Men vs. women : the gender-difference myths
The old battle of the sexes reaches well beyond the nature vs nurture debate and has its roots buried deep into the history of human civilizations. That same history was pretty hard on women and yet, some stands have remained biased. Men are strong and aggressive while women are gentle and nurturing. I call BS and I call myth, luckily for me, science has evolved enough to back my claims.
CC0 image, Pixabay, author: geralt, adaptedToday I will dive into gender differences and take a look at what biology and psychology have to say about the subject. We will touch upon the inside and outside plumbing systems and see how strong that testosterone and estrogen battle truly is but also take a look at our brain patterns, cognition, and some behavior analysis. Oh and, that crap about boys being better at math ends now :)
Despite all the scientific evidence, the media continues to spread the idea that the sexes are fundamentally different which leads to real daily life consequences. Parents listen to that crap and lower their expectations overlooking in that way their mathematically talented daughters or sons with interests in design. Studies have shown that one's sex has little or no bearing on personality, cognition, and leadership. It has everything to do with your plumbing system but that is about it.
Men and women being fundamentally "different" is nothing more than an urban legend. Unfortunately, even some of the best-selling books and popular magazines claim that women and men don't get along because they communicate too differently. This misrepresentation of sex differences harms men and women of all ages. It can hurt women's opportunities in the workplace, prevent couples from trying to resolve conflict and communication problems and cause trouble for children and adolescents' self-esteem. The biggest problem is that those differences that do exist support prejudicial beliefs and discriminatory actions even though the size of them is not large enough to be meaningful. Biological and environmental variables interact and influence one other and nature vs. nurture is fundamentally wrong. It is not one or the other but a combination.
Any sentence that describes what boys or girls are supposed to be like is stereotypical. Have you ever been to a supermarket and saw shelves filled with pink stuff for girls on one side and all the other colored toys for boys on the other side? That is neither encouraging or fair to children. When a book, toy or a tool is described or pictured as “for boys” or “for girls” it is a stereotype. There is no logical or rational reason why any toy should be reserved for a boy or a girl.
There are a couple of myths regarding our brains. One of them is that women are better at using both sides of it while men use only one side of the brain for listening because women have a chunkier corpus callosum. The US neurologist Norman Geschwind and his collaborators in the 1980s, proposed that higher testosterone levels in the womb mean the left hemisphere of male babies develops more slowly than females and that it ends up more cramped. Guess what? It is not true.
A team of scientists scanned the brains of 74 newborn babies and found no evidence what so ever for smaller left hemispheres in male babies compared with females. There was also a meta-analysis by Iris Sommer and her colleagues of 14 studies that found no evidence of differences in language lateralization between the sexes. You can read about it here:
Regional Gray Matter Growth, Sexual Dimorphism, and Cerebral Asymmetry in the Neonatal Brain by John H. Gilmore, Weili Lin, Marcel W. Prastawa, Christopher B. Looney, Y. Sampath K. Vetsa, Rebecca C. Knickmeyer, Dianne D. Evans, J. Keith Smith, Robert M. Hamer, Jeffrey A. Lieberman and Guido Gerig
Do women really have more bilateral language representation than men? A meta-analysis of functional imaging studies by Iris E. C. Sommer André Aleman Anke Bouma René S. Kahn
When it comes to brain size, men do have slightly bigger brains with 1378 grams on average, and women have 1248 grams but some women will have larger brains than some men. Women having smaller brains does not account for them being less able to do anything. In fact, the hippocampus, a structure involved in memory, is usually larger in women and yet, we all forget things now and again.
Do not over-simplify and over-generalise
The fact remains, men and women are not the same. Biology is different but it should not be the reason behind stereotypes and behavioral differences which are more about cultural expectations and pressures than anything else. I suggest you take a read about how in countries that are not strong on gender-stereotyped beliefs about ability, women tend to perform better at science and vice versa:
National differences in gender–science stereotypes predict national sex differences in science and math achievement by Brian A. Nosek, Frederick L. Smyth, N. Sriram, Nicole M. Lindner, Thierry Devos, Alfonso Ayala, Yoav Bar-Anan, Robin Bergh, Huajian Cai, Karen Gonsalkorale, Selin Kesebir, Norbert Maliszewski, Félix Neto, Eero Olli, Jaihyun Park, Konrad Schnabel, Kimihiro Shiomura, Bogdan Tudor Tulbure, Reinout W. Wiers, Mónika Somogyi, Nazar Akrami, Bo Ekehammar, Michelangelo Vianello, Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Anthony G. Greenwald
My point is not to convince you that we are the same and have the same brains, we do not. Sex differences exist in every major part of the brain and it is important to understand those differences in order to better treat autism, which is more often found in men and depression, that is more often found in women. I just want you to realize how we have more in common than we have different and how while it is important for neuroscience, our differences are not important for psychology because an individualistic approach is the key. Do not generalize and expect men to act one way and women the other. The neuroscience paper is available here:
Why sex matters for neuroscience by Larry Cahill
We are all impacted with what we hear and read. This is why it is crucial that you receive your information from more than one source. There was a paper published in Psychological Science that found that politically conservative sources were more likely than liberal ones to explain gender differences by appeal to biological as opposed to sociocultural factors. It also showed how reading a biological explanation significantly increased readers’ opinion of traditional gender stereotypes.
Biological vs. sociocultural
Again, it is not "or" but "and" that we should use and nature vs. nurture is a wrong concept. Men and women are biologically different but if you focus only on that, you are in a world of trouble. Newspapers that are more conservative and traditional in their stance on sex roles are more likely to report biological explanations for gender differences while those more liberal ones tend to focus on psychology alone. Exclusion is never a good thing. The explanations for gender differences that adults read have subtle but pervasive effects on our opinions. Reading about hormones, evolution, genetics, or neurotransmitters should be encouraged but the conclusions of the author are important too. Unfortunately, when you read a text in a newspaper about hormones, it is often ended with "and that is why women and men are different in this and that" where "this and that" implies to stereotypical views. You can read the study I was talking about here
The Correlates and Consequences of Newspaper Reports of Research on Sex Differences by Victoria Brescoll, Marianne LaFrance
It is very important not to take political correctness too far and say how differences do not exist, they do. When it comes to biology, our hormones play a key role and can impact our behavior but the point is to not look at those differences as something negative. Diversity is not a bad thing and should be taken into account but just keep in mind that statistics will get you nowhere if you approach a woman and think you know everything about her just because she is a woman. Always approach every individual with an open mind because being a woman or being a man does not mean that a person MUST act in a certain way. Those "women are better at" and "men are better at" articles (even when the scientific background is provided) are statistical. That means they deal with data and probabilities in the range between 0 and 100% but are never absolute. There is no scientific evidence that ALL WOMEN or ALL MEN act a certain way or should act a certain way. Boys do cry and women do drive cars, get over it.
There have been a couple of books written and plenty of articles published on gender intelligence. The point is to know the differences between the sexes and use that knowledge to your advantage. For example, women are more emotional and men are more logical and we should keep that in mind while doing business. The problem, once again, is the generalization. If a text about men and women encourages you to always approach a person the same way regarding her gender, please do not listen to it.
Statistical facts will not help you
Statistical facts about men and women will not help you unless you take culture into account and treat every human being as an individual. You should never expect a person to behave like a piece of data. There are many things you should know while also not accepting those things as the ultimate truth. For example, women feel, while men use logic. Men take a more fact-based approach to their environment while women tend to take a more intuitive approach because they perceive things more deeply and with greater memory capacity. This does not apply to every woman and it does not apply to every man. Men tend to converge in their thinking, while women diverge and men’s brains gravitate toward facts and logic while women are more intuitive and emotional. Trust me, there are logical women and emotional men living around you and doing just fine.
The individual approach works best
Every human being should be respected enough to not be generalized. Do not look at people around you as male or female and immediately attribute them with traits you think they have or should have and do not pretend that you are something you are not just because of your gender. Be happy. That is the only thing you should aim for. Do the things that make you happy and do not worry about if those things are "for boys" or "for girls". If you like something, that is the only reason that matters. You are not wrong if you are a woman in science, politics or business and you are not wrong if you are a woman who is a stay at home mom, a model or a kindergarten teacher. You are wrong if you are in a place where you do not want to be regardless of what that place is and you are absolutely perfect just the way you are if that makes you happy. There is no right or wrong behavior for men and there is no right and wrong behavior for women.
If you are interested in learning more on this subject, check out these REFERENCES:
Girls Are... Boys Are... :Myths, Stereotypes & Gender Differences by Patricia B. Campbell, Ph.D. Jennifer N. Storo
Two Myths and Three Facts About the Differences in Men and Women's Brains from psychologytoday.com
Men and Women: No Big Difference from American Psychological Association
Women & men from American Psychological Association
Explaining Gender Differences from psychologytoday.com
6 Fascinating Gender Differences Between Men and Women in the Workplace from scienceofpeople.com
Until next time,
KEEP YOUR SMILE ON!
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I'm so with you on this one @zen-art. There is so much conditioning. A couple of decades ago a daft pop-science book entitled "Why men don't listen and women can't read maps". I've enjoyed reading maps since I was a child, and I used to navigate for my parents when we were on holiday. So maybe it's not really surprising that I regularly organise walks for Meetup groups. Most people don't actually believe that women can't read maps, but there are maybe one or two who still take this kind of stuff seriously and try and challenge me about my map-reading. Thankfully it is very rare.
When I did my Mountain Leader course recently there were about six women in our group who were all excellent navigators (we were taking it in turns to do navigation exercises). I'm booked on a winter mountain navigation course in a few weeks, which will be taught by a woman.
It's sad that some women – including my sister, who is a Professor of psychiatry – have come to believe that they simply can't read maps. They've built up a mental block about it.
I am happy to hear that you are good with maps too. I was in the scouts for a long time and we really have excellent scout programs in my country. One of the things we had to learn was maps and not just regular map reading but the mathematical one or the military one if you will, with azimuths. To this day, if you give me a ruler, a compass, and a protractor and I will calculate miracles :D I never got lost in my life, not ever. :)
Azimuths! Now that is impressive :)
It all goes back to "Don't you worry your pretty little head about it."
Girls can't do math so let's not bother teaching it to them. We'll teach them home economics instead, so they can be good little housewives and mothers.
I remember a girl who wanted to do something other than home ec. Industrial arts. NOT FOR GIRLS. I hope she found a better school, she left ours.
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So, I'm late to the party. What do you expect? I'm a boy :) Ahahaha.
I'm just shaking my head trying to word my comment. I'm not having the best of days and so am very careful.
Considering boys and girls differently is the precise same in my book as believing there are separate races and that they might be different. It's a predilection that will not get much attention from me. You express that view and I pretty much give up on you and quit listening.
Not that I don't celebrate the differences, I most certainly do. It's just that limiting anyone on any basis is so incredibly useless. It just irritates me that in this day and age we have to have this discussion again.
Thanks Petra. Per the norm you have explained things with incredible clarity. I do appreciate it.
I can't agree more. There are definately sone neuroanatomical sexual dimorphism, but way people and media understand it is way too flawed. And, sure as hell focus on things that makes good clickbaits.
Take example of math performances and mental rotation skills. Many people will quote many studies, showing these correlation via sex. But does correlation always mean causation? I doubt.
The math performances gives us best example. Quoting from Robert spolsky lectures (not in exact words) - In 20th century many studies came up showing that gender differences in maths are real. However, this notion waa challenged in multicultural studies, that show that equality index of the society being study had an effect on it. Gender differences k
math test performances disapoeared in Scandanavian countries. The researches started looking at children and pointed that male kids still perform better in maths, and sex differences in test performances must be innate. Turns out, their assumption was wrong. It was later shown that sexism in math happened to seep in, in a very early age. The way teachers encouraged male children for solving math problems vs female children was different.
Mental rotation problem can also be reflection of such a bias creared by steretypes. For instance, here Hoffman et al., 2011, show thar mental rotation ability as function of society being studied. Then there are studies showing cultural differences in this ability as well as a role of education levels. This puts the entire premises into a blurry line which needs a better focus. Moreover, there are srudies implying that rotation ability by sex is also a function of stimuli (see Fisher et al., 2017. For instance females may perform better in the task, if they are more familiar with the stimulus.
Men and women are the same.
In old age men get breasts and women moustaches.
Swami Yogasvarupanada
😘
Great article!
When I was a little boy, my grandmother, a wizard in crochet, taught me crochet and when my father saw me doing it, he forbade it:
A boy does not do crochet!
My dad used to sit and sew sometimes - just small things like buttons and hems. When we asked him where he'd learned to sew, he would say, "In the army".
Hahahaha, your father did not know the meditational qualities of needlework ;)
Ha, that's a great quote.
Shame about your Dad though. I'm just writing an article on why men should teach their daughters to surf. My father never, ever forbade me from doing anything boys could do. My Mum wouldn't have allowed it lol.
What about chess?
What about chess? When I was 8 I beat the boy up the road at chess. He was supposed to be a genius. He never forgave me, and certainly never asked me to play chess again!
I guess it was not a world championship.
No it wasn't, smarty-pants!
I was going to mention my good friend at University who was a chess champion in her schools league, however when she turned 13 she was teased about the size of her breasts every time she played chess, so she gave up. I think conditioning counts for a lot.
The most insightful argument that I've heard so far about this subject is the fact that men and women are mostly identical when it comes to behavior.
However, statistically the overlap between men and women is not complete and this affects outcomes on the scale of a large population which are then used by each camp to support their case.
For example, you may find out that statistically men tend to be more interested in "things", while women tend to be more interested in "people".
This does not mean that the majority of men are not interested in people.
It just means that there is a statistical deviation between the number of women ending up working with "people" (teachers, nurses, psychologists, etc) and men working with "things" (software engineers, carpenters, plumbers, etc).
Similarly, on a big scale, statistically men can be shown to show a more physical aggressive nature than a similarly sized population of women.
Again, this is only statistics and the vast majority of men are as physically passive as women.
But this statistical difference explains why prisons are populated overwhelmingly by men.
The problem is that today's debates about this subject are charged with emotions and partisanship which makes it hard to have mature conversations based on scientific data.
My personal view is that we should try to find a balance between equality of opportunity between genders and also acknowledge that there are biological differences between men and women.
And no, I do not mean that one group is statistically more intelligent or superior to the other.
We must salute any attempt to have a mature and balanced discussion about this sensitive topic.
The problem with statistics is that people do not understand statistics :)
Yeah, I agree that when a discussion is heavily charged with emotion, it almost always leads nowhere. Thank you for your addition to the subject and for sharing your views, always lovely to see you. 💚
Ah... If only those modern agitators of group identity were able to understand this...
Let the individuals find their roles and their paths to successful and fulfilled future.
That last line I would have not said it better myself no matter how hard I would have tried. 💚