Before I retired, I conducted a ton of research projects in rural communities. The more I interviewed people, the more I learned to seek out the outliers.

The people who were doing unusually well and unusually poorly were the key to understanding the community itself. In both cases, the outliers were usually explained by some kind of group formation. Sometimes it was racism, sometimes it was family cooperation or collapse, sometimes it was outside influence etc. and so on. However, whatever accounted for outliers unusual success or struggle formed the foundation of community health or struggle.

I find the same thing in feminism. The outliers - the women doing unusually well and unusually poorly - explain a lot more than the group as a whole. For example, among the nation's most elite hot shot firefighters, women are leading some of the toughest men and women in the nation. How these women gained the kind of trust and respect that literally spells life or death is well worth understanding.