[0:00]What do you understand about equality, Sophie? What does it mean to you? Uh, freedom. Can you be more Is it a quality of opportunity? Is it equal pay across the board? Is it something more than that? I think equality's better for everyone. I think, you know, I, and I'm really delighted, I, you know, I love my job because it's an optimistic and a hopeful job, which is about creating more choices for people. I'm interested in people being able to have different choices and, um, and having equality of outcome. Ah, well, so you're going to have choices and equality of outcome. What if people choice choose different things, which is what they've been doing in Scandinavia? The Scandinavian countries have moved more towards gender equality than any other countries, and the personality differences in Scandinavia have increased rather than decreased, and the proportion of women who are choosing STEM fields has decreased rather than increased. So as cultures become more gender neutral, the number of women who choose STEM fields decreased. Would you have STEM fields? So science, technology, engineering and mathematics. So if you let men and women make their choices, what actually happens is that they specialize in different in different situations, and you don't get equality of outcome. Could they not have been programmed to have those views from the moment we raise them and give boys Lego and construction? No, because what happens is that as countries get more egalitarian, which means there's less programming of that sort, the differences get larger, not smaller. And the scientific data on that is clear, and most of it was generated by people who have a left-leaning bias, so you can't blame it on conservative scientists. It was a shock to everyone to find that out. So, I mean, I think the difference between Jordan and me is that we, um, we look at, uh, evidence and we lean towards different theories. So Jordan's theory is very much evolutionary, you know, that there are inherent differences in men and women. Mine is very much more social role theory if you like, and I that that men and women are taking on different roles due to the expectations that society puts on them. And it's it's interesting that Jordan frequently uh cites Scandinavian countries where they've made more, like there's nowhere in the world that women are equal. Um, but Scandinavia has made the most progress towards um, uh, shared parenting, um, uh, etcetera. Um, that said, um, it's not done yet. There's nowhere in the world where this is done yet, so But it's having the opposite effect that the gender equality types predicted, opposite, not not the same. And it isn't a theory, it's actually data driven by tens of thousands of surveys and the best scientific literature on the topic. I'm not it's not a theory, and I didn't come about it because of my political perspective. I looked at the data, what it showed was that as countries become more egalitarian, the differences between men and women grow, they don't shrink. So what I'm interested in is is data and analysis as well, and I'm particularly interested in the ones presented such as the ones by the University of Southern California, um, which discovered that, um, change towards gender equality is actually being slowed by beliefs that are legitimizing social inequalities on the basis of sex. And I'm also interested, I mean, like Jordan, I look at the data and I look at the studies, and I'm really also very much interested in studies like the analysis that was done by, um, the American Psychological Society, which looked at 45 analysis of whether there's sex difference over 20 years, and its conclusion was that men and women are basically alike in terms of personality, in terms of cognitive ability, in terms of leadership, but what it did find was that media depictions of men and women as fundamentally different, perpetuate misconceptions, as does workplace bias. Oh, God, so it's my fault. So, no, well, you know, you're leaving soon, it's all right. Men and women, men and women actually are more the same than they are different. But the issue is, is that small differences at the population level can turn into very large differences at the extreme. So, for example, men and women are broadly similar with regards to aggression, although men tilt a little bit more towards aggression. About so that if you picked a random person out of the population, male and female, and you guessed that the male was more aggressive, you'd be right 60% of the time. But if you take the one in a hundred most aggressive people, they're all male, and that's why the overwhelming proportion of people who are in prisons are male. Now, do you want to equalize that? Just out of curiosity. What about brick layers? They're 99% male. And the and we've got about three quarters of of the population now in universities in the humanities and social sciences are female. Are we going to equalize that? And men men work more longer hours, they work more dangerous jobs, they're more likely to move, they're more likely to work outside. They're more likely to participate in jobs in the STEM fields that are scalable, they make more money for those reasons, and that's all hidden under the idea that the reason that men and women make different amounts of money is because of their gender. It's a very simplistic analysis and trying to. Okay, so I I I was just going to say, Sophie, can you can you come back on that? I I what I'm trying to equalize is is opportunity and choice. Fine, let's equalize choice. So you agree on that? But we won't get equal outcome that way. and and I think that what happens then, nobody knows, because we we we've never done it yet. We do know, we know what's happened in Scandinavia, but it's not fully got there. No, but it's going in the opposite direction that everyone predicted, and strongly. You do. I think there's I think one of the things I loved about Jordan's book, which I read, speed read last night, so forgive me, Jordan, I've not read every line. But one of my favorite rules in Jordan's book is rule nine, which says, assume the person you are listening to might know something you don't.
[5:37]And I think that in a country where men outnumber women, um, uh, by two to one in parliament, in local government, um, where women's voices are not equally represented in media, um, where our education systems, um, still are teaching boys and girls ideas of pink and blue, what I'm trying to do is work with thousands of optimistic, hopeful people for change. Okay. You kept very quiet through this, Michael. I'm going to make you put you under a bit of pressure. Do forgive me. I'm going to come to the clues in a moment. Your boss called the gender pay gap a burning injustice. Is it? Yes, it is, because uh, it's there should be an equality of uh, opportunity, there needs to be the same rights. But you know something that surprised me, but neither of you, and an equality of outcome, Sure, all of that, all of that. But the one thing both of you haven't mentioned is the biological difference, which unfortunately affects women's career prospects, whether we like it or not. Babies. And that does cause a problem, you know, if I were to take a sabbatical from a corporation for a while, it's going to set me back slightly. And it is a problem that biologically it's women who have babies, not men. Sure, but that's why we are the So the women's Equality Party is the only party in the UK that's got policies around shared parental leave. She said we're the only, we're the only party that, um, has got fully costed plans for universal free child care. You're trying to change, change the outcome. We're trying to change the outcomes and also men are joining our party. Men who are really tired, I'm sure we'll have a word with Michael because I am sure he will want the application. Okay, okay, forgive me. I want to take one call if you'll forgive me because time is really short and I owe it to the viewer to hear their views on this. We've got Salim calling from Manchester. Salim, good morning. Hi, Matthew. How are you doing? I'm very well, love. I'm holding it in. I'm a I'm a pig in heaven today. Uh, what do we think about equality? Will it ever happen, Salim? Um, I I was going to say I thought it was going to happen, but after listening to Jordan, he's swayed my opinion. Why did you, why did you think it was going to happen? Because I think we're going to become more cognitive creatures and jobs are going to be more about mental skills. Technology. But then I've been visited schools and I work in STEM. I'm an IT software developer, and the number of women doing software development hasn't increased. I would have thought they would have increased more. But I went into secondary schools to do GCSE IT stuff, and there's very, very few girls doing IT and I'm thinking IT's the future and why are, and they are The schools are pushing for more girls to go into IT. But there's only two Can I just sorry, sorry, I've got 30 seconds. Sophie's idea of representation in the media could be affecting such choices. Geeks, we see geeks, got the spectacled blokes with bad hair on computers. That's what Tech means, isn't it? Yeah, and you're absolutely right, because I think actually one of the other things we want to do is to have a look at curriculums to have more female role models to, you know, to encourage girls because so long as we still see STEM as a boy's area that we're trying to get girls into, it's not going to work. We need to do the work we're doing on care. Get more boys thinking about, you know, nursing, teaching, more role models, boys at schools. And on games, on programs like East Enders, the Archers, that's helped them. Complete. Right, so I I have to draw things to a conclusion. Can I just say how wonderful three people, diverse political views, diverse views on many other issues that get along famously and have wonderful conversations. Thank you. That is the exactly the show. So Jordan, good luck with the book. It is out now. It's called 12 Rules for Life.
