> Girls do better than boys in school, period. Women are more likely to attend college and to graduate once they're there.

There are many reasons for this. They get more support at every turn, and they conform to rules and systems more easily than men who are inclined to think for themselves. They also believe in the narrative that college is necessary and if you don't do it you've missed out big time. That isn't necessarily true. Most of the degrees issued are overpriced and/or worthless now, and even 20 years back.

Most of the women who go to college now don't need a college degree. They would be better served by community college to do a useful job, or else taking that time to start a family. But they've been sold the lie that college always pays off, and they get lots of help to pay for it and survive it.

>The fact that they do better in school and not in early career earnings has, in fact, been a long time point of evidence that gender imbalance exists.

Men have to work hard in life to get the affection of a woman, and that skews everything. Then there is also the fact that women choose stability and flexibility to deal with children and their own social preferences (such as higher amounts of travel for leisure). A woman could literally be on the verge of homelessness and be able to find a man to take care of her.

If women are really such better and cheaper workers than men, why doesn't every employer hire women? They could quickly put everyone else out of business.

> Yet the instant it looks like that might be reverting to mean, we see men screaming that it's somehow unfair and we need to put the finger back on the scale.

There is no reversion to the mean here. I reject your claim that men are somehow inferior workers. Cut out all the DEI programs and go strictly based on merit, and you'll see how quick things turn around. Although I'm not sure that would necessarily happen. Women have not been disadvantaged in any area in at least about 50 years, but they've received preferential treatment the whole time.

This isn't a simple matter of fairness. Shitting on men constantly and propping up women is going to lead to a demographic collapse. Women don't want to date men who they outperform. They want men to provide for them so they can take it easy with the kids. That's fine but don't expect that while doing everything you can to make that as hard as possible.

>This is what I meant upthread about people being mentally unprepared. Seriously: what if it's true? For myself, I think it's probably true that women are more valuable blue collar employees. It's the theory that fits the data best.

Considering that blue collar jobs are the hard physical ones, women absolutely aren't preferred for those jobs by default. They might be favored by guys who appreciate having women around but they just can't do what men do (at least, with the same high level of output, in general). There are many better jobs that are naturally leaning toward women, such as waiting tables or tending bar in nice restaurants, certain sales jobs, nursing, teaching, child care. Good luck getting one of those jobs if you're a man. At the same time, you'll almost never see a woman welder or oil worker, or construction worker. The real high-pressure jobs that shave years off your life have no appeal to women because they don't need money that bad. Men do them because they need to support their families, or else their wives will hate them and/or leave.