Feminists and unexpected field experiments

Intriguing. Speculatively scientific investigation rather than anything that is rigorous, randomly selected, large population, replicated or any of the other attributes of more formal science. From Why Aren't More Women Feminists? by Ross Pomeroy

It's been called the "Feminist Paradox": Feminism's aim is to improve the lives of all women, yet only about a third of women in the United States identify as feminists. That disparity is even starker when you consider that surveys show three-quarters of women to be concerned about women's rights.

Why do most women eschew the feminist label? Perhaps it's because we don't like to categorize ourselves socially or politically. After all, far more Americans identify as independent rather than align themselves with a political party. It could also be that feminism is not clearly defined. There's liberal feminism, radical feminism, Marxist feminism, ecofeminism, womanism, and a boatload of other different brands, all espousing diverse ideologies and expressing varying levels of activism. The hodgepodge might lead women to remain agnostic. Another reason is the less-then-flattering image of feminists offered up in the popular media, which often depicts them as extremist, unattractive man-haters.

Fair enough. A reasonable scene setter.

Entering the controversial fray with a new eyebrow-raising explanation -- and even some empirical data to back it up -- is a team of psychologists from Umeå University in Sweden. They hypothesize that the activists who get the headlines and shape feminist attitudes are "generally more physiologically and psychologically masculinized than is typical for women." Basically, there may be "biological differences between women in general and the activist women who formulate the feminist agenda."

That's a bold claim. Not obviously wrong but certainly somewhat unusual.

The empirical data that was mentioned originated from a feminist conference in Sweden. The researchers visited the gathering and offered candy in exchange for participation. Subjects answered questions designed to measure social dominance and had their hands imaged with a high resolution scanner so that researchers could measure the ratio of the length of the index finger to the ring finger, which is the most widely used index of prenatal testosterone exposure. Men have a lower ratio (meaning the index finger is shorter than the ring finger) while women have a higher ratio (the index and ring fingers are more similar in length). Participation in the study was anonymous and no demographic data was collected. The researchers did not directly ask the subjects whether they were feminists, thinking that it would deter participation.

I had forgotten about that finger ratio thing. I wonder how well established it is.

But the results are startling, at least to me.

Not only did the (only 25 of them) feminists exhibit a more masculanized digit ratio than a reference population of women, but they had an even more masculanized ratio than a reference population of men.

25 women -- approximately 35% of attendees at the conference -- took part in the survey. The researchers found their index-ring finger ratio to be vastly more masculine compared to the average for Swedish women. (For the statistics lovers out there, the p values were <0.000001 for the right hand and 0.00016 for the left hand. That's remarkably significant.) The difference indicates that the women were exposed to higher levels of testosterone during development, engendering more masculine characteristics.

Obviously the experiment would have to be conducted again with a much larger population and with greater controls and then replicated by independent third parties. None-the-less, it is interesting. Not sure what it means, or even how to interpret it, but how interesting.