

Instead, Californians should consider interventions similar to those undertaken elsewhere, such as in Japan, the paper suggests. In 2005, as a means to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the Japanese government mandated that all government buildings could not be heated or cooled when temperatures are between 20 and 28 degrees Celsius (68-82 F).

But, the government also changed employee dress codes. Marketing consultants were hired to create campaigns to transform the meaning of smart and appropriate work attire to encourage more layering in the winter and lighter fabrics in the summer. Within two years of implementation, the so-called Cool Biz program led to an estimated 1.14 million-ton reduction in emissions.

While current solutions that seek to increase energy efficiency of various technologies, invest in renewables and regulate emissions are important first steps these current strategies will be insufficient to make the deeps cut that the state is mandating, the author concluded. Instead, using social practice research, the government should take steps to better implement policy solutions that incentivize and change human behavior.

It is time to stop treating the end-use consumer as just a barrier to energy-efficiency measures, Clarke said. Through deeper examinations of the ways in which energy consumption is socially and culturally determined we can begin to construct more holistic policies that take into account why and how people actually consume energy.

UC Davis News

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'Getting to 80 percent' on energy cutbacks requires behavior change - Davis Enterprise

It was nighttime, a soft summer night, and I was standing onEighty-second Street and Second Avenue, in Manhattan, with my wife andanother couple. We were in the midst of saying goodbye on the smallisland between the bike lane and the avenue when a bike whooshed by,soundless and very fast. I had been back in New York for only a week. Asis always the case when I arrive after a period of months away, I wastuned to any change in the citys ambient hum. When that bike flew past,I felt a shift in the familiar rhythm of the city as I had known it. Iwatched the guy as he travelled on the green bike path. He was speedingdown the hill, but he wasnt pedalling and showed no sign of exertion.For a moment, the disjunction between effort and velocity confused me.Then it dawned on me that he was riding an electric bike.

Like most of the guys you see with electric bikes in New York, he was afood-delivery guy. Their electric bikes tend to have giant batteries,capable of tremendous torque and horsepower. They are the vanguard, thevisible part of the iceberg, but they are not indicative of what is tocome. Their bikes are so conspicuously something other than a bike, forone thing. For another, the utility of having a battery speed up yourdelivery is so straightforward that it forecloses discussion. What liesahead is more ambiguous. The electric bikes for sale around the city now havebatteries that are slender, barely visible. The priority is not speed somuch as assisted living.

I grew up as a bike rider in Manhattan, and I also worked as a bikemessenger, where I absorbed the spartan, libertarian,every-man-for-himself ethos: you need to get somewhere asfast as possible, and you did what you had to do in order to get there.The momentum you give is the momentum you get. Bike messengers were oncefaddish for their look, but its this feeling of solitude andself-reliance that is, along with the cult of momentum, the essentialelement of that profession. The citywith its dedicated lanes andgreenwaysis a bicycle nirvana compared with what it once was, and I havehad to struggle to remake my bicycle life in this new world of goodcitizenship. And yet, immediately, there was something about electricbikes that offended me. On a bike, velocity is all. That guy on theelectric bike speeding through the night was probably going to have tobreak hard at some point soon. If he wanted to pedal that fast to attaintop speed on the Second Avenue hill that sloped down from the highEighties, then it was his right to squander it. But he hadnt worked togo that fast. And, after he brakedfor a car, or a pedestrian, or aturnhe wouldnt have to work to pick up speed again.

Its a cheat! my friend Rob Kotch, the owner of Breakaway CourierSystems, said, when I got him on the phone and asked him about electricbikes. Everyone cheats now. They see Lance Armstrong do it. They seethese one-percenters making a ton of money without doing anything. Sothey think, why do I have to work hard? So now its O.K. for everyone tocheat. Everyone does it. It took me a few minutes to realize thatKotchs indignation on the subject of electric bikes was not coming fromhis point of view as a courier-system owneralthough there is plenty ofthat. (He no longer employs bike messengers as a result of the cost ofworkers compensation and the competition from UberEATS, which doesnthave to pay workers comp.) Kotchs strong feelings were drivenso tospeakby his experience as someone who commutes twenty-three miles on a bicycle eachday, between his home in New Jersey and his Manhattan office. Hehas been doing this ride for more than twenty years.

There is this one hill just before the G. W. Bridge that is a goodsix-degree grade, and it goes for half a mile, he told me. If youcommute to Manhattan on your bike, you have to find a way to get up thathill. A lot of people are just not willing to commit to that muchexercise on their way to work.

Recently, though, he has noticed a lot of people cruising effortlesslyup the hill on electric bikes.

Its a purely pragmatic decision for them, he said. Its just a muchcheaper and faster way of getting to work than a car. So they use anelectric bike.

He described a guy on one of those one-wheeled, Segway-like things.

He passed me going up that hill, then took the long way around to thebridge. I use a shortcut. I thought I got rid of him, but when I got tothe bridge, there he washe was going that fast!

I laughed and told him about a ride I took across the Manhattan Bridgethe previous night, where several electric bikes flew by me. It was not,I insisted, an ego thing about who is going faster. Lots of people whoflew by me on the bridge were on regular bikes. It was a rhythm thing, Isaid. On a bike, you know where the hills are, you know how to time thelights, you calibrate for the movement of cars in traffic, other bikes,pedestrians. The electric bike was a new velocity on the streets.

And yet, for all our shared sense that something was wrong with electricbikes, we agreed that, by any rational measure, they are a force forgood.

The engines are efficient, they reduce congestion, he said.

Fewer cars, more bikes, I said.

We proceeded to list a few other Goo-Goo virtues. (I first encounteredthis phraseshort for good-government typesin Robert Caros The PowerBroker,about Robert Moses, the man who built New York for the automobile.)

If its such a good thing, why do we have this resentment? I asked.

He wasnt sure, he said. He confessed that he had recently tried a friends electric bike and found the experience appealing to thepoint of corruption.

Its only a matter of time before I get one, he said ruefully. Andthen Ill probably never get on a real bike again.

In some ways, the bike-ification of New York City can be seen as theultimate middle finger raised to Robert Moses, a hero for building somany parks who then became a crazed highway builder who wanted todemolish part of Greenwich Village to make room for a freeway. But areall the bikes a triumph for his nemesis, Jane Jacobs, and her vision ofcohesive neighborhoods anchored by street life, by which she meant theworld of pedestrians on the sidewalk?

The revolution under Bloomberg was to see the city as a place wherepedestrians come first, a longtime city bike rider and advocate I know,who didnt wish to be named, said. This electric phenomenonundermines this development. The great thing about bikes in the city isthat, aesthetically and philosophically, you have to be present and awareof where you are, and where others are. When you keep introducing moreand more power and speed into that equation, it goes against thephilosophy of slowing cars downof traffic calmingin order to makethings more livable, he said.

Some bicycle-advocacy groups are cautiously optimistic about electricbikes, or even cautiously ecstatic. E-bikes have the potential todemocratize bikes for millions of Americans, Paul Steely White, theexecutive director of Transportation Alternatives, said, adding that hewas bullish on e-bikes, though it has to be done right. I get hislogic. Think of all the people who will be drawn onto bicycles by thepromise of an assist when going uphill. The most important factor forbike safety, more than bikes lanes or helmets or lights, is the numberof cyclists on the streets. The more people who ride bikes, the saferthe conditions for everyone on a bike. (Hence the name of the bikeadvocacy group Critical Mass.) In this equation, bikes are the rarespecies that can be introduced into an urban ecosystem for the purposeof discouraging cars.

I went into a bike shop and asked about the electric bikes for sale: twothousand and change each.

We dont call them electric, the salesman said. We call it pedalassist.

I asked if he had tried one. He gave me a huge smile. He had, and heloved it.

Why? I asked.

It looks like youre pedalling, but you are not doing nothing.

A few weeks after this exchange, Iwas in Paris. There are bikes everywhere, often in the lanereserved for buses, and cars proceed with great civility toward peopleon two wheels or two feet, at least compared to New York. The other day,while pedalling down Boulevard Saint-Germain on a Vlibthe Parisversion of a Citi Bikea woman in a dress with short blond hair cruisedpast me, her stylish bag flung over her shoulder. I immediately thoughtof that sense of joyous stealth or imposture implied by the bikesalesman in New York. She was pedalling, but there was no question thather speed and momentum derived from something other than her effort. Westopped together at a red light. When it turned green, she placidlysailed ahead and out of sight.

I immediately searched out an electric bike to rent. I found a store onthe Rue des coles that sold stately Holland bikes, both electric andregular. The guy agreed to rent one to me, and I began sailing aroundtown. I found the effect narcotic and delightful: on a flat road, Imoved faster than I did on a normal bike, with less exertion. Downhillswere no different than a normal bike. Uphill, I maintained speed, withjust a tiny bit more exertion. Now and then I could feel the happy bumpof electric power. Assisted living was so pleasant! The only problem wasthat, like some mouse in a cognitive-behavior experiment, I began tocrave that bump. It was the effect of the assist I wanted; it was thefeeling of being assisted.

This is an issue of shared values and perspectives, my bike-advocatefriend said. This whole thing is about attentiveness. How do you dealwith technology and the frailties of being a human being? Bicycles aremechanical augmentation of walking, really. It gets pretty etherealwhyis it bad to have a motor when you are already using gears? Who gives ashit if you are using a motor?

But, I feel there is a clear line between human power and non-humanpower, he added. I think there should be a very simple classification:human-powered or not human-powered. And if you are not human-powered,you should not be using human-powered infrastructure. You should be inthe street. E-bikes being licensed as motorized vehicles is good.E-bikes being in human-powered infrastructure is no good. . . .

At which point we arrive at the insidious genius of our iPhone, Google,A.I. era, in which the distinction between human behavior that is andisnt assisted becomes almost impossible to detect, and thereforeto enforce.

This parallel found expression one afternoon in Paris, while I was on the electricbike in route along the Seine, way at the edge of town. The road wasmostly deserted, the riverfront lined with shrubs and trash. I took outmy phone to take a picture of the scene as I cruised along and then,creature of my era, I pressed the little icon that brought my own faceonto the screen. I took a selfie. When I lowered the phone, I saw anolder man walking along the river, waving at me in a strange way.

He had white hair, wore a rumpled suit, and held his waving hand in apeculiar position that I now realize is how one would hold a pocketmirror if you were trying to make it reflect a beam of light. At thetime, I only noticed that there was something patronizing about his bodylanguage and wave, like he was trying to get the attention of a child.Before I had to time to even consider waving back, he turned his palmtoward himself. With impeccably expressive poise, he mimed an orangutanstaring sadly at his own reflection. I sailed onward, chastised andfrozen-faced, moving a bit faster than I otherwise would have. I didnthave time to react. He is still vivid to me in this pose, his bodylanguage and mopey face indelible. You always remember the picture youdidnt get to takebecause its preservation in memory depends entirelyon you.

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The Electric-Bike Conundrum - The New Yorker

Glamping with goats and the eclipse. Pet safety and the eclipse. Have you reached peak eclipse yet? If your answer is Nope! well, weve got some more pertinent eclipse information for the animal lovers in the audience.

Zoos across the country have been curiously preparing for Aug. 21. These wildlife sanctuaries all agree that the eclipse will be a learning opportunity, and many are enthusiastically opening their gates and inviting the public to watch the solar event.Most are unsure how their wards will react to the phenomenon, but some have offered predictions about which animals may exhibit the most unusual behavior.

According to the Little Rock Zoo in Arkansas, some drama may ensue among five species in particular. Education Curator Katie Holloway tells THV11 they include barn owls, armadillos, sloths, elephants and chimps. PEOPLE rounded out the list with five more compelling species.

1. Barn Owls (and other birds, especially song birds)

Although theyre usually asleep in the afternoon, these nocturnal birds might awaken and start looking for food. The Wausau Daily Herald says nocturnal birds, including a variety of owls and nighthawks, have reportedly become active, taken flight or called out during total eclipses. Starlings and other birds may return to their evening roosts, as will fowl and pigeons.

2. Three Ringed (or Three Band) Armadillos

The Little Rock Zoos expert says these armadillos can jump up to three or four feet vertically and its likely to occur!

3. Sloths

Good morning!

A post shared by Krista (@yellowkray) on Jun 19, 2016 at 6:22am PDT

These slow-moving sweethearts might get hungry and go on a feeding frenzy, although it will take up to 30 days for sloths to digest whatever they happen to eat during the eclipse. (We suggest watching the eclipse along with them at Oregons Zoological Wildlife Conservation Center.)

4. Chimps (and other primates)

The Little Rock Zoo says that chimps (and primates in general) are capable of overreacting to all kinds of things, so it expects these guys to go bananas. However, Sean Putney, the Senior Director of Zoological Operations at the Kansas City Zoo,predicts the more intelligent and intellectual animals will respond in ways that are more human-like: Will they be smart enough to know that this is going to be over in a couple of minutes? Or will they start to move towards their evening quarters as well thinking its time for bed? Itll be interesting to see.

The Mother Nature Network recounts a story about chimps who climbed to the top of their structure and turned their heads skyward during a 1984 eclipse.

5. Elephants

Our countdown to the New Year continues with Nos. 4, 3 and 2 of our #Top10 Best of 2016 list. Landing at No. 4, the opening of #AlaskanAdventure back in June. The splashgrounds 18-foot-tall humpback whale, 75 bronze sculptures, including jumping salmon, puffins, orcas and brown bears, and 200-plus misters and water spray nozzles were one of the highlights of our summer AND yours! The critically endangered #SaltCreektigerbeetle, one of #NorthAmericas most endangered insects, finds itself at No. 3. Our Butterfly and Insect Pavilion crew have been helping this local since 2011, working with the @usfws, the @negameandparks and other partners to collect adult #beetles in the wild, shepherd them through the egg-laying process at the Zoo and fish their newly hatched larvae from tiny burrows in a custom sand mixture. Our crew produced 27 larvae for reintroduction into the wild at the start of the project. Numbers have since soared to more than 1,300 larvae, enough to boost reintroduction numbers and establish a Zoo-based assurance colony. At No. 2, the most highly anticipated animal arrival at the Zoo, probably ever: the arrival of six African #elephants in Omaha. On March 11, the world watched as 17 African elephants flew across the globe to the United States in a joint mission to rescue the animals from drought-stricken Swaziland. One male and five females call the African Grasslands at our Zoo home, six at Wichitas @sedgwickcountyzoo and five at @dallaszoo. Just look at them now! #OmahaZoo #2016

A post shared by Omaha's Zoo & Aquarium (@theomahazoo) on Dec 30, 2016 at 3:13pm PST

The Little Rock Zoo predicts that elephants will make the most noise during the eclipse. They tend to trumpet when things are out of the ordinary, so they may sound off on Monday. Dan Cassidy, the general curator at Omahas Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, suggests watching the elephants as well. He says if its dark enough, they may go back into their barns. Dr. Joel Parrott, president and CEO of the Oakland Zoo, seems to agree. He says that the smarter animals, like elephants, will be more interesting to watch. Dr. Don Moore of the Oregon Zoo is on board with this, too. He says the pachyderms mightthink its dinnertime and start looking for food.

6. Giraffes

The Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha says the giraffes may behave similarly to elephants and head back to their barns, thinking that nighttime has descended.

7. Whales and 8. Dolphins

Once again, the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium predicts unusual behavior, this time amongst sea mammals like whales and dolphins. To test the waters, so to speak, Tradewinds Charters out of Depoe Bay, Oregon (known for its year-round pod of gray whales), is offering a two-hour whale-watching tour during the eclipse. And according to Time, Dr. Douglas Duncan of the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado says he witnessed whales and dolphins act strangely in the Galapagos during a 1998 eclipse. He told Time thatas the sky darkened, about 20 of the marine mammals surfaced, arching in and out of the water.

9. Llamas

#llamasofinstagram

A post shared by Derek Verzuh (@derek_verzuh) on Jun 14, 2017 at 7:02pm PDT

Dr. Duncan also told Time that hes witnessed llamas act strangely during a 1994 total solar eclipse in Bolivia. He says a pack of llamas suddenly seemed to show interest in the sky, claiming that there were none of the animals around while a group of people observed the event, when out of nowhere, about 15 llamas gathered around them during the partial phase of the eclipse and gazed at the sky along with the humans during the totality of it. For the life of me, I cant tell you where they came from, he said. When the total eclipse ended, the llamas kind of got themselves into a rough line and they marched away.

10. Lions (and other big cats)

Dr. Don Moore of the Oregon Zoo thinks that during the eclipse, lions may act more predatory or start looking to be fed. Then again, lions and tigers spend up to 18 hours a day sleeping, so they may never even notice.

In general, many zoos are inviting people to visit during the eclipse and just see what happens.Nashville Zoo invites visitors to watch its new rhinos in particular, using the #NashvilleZoo or #NZooEclipse hashtags. According to WKRN,the rhinos are the zoos newest animals and they have a schedule they go by, coming out of their barn at 9 a.m. and returning at 6 p.m. Before they came here, they were in Africa in a reserve where they spent most of their time outside day and night, so does that change with their behavior? Does it change with light level? Or are they going to be affected by this kind of experience or are they not? Itll be really interesting to see, said Jim Bartoo, the zoos marketing director.

Finally,Jeff Bullock, Director of the Greenville Zoo says this,[The eclipse] just throws everybody off. Animals that are on a diurnal structure will go to bed (during the eclipse). Animals that are used to being up at night will get more active We get a lot of owls, bats, rats and possums, he said of the local wildlife. We may see some of those that we dont usually see when the sun is out.

The rest is here:
Zoo Animals - PEOPLE.com

Executive Summary

Many people have asserted that biological differences can explain the gender gap in math, engineering, and science. To address these claims, we need to examine three interrelated questions: Are there gender differences in outcomes achieved by men and women? If so, is there evidence that they are due to biological differences? Is there stronger evidence that they are due to bias? A review of research finds that the evidence on biological differences is too thin to explain the large gender gaps in leadership roles and STEM careers, while the evidence for gender bias driving career outcomes is much stronger.

Former Google engineer James Damore was hardly the first person to argue that biological differences between men and women determine career outcomes. Many people even smart, science-minded ones have asserted that biological differences can explain the gender gap in math, engineering, and science. A 2005 Gallup pollfound that 21% of Americans believed men were better than women in terms of their math and science abilities (though 68% believed men and women were about the same). The fact that this argument keeps coming up means that we need to engage with it and clarify which claims are supported by evidence and which are not.

To address these claims, we need to examine three interrelated questions: Are there gender differences in outcomes achieved by men and women? If so, is there evidence that they are due to biological differences? Is there stronger evidence that they are due to bias?

To answer the first question: Yes, there are gender differences in the participation of men and women in some STEM fields among college students, and these differences do contribute to the underrepresentation of women in STEM professions. Women are also significantly underrepresented in top leadership positions.

But are these outcome differences due to biological differences? While there are (of course) biological differences between the sexes, social science has shown that men and women are more similar than different on a wide range of characteristics, from personality to ability to attitude and that these factors have a larger effect on career outcomes than biology does.

My former colleague Janet Hyde, a developmental psychologist and an authority on gender differences, reviewed 46 meta-analyses that had been conducted on psychological gender differences from1984 to2004. (A meta-analysis examines the results from a large number of individual studies and averages their effects to get the closest approximation ofthe true effect size.) Hydes review spanned studies looking at differences between men and women in cognitive abilities, communication, personality traits, measures of well-being, motor skills, and moral reasoning.

She found that 78% of the studies in her sample revealed little to no difference in these measures between menand women; this supports her gender similarities hypothesis, which states that men and women are far more similar than they are different. The only large differences she found related to girls being better than boys in spelling and language, and testinghigher than boys on the personality variable of agreeableness/tendermindedness; boys tested higher than girls on motor performance, certain measures of sexuality (masturbation, casual attitudes about sex), and aggression. So there are some gender differences, but most are small to nonexistent.

But can these differences truly be classified as biological? Or are they due to differences in socialization? Its the old nature/nurture debate a debate that can be a false one because most human behavior involves complex interactions between genetic, environmental, and epigenetic influences. For example, one study that Damore cited did find gender differences in personality across cultures,but the researchers described the differences as relatively small to moderate and concluded that human developmentlong and healthy life, access to education, and economic wealthis a primary correlate of the gap between men and women in their personality traits.

And a review of studies on levels of prenatal exposure to testosterone found resultant differences in empathy, aggression, and toy preference between males and females, but found no significant differences in dominance/assertiveness or ability. Unless all of the differences in mens representation in STEM and leadership are the result of their lack of empathy, high levels of aggression, or toy preferences, there is little evidence that biological differences affect work-related outcomes. In fact, based on the research on leadership, we would expect to see that a lack of empathy and high levels of aggression would hurt a persons chances of becoming a successful leader, not help them.

On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence to support the impact that environment has on gender differences in society. For example, a review of research on gender differences in math test scores shows that the already small effects have declined over time and tend to be greater in countries with less gender equality. In terms of behavior, a study by economists showed that in cultures where women are dominant, theytend to be more competitive than men. Meta-analytic evidence on gender differences in leadership aspirations showed that differences are decreasing over time women are closing the gap in terms of wanting to be leaders suggesting that the gap is more due to society than to biology.

Other data also contradicts the idea that women are biologically predisposed to lower levels of leadership. One meta-analysis of 95 studies found that female leaders tend to be rated by others as significantly more effective than male leaders, and this effect is stronger after 1996. (On the flip side, men rated themselves as significantly better leaders than women, particularly before 1982.) But thisdata does tell us something about the impact of gender roles (as women tend to rate themselves as less effective leaders) and societal changes (since the effects are diminishing over time).

If the evidence on biological differences is too thin to explain the large gender gaps in leadership roles and STEM careers, is the evidence on gender bias any stronger?

Several studies have shown that employers do discriminate against women and minorities. One robust vein of research uses rsums to test how people respond to different candidates with identical qualifications. For example, in one study, professors rated the identical applications of fictional male or female students. When a male name was used, faculty members rated them as significantly more competent and hirable than the female applicant, and they offered the male applicant a higher starting salary and more career mentoring. The reason for this was that women were perceived as less competent by the faculty members; faculty who had greater bias against women rated female students worse. The effect sizes here were moderate to large, unlike those shown in sex-differences studies. And numerous other studies have hadsimilar results, not just in hiring but in promotion rates, performance evaluations, getting credit for good work, and project assignments.

This body of research also shows why advocating for a pure meritocracy rather than explicitly pursuing diversity doesnt help companies overcome bias. In fact, companies that highlight meritocracy may actually cause greater bias against women: Experimental studies show that when an organization is referred to as a meritocracy, individuals in managerial positions favor male employees over equally qualified female employees and give them larger rewards. The author theorizes that calling the organization a meritocracy may create moral credentialing (when ones track record as egalitarian makes them feel justified in making nonequalitarian decisions) or greater self-perceived objectivity, giving them license to discriminate against women.

Calling for a meritocracy and denying that workplace inequality stillexists captures what scientists refer to as modern sexism.Modern sexism is characterized by beliefs that discrimination against women is a thing of the past, antagonism towards women who are making political and economic demands, and resentment about special favors for women. Notably, individuals espousing such views do not regard these notions as sexist or unfair andconclude that, given the even playing field upon which the two sexes now compete, the continuing under-representation of women in certain roles (e.g., management positions) must be a result of womens own choices or inferiority as opposed to discrimination.

In his memo, Damore wrote, We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism, and that we should assume people have good intentions. But the gender gap in the workforce can be explained by sexism, just as the race gap can be explained by racism. When workplace practices aim to support underrepresented groups, that does not mean they are unfairly biased against overrepresented groups. It just means that we need more than good intentions to change biased behavior.

We all want systems that are fair. But we need to consider how to make them fair for everyone.

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What the Science Actually Says About Gender Gaps in the Workplace - Harvard Business Review