Sorry, the numbers are a measure of talent; so from that table, if a man were to work a year in an "A" field, he would generate 1 unit of production, but if he were to work a year in a "B" field he would produce 2 units of production. A woman would produce 2 units of production regardless of whether it is in an "A" or "B" field.
In many real-world cases you get diminishing returns for more production. Let's say it's a square-root return, so 16 units of production in "A" is twice as good as 4 units of production in "A" (if you do the math with other diminishing returns like logarithmic you see a similar outcome).
Consider a population of 8 men and 8 women. If they are equally distributed between jobs there are 12 units of production of "A" and 16 units of production of "B" for a total value of sqrt(12)+sqrt(16) ~=7.5 units of total value.
If instead all women work in "A" jobs and all men work in "B" jobs, then you will see 16 units of production in each, for a total value of 8 units.
The most pessimal would be the reverse of that and it would generate ~6.8 units of value.
Thanks for explaining. That makes a lot of sense. I was obviously reading the table wrong and had a sense that there was a good explanation underlying things here, but no real intuition about it.
In many real-world cases you get diminishing returns for more production. Let's say it's a square-root return, so 16 units of production in "A" is twice as good as 4 units of production in "A" (if you do the math with other diminishing returns like logarithmic you see a similar outcome).
Consider a population of 8 men and 8 women. If they are equally distributed between jobs there are 12 units of production of "A" and 16 units of production of "B" for a total value of sqrt(12)+sqrt(16) ~=7.5 units of total value.
If instead all women work in "A" jobs and all men work in "B" jobs, then you will see 16 units of production in each, for a total value of 8 units.
The most pessimal would be the reverse of that and it would generate ~6.8 units of value.