[14] The series of tests proposed, and an especially clear discussion of the problems, methods and characteristic results of these tests, is to be found in Science, Jan. 24, 1913, pp. 133-142, in Thorndike's article on "Educational Diagnosis."
It is customary for authors, in discussing vocational problems, to assume that the vocational future of girls is determined in advance by the fact of sex. Not infrequently the lack of provision for domestic training in our high schools and colleges is indicated at length, and suggestions for establishing the domestic arts and sciences on a firmer basis in the educational system are advanced. Some paragraphs may be devoted to a discussion of the statistics which show that thousands of girls go from school into industry, and to an inquiry as to what training is best fitted to assist them in earning a living for the period intervening between graduation and matrimony. With this the discussion of vocational problems ends, so far as girls are concerned, and the remaining space is given over to more adequate consideration of the vocational aptitudes and guidance of boys.
It is the purpose of this chapter to inquire whether there are any innate and essential sex differences in tastes and abilities, which would afford a scientific basis for the apparently arbitrary and traditional assumption that the vocational future of all girls must naturally fall in the domestic sphere, and consequently presents no problem, while the future of boys is entirely problematical, and may lie in any one of a score of different callings, according to personal fitness. We shall try to determine whether the present expectation that all women will follow the same vocation, i. e., housekeeping, is founded on any fact or facts of human intellect, or whether it arises merely from ideas of traditional expediency connected with the care of the young, and whether it leads to a waste of energy and of intellectual talents.
The discussion will take the form of five general questions, together with the answers which are to be made to each in the light of experimental psychology: (1) Are there innate sex differences in average intelligence? (2) Is either sex more variable than the other in mental traits? (3) Are there any special causes of intellectual inefficiency affecting one sex but not the other? (4) Are there any sex differences in affective or instinctive equipment which would naturally lead to vocational differentiation of the sexes? (5) What explanation is to be given of the traditional division of labor between the sexes?