The Gender-equality Paradox is back in Finland! Maybe that will influence the collapsed research and curb Finnish women's relational aggressiveness?

ÅU reports on a doctoral dissertation on a phenomena called the Gender-equality Paradox, signed Dr. Marco Balducci. But Dr. Balducci's research is not, as Åbo Underrättelse claim, a discovery. It's more a replication of a known phenomena: democracy and affluence influence women's personality. The implication: they reject things like Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). But, the real issue in Finland seems to be women's relational aggressiveness (psychological domestic violence, children's lack of school performance, collapsed research, and lack of entrepreneurship and innovative thinking. Hence, the media's attention to Dr. Balducci replication of the Gender-Equality Paradox, may work as an injection, not only for the collapsed Finnish research, but also for the Finnish political view on men and women. Maybe that will also curb Finnish women's relational aggressiveness?

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Åbo Underrättelser (ÅU) reports on a doctoral dissertation on a phenomena called the Gender-equality Paradox, signed Dr. Marco Balducci, at the department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology, University of Åbo.

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But Dr. Balducci's research is not, as Åbo Underrättelse claim, a discovery. It's more a replication of a known phenomena: democracy and affluence influence women's personality. The implication: they rejects things like Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) to a greater extent compared to women in autocratic countries (Baron-Cohen, 2003; Hyde, 2005; Lippa, 2010; Schmitt et al. 2008; Stoet and Geary, 2018; Su, Rounds and Armstrong, 2009).

Why is Dr. Balducci's replication of the Gender-Equality Paradox important here in Finland?

Part of the issue is that Finnish politicians and university administrators have pushed the agenda that because of men, young women are discriminated in STEM (Österberg, 2019).

Fundamenta:

• Men are doing fine alone, whereas women crave for friends and family (Dunbar, 2021; Pinker, 2005).
  
  
• What is happening in the home environment during the first 4 − 5 years of living, typically influences school performance at 10 − 12 (Baker et al. 2020; Bandura, 1977; Barkley, 2001; Baumrind, 1966; Farran och Formby, 2011; Gopnik, 2016; Hart och Risley, 1995; Liu et al. 2017; Olsson, 2022; Tomasello, 2014; Trafton, 2017).

It is good that the father is at home with the children (LaFlamme et al. 2012). A research team at Imperial College has published a study showing that children who interact with their father at three months have better cognitive ability at the age of two (Sethna et al. 2017). A systematic review shows a positive effect of the father-relationship on the cognitive development of school children (Rolle et al. 2019). The father-relationship benefits children's emotional and social adjustment (Vieno et al. 2009, 2014). My own master's thesis in social psychology, which deals with children's emotional relationships with their respective parents, indicates that children who grow up with both parents or only with their father have better emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development (including visuospatial perception and numeracy) compared to children who grow up with only their mother (Österberg, 2004):

“A compilation of 28 studies on the effects of father absence on children's cognitive ability (Shinn, 1978) indicates that father absence as a function of divorce is negatively related to intellectual competence in children; which has also been demonstrated in previous studies (Blanchard & Biller, 1971; Crescimbeni, 1965; Ferri, 1976; Hetherington et al., 1978, 1982; Radin, 1976; Radin et al., 1994; Santrock, 1972; Sutton–Smith et al., 1978). Shinn (1978) "The results of the comparative study are consistent with the hypothesis that children's interaction with their parents forms a platform for cognitive development, and that a reduction in this interaction inhibits cognitive development" (p.2).

The real issue in Finland seems to be women's relational aggressiveness (psychological domestic violence; Hyde, 2005) (Helsingfors police department, April 2022).

The month after, the ministry of education and culture communicated the likely consequence: too many Finnish children fail reading comprehension and numeracy. The latter is the foundation for instrumental and epistemic rational thinking (Stanovich, 2011, 2016).

The reports kept coming.

During spring 2022, a mother murdered her child at the social service place for, as they say, women with mental issues (Björkquist, 2022).

During the summer of 2022, a mother tried to murder her five year old son. She kept beeting him despite the Police brook into the apartment (Nyquist och Kurri, 2022).

In November 2022, during a conference about children's rights, Finland's child commissary Elina Pekkarinen, said that 20% of the Finnish kids and young born 1997 or later, have mental issues.

If school performance fail, higher education will eventually fail; in August 2023, Finland's biggest tabloid − Helsingin Sanomat − reported about the school failures, but also, that the research at the University of Helsingfors had collapsed (Bäckgren, 2023).

During Pekkarinen's speech at the next years conference, which was about increase of lethal and psychological domestic violence against small children, the host interjected and said:

• Finland has the highest prevalence of depression within the EU
  
  
• 40% of Finnish school kids are victims of psychological domestic violence. Note. That's typically a female behavior.

In December 2024, Atte Jääskeläinen, the manager at Sitra Fund, said that entrepreneurship and innovative thinking is at rock bottom − why is Sweden doing so much better?

No one in Finland seem to take notice about the scientific facts.

In 2024, two studies were marketed by the media and the University admin. The first claimed was Men benefit more from a relationship than women − the differences are visible (Grundström, 2024). My comment (Österberg, 2024 a).

The same year, the University of Helsingfors claimed that other researchers (Ilmarinen and Lönnqvist, 2024) had refuted the Gender-equality paradox. That was of course not true, but the administrators wanted it to be that way. My comment (Österberg, 2024 b).

Hence, the media's attention to Dr. Balducci's replication of the Gender-Equality Paradox may work as an injection, not only for the collapsed Finnish research, but also for the Finnish political view on men and women. Maybe that will also curb Finnish women's relational aggressiveness?

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