I have no idea if this is true (estrogen = steady trading while testosterone = risky trading). It does fit in with some pretty pervasive stereotypes, but I am not qualified to comment on the science involved. If it is true, however, I doubt it would translate into more opportunities for women. On Wall St., risk taking is rewarded. In general, careful, steady traders may build nice portfolios, but they tend to remain in mid-level jobs. To get to the top, one must win big. To win big, usually one must risk big. Wall Street can pay lip service to stability during the current financial crisis, but as soon as (if) things normalize, companies will find it difficult not to promote the next “hot shot� investor over the steady performer. It would take a massive cultural shift to change that, I think.

I share the study's conclusions, actually. And the lack of estrogen in financial management is all about sexism. But it's more subtle than just a "Wall Street Boys Club" mentality.

Investing shouldn't be about 'winning'. It should be about balancing 'risk' and 'reward'. The more 'risk', the more 'reward', because more 'risk' implies you might receive no 'reward' at all. You need a kind of eco-system of players; some prepared to take on more risk than others.

However, as noname above explains this kind of rationality isn't rewarded on Wall Street because of the very limited horizons placed on portfolio managers. Most bonus based compensation looks at annual return relative to an index.

Were we to change the way portfolio managers are rewarded -- place more emphasis on long term returns -- then the steadier risk-balanced managers would be more rewarded. Sadly the devil is in the details here, but you get the general idea.

In my judgment (as the study suggests) such a variable time horizon compensation structure would (tend to) balance out the gender allocation in portfolio managers.

Not sexism: Summers was merely exercising his academic freedom—and he had been asked to be provocative. - 39.97%

He was not asked to be provocative and if you read what he wrote, he did not back up anything with science. It was all an excuse to not have to make an effort to end sexism. Ugh.

Haha, I think we might have skewed the results of the sexism poll--each one shows up as sexist by roughly 2/3 of the vote. This includes the Regan firing, which given the odious nature of the OJ Simpson book and surrounding publicity, reeks more of PR butt-covering than sexist scape-goating.

the comments on the page for that article are very angry.

The correlation between testosterone and risk-taking behaviors is spurious at best and may be misleading. Not that I would throw out completely the biological effects of testosterone, but we must not ignore the particular social pressures to take risks, and a preponderance of those are placed on men. Additionally, the entire trading industry seems coded masculine and rewards behaviors we more often associate with males.

It is funny how certain scientists, researchers, or whatever, try to map scientific authority onto a social phenomenon, such as financial investments, while ignoring a complex and often more influential host of socio-cultural forces. Biology certain has its limits in explain the cultural manifestation of gendered behavior and I am confident that its limits fall well short of explaining Wall Street trading.

The correlation between testosterone and risk-taking behaviors is spurious at best and may be misleading. Not that I would throw out completely the biological effects of testosterone, but we must not ignore the particular social pressures to take risks, and a preponderance of those are placed on men. Additionally, the entire trading industry seems coded masculine and rewards behaviors we more often associate with males.

It is funny how certain scientists, researchers, or whatever, try to map scientific authority onto a social phenomenon, such as financial investments, while ignoring a complex and often more influential host of socio-cultural forces. Biology certain has its limits in explain the cultural manifestation of gendered behavior and I am confident that its limits fall well short of explaining Wall Street trading.

I think what's forcing Wall Street to reexamine its relationship with the women who make up too small a percentage of its ranks is not the economic crisis but rather the fact that all the big banks are getting sued left and right by women who claim discrimination, retaliation, hostile work environments and harassment. Those suits might not usually be news, but they're beginning to cost the banks more: Just one case cost Citi $33 million earlier this month, and Morgan Stanley paid $46 million in the fall, after having paid $54 million to settle similar claims in 2004. Plus, the banks are already canning a lot of lower-level employees, and conveniently many of those just happen to be women.

Ugh! I can't believe this! So tell me, is testosterone only important in determining behavior when the "study" shows "men are flawed"?

You're heading down a slippery slope if you give this credence, Ann.

Ugh! I can't believe this! So tell me, is testosterone only important in determining behavior when the "study" shows "men are flawed"?

You're heading down a slippery slope if you give this credence, Ann.

If you are interested in the behavioral effects of testosterone, you might find this interesting:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=220

It includes an interview with a man who experienced a medical condition which caused his testosterone level to fall to near zero temporarily, and a FTM transexual discussing the effects of the testosterone injections s/he received during the transition from female to male.

I think the effects of T on behavior are generally probably *under*-estimated.

Tersa, I read the comments accompanying that article also and a lot of them were really dissapointing. As could be expected there's plenty of douche's blaming feminists for sexism. What a load, I hate it whenever I hear that "argument" that blames feminists for everything. I never really understood the logic of that "argument" and always though it was just someone's ignorant rantings because they themselves are misogynists and refuse to see the real issues. I find it sad that there's still so few feminist men (at least from what I can see). I strongly believe that we need to involve them in the movement in order for certain things to change. It's sad, to me, that some of the male commenters responding to that article are blaming feminists for sexism instead of intelligently talking about the real issues. But, I refuse to believe that the majority of men are women-hating assholes, even when comments for article's like this have a lot of anti-women remarks (actually the comments at Salon.com are always 10x worse, but I digress).

At least there were several positive comments from women who stood up to these idiots and who recognize that sexism is alive and well and that it needs to be eliminated. That does give me some hope, it's just the anti-women remarks from certain men, and the fact that there's always so many of them, that I will never understand. I mean don't these men have mothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends, wives, grandmothers? Where does all this hatred come from? I just don't get it.

Yeah, the comments on the article's page made me furious. They blame feminists for, oh, EVERYTHING, including but not limited to the poor economy, all problems with their children, the divorce rate, and current labor problems. Wow.

Wait a second, all this is actually kind of fantastic, don't you think?

I mean, MEN are saying that they're the irrational ones, and WOMEN are the level headed steady thinkers untainted by raging testosterone levels.

Yeah! Eat it with your women=irrational shit!

It might only apply to me, but fwiw... as a transsexual women, when I started taking estrogen, it knocked out most of my testosterone, and I just felt fine... then I stopped, to see what that felt like, and I went all totally ruthless - would have had no trouble putting very large numbers of people on a death train, starting a pointless war, whatever. Restarted... felt fine till I had to stop around the time I had sex change surgery, but I didn't get such a surge of T then.. and I had a lot of recovery to do!. About a year later I was suffering from low libido, and tried "Testogel" which is a skin absorbed version of T. I started driving very aggressively, had blazing rows with my project sponsores ( working as an IT project manager at the time) and generally felt very peculiar.
So - for me, anyway, it's a very dangerous drug. Scarey to think that half the population are manufacturing their very own supply!

SHAUN "It is funny how certain scientists, researchers, or whatever, try to map scientific authority onto a social phenomenon, such as financial investments, while ignoring a complex and often more influential host of socio-cultural forces. Biology certain has its limits in explain the cultural manifestation of gendered behavior and I am confident that its limits fall well short of explaining Wall Street trading."

This actually strikes me as having the potential to be a really nice bio-psycho-social model.

We have a situation that is in someways evolutionarily novel (stock market trading) and that in sometimes is as old as time (competing for resources and status).

It's not surprising that we would have hormones that organize and direct behaviors to deal with such a recurring adaptive problem.

I think the literature on competition and testosterone is pretty clear: Winning competition raises testosterone. My opinion is also that the evidence is in favor of the idea that individuals with high levels of circulating testosterone/masculinized traits act in more behaviorally dominant and risky ways.

So the first part of their model makes sense to me: Social phenomenon that encourages competition --> up Testosterone --> up risky/dominant moves in the competition.

I think their speculation is also interesting. Are societal institutions in the modern world activating hormonal systems involved in competitive interactions to an unusually strong degree, and is that then feeding back into the social system? What is the effect of having massive competition and potentially hormonally-fueled competitiveness on society as a whole? I think it's interesting to speculate and perhaps ultimately to test in some sort of micro experiment (e.g., 8-12 people interacting).

One thing they should address more systematically is whether this system operates the same way in men and women. For example, we know that men have much higher levels of circulating testosterone. Is it absolute amount of testosterone that matters (in which you'd expect men to show this response more strongly than women), or is it relative-to-baseline levels of testosterone that matter (in which you might expect men and women to show similar responses).

But in any case, this strikes me as one of the factors contributing to risk taking on wall street. I don't see this model as being anti-feminist or pro-feminist, just neutral. Some of the assumptions about it might be (e.g., did they decide to test men because they had pre-existing stereotypes? Will people use this to justify anti-male beliefs (e.g., testosterone poisoning) or anti-female beliefs (e.g., women don't have the T it takes to make risky decisions)?

As a former pit trader (ten years trading options on the old Pacific Exchange,) I know without some quasi-scientific study that male traders are prisoners of their testosterone, poor little dearies.

It was so easy to goad them into making bad trades.

I was only one of eight women traders on the entire floor. The support staff was full of women, but few were given the opportunity to move into trading.

Half of it was size, pure and simple - in an open outcry market environment, you had to be where the action was and that meant elbows flying, pushing and shoving and basic rugby-scrum behavior.

Though one of the most effective traders I knew was a 5 foot nothing woman with a big voice.

The environment was very hostile, but what male dominated work environment isn't?

*Men* are hostile. We know it and they know it. It's hormonal and societal. I prefer male free environments these days - it makes for a much more pleasant life.

I am following this discussion here and there because I know a thing or two about testosterone, being a man and in other ways.

We have to be very careful to not conflate social expectations or codes and biological factors. Ask the question: does testosterone actually cause the aggression or do the bodies that possess the hormone (i.e., males, trans-individuals) bear the expectation of being aggressive? The link between testosterone and aggression is not conclusive, yet we map an almost definitive expectation of violence on the hormone alone.

To some extent, we have a tendency to take evolutionary explanations out on a limb, working backwards to explain just about anything. Wall Street, for instance, deals with competition, but not the kind that might be evolutionarily similar to what would have occurred 10,000 years or more ago. Additionally, I find it interesting that a hegemonic form of masculinity once valued physical strength over something more effete like stock trading. To me, Wall Street trading does not evoke traditional masculine tropes, so it would seem convenient for people try to associate stock trading with base masculine virtues, like competition and aggression, much like hunting out on the savannah or something like that.

Shaun said:

Additionally, I find it interesting that a hegemonic form of masculinity once valued physical strength over something more effete like stock trading. To me, Wall Street trading does not evoke traditional masculine tropes, so it would seem convenient for people try to associate stock trading with base masculine virtues, like competition and aggression, much like hunting out on the savannah or something like that.

If you've ever been on a trading floor (pit trading) you'd know how actually wrong you are.

Ha! Try walking into the S+P500 futures pit on the CBOT and calling those guys effeminate. Most stand well over six feet with broad shoulders. It's all about taking up real estate and making yourself seen by the broker.

Computer trading, maybe, traditional trading - not even close to being "effette" - and what a stupid word.

Pit trading takes stamina, strength and nerves of steel. It also takes quick thinking, lighting fast basic math skills and the ability to change perception in a heartbeat.

All genders should be able to do it because none of those traits are inherently gender specific.

That said, goading men into making stupid, ego based, rather than market condition based trades was rather easy.

I think *that* part could be put down to sociology and group and pack behavior among men. After all, wouldn't want to see "effette" would we?

"I couldn't help but notice the Portfolio article and the trader-testosterone research seem to be saying the same thing: Wall Street wants more stability, therefore it wants more estrogen. Forcing your employees to take hormones to improve their job performance?! That's reprehensible. And I'm exceptionally wary of this gender-essentialist, "it's all the hormones" argument. But I'm putting all that aside just to speculate for a moment how strange it would be if Wall Street does respond to the economic crisis by privileging estrogen over testosterone -- and that's how it ends up solving its no-women-executives problem."

If you buy into that argument, you could also argue that there are simply more males on wallstreet since they get higher returns on average, since they deal with the return/risk tradeoff differently. I doubt that´s something you want.

As far as I´m concerned, neuroeconomics is mostly junk science. Medical referees usually reject neuroecon papers, because they have higher standards.

The real hoot is that they want estrogen-enriched traders so they... make *men* take supplements instead of, oh, y'know, hiring women.

I dunno. Maybe it is the size thing WendyAnn mentions. But I bet there's some other reason.

---

That said, the effects of testosterone really are pretty misunderstood. In case after case, even species after species, aggressiveness and hostility usually crop up when levels *drop.*

I certainly see that in a friend who's lost his own ability to produce it. He gets a shot about once a month and he becomes terribly irritable just before, and cheery/mellow after. I remember reading on one article or another a few years ago about scientists giving animals enough testosterone "to make a coffee cup grow antlers" without causing any increase in aggressiveness. The tricky bit is that aggressive behavior, especially successful aggression, can *stimulate* testosterone secretions so... So it's still *associated* with aggression and risk-taking, just not the way most people assume.

And for the record, in my women's-studies/sex-ed/communications course last quarter, in a lecture on the menstrual cycle, the prof noted that symptoms associated with PMS show up when estrogen and progesterone levels are lowest, not highest. Meaning, she said dryly, that just like men it's usually inaccurate to say someone's feeling "hormonal."

figleaf

p.s. I *still* can't believe they don't just hire women, though, if they want more estrogen in the workplace. Doi! Old habits die *really* hard I guess.

This will be my last comment in this issue, not that anyone is waiting with bated breath.

I am sure we can all applaud the lightning fast math skills and the broad, burly shoulders indicative of a pit trader (not at all coded masculine!).

The point I tried to make, but has been missed by some readers, is that at one point, dominant definitions of masculinity in past years more highly valued working with the body in jobs that required more physical labor. Jobs in the service industry or those that worked with technology were not consider as masculine, or perhaps more feminine.

Now that we have a very technological, knowledge based economy, it is absolutely no coincidence that the culturally reified features of testosterone-aggression, hunting, competition-would be mapped onto something like stock trading. It is a way of affirming masculinity in a profession or in kind of labor that has not traditionally been associated with hegemonic masculinity, as jobs in manufacturing, construction, or athletics.

To me, and this is an unqualified and perhaps biased observation, I am often upset and unimpressed with those who earn their living so detached from those that have actual contact with production. That is, hedge-fund managers, investors, and traders make their money on the backs of others. I frankly do not care how intimidating a pit-trader has to be, their job does little to impress me.

I thought this was an interesting article "Status, Testerone, And Human Intellectual Performance"

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/josephs/pdf_documents/Josephs_et_al.pdf

It kind of explains how testosterone and stereotype threat influences math abilities and kind of ties into your post.

My brother was an intern at Goldman Sachs last year, and he saw some pretty blatant discrimination going on... the sales staff was composed entirely of pretty young girls, and all the female interns were strongly discouraged from working with any other group.