“Crawl back under your rock!” There is not much diplomacy left to spare in Margot Wallström. The then Swedish foreign minister will be remembered as one of her country's most respected statespersons of the beginning of this century. She has embodied the values of openness, equality and tolerance that we associate with Europe's North. Among other initiatives, she pioneered a “feminist” foreign policy, to promote equal opportunities in all aspects of Sweden's international projection. And it is precisely in relation to this that she clearly lost her cool. The target of the fury that led her effectively to compare him to a snake is Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, who had earned a reputation and a large following for his politically incorrect positions, in particular on gender issues.

Peterson was in Sweden to promote one of his books and found himself entangled in a dispute on equal opportunities with Swedish feminists. Peterson's thesis, which he argues is supported by a quarter of a century of quantitative research in social psychology, is that countries like the Nordic ones which have reached the highest standards in terms of gender opportunities, have produced the most unequal results in terms of actual choices, for example in the workplace. In other words, given the best possible opportunity to choose, women tend to select certain kinds of jobs as compared to men, with women usually picking jobs on the lower side of the employment pyramid and men choosing those on the top.

Peterson should have never gone there. The Swedish public, usually civilized and measured, burst into a collective bout of disdain. But the Canadian psychologist, now stained as a chauvinist of the worst kind, doubles down: his interpretation of the data is that the moment the barriers between men and women are lowered, the biological factor is decisive to explain gender behaviour and ultimately differences. Put another way, once the structural constraints disappear, natural differences between genders emerge, for example in professional settings. Plainly, this point reinforces stereotyping and discriminations, such as those that see men more inclined to relate to objects and mechanics, while women's innate sociability is reflected in jobs in the healthcare sector.