The Brains of Men and Women - Part 2

I beg your pardon men don't ever get lost we know exactly where we are right here! Just don't know how to get to where we want to go. A lot of that is due to the women in are lives always telling us where to go. And them know knowing where that is.

I always attribute a longer than usual drive as a sightseeing expedition or a " lets see how it will take her to ask if I am lost" scenario.

I challenge the scientific basis for your statements about male vs female brains.

I agree that "exaggerations on gender differences are .. a lot of fun to laugh at". These are, however, cultural differences afaik, not biologically determined sex-linked traits.

When someone steps up and says, your behaviour is determined by your gender, due to some physical difference in the brain, this is not, IMHO, a laughing matter. And your comment that "acknowledging differences in the brain may be the best way.. to co-inhabit.." is shameful and disgusting from where I stand.

From your own article linked above:

"The big question remains whether this is nature or nurture. On the one hand, boys, compared to girls, may have opportunities to cultivate this skill, but if we eventually see both a strong performance and parietal lobe structural difference in children, it would support a biological, not just environmental, effect,"

The jury's still out then? No actual data to support your assertion? Or should we just accept as fact something completely unproven, which is pejorative to women as a group?

Lapin,

The blog makes this statement:

"Additionally, men tend to score higher on mathematical problems and numbers. This is linked to men's noticeably larger inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) which is thought to control mental mathematical ability."

Now, you seem to think there's nothing pejorative about the implication or conclusion, that women have less capability in engineering and math, because of the size of their "IPL", and nothing shameful about promoting the acceptance of this bald conjecture as a physical fact, on a respected engineering site.

I submit this report of a global, cross-cultural study looking at gender differences in math performance in 493,495 students ages 14-16 from 69 countries. "Despite overall similarities in math skills, boys felt significantly more confident in their abilities than girls did and were more motivated to do well." and "While these measures tested different math abilities, there were only small gender differences for each, on average. However, from nation to nation, the size of the gender differences varied a great deal."

This study clearly indicates that a gender gap in math performance is culturally determined, not produced by physical differences in the brain. Indeed, it indicates that a gender gap in performance is fostered by social attitudes of the very sort which are expressed or implied in this blog. "Shameful" and "disgusting" and 'pejorative'... yes, I do think so.

And I will add, Lapin, that research in the 'biological determinist' camp has a long history of seeking out 'data' to prove that one race, gender, or social group is inferior to the proponent group, beginning with the infamous 'white brains are bigger and better' research. It is no secret that 'research' out of this camp is found to have been designed to produce junk data purely to support a political agenda. The research does not hold up under scientific scrutiny and/or cannot be replicated by more objective and better designed studies, but it allows the agenda to be publicly promoted for a period of time until debunked. I do not see any ethical difference between the 'genderism' and racism agendas.

This is a site where the weaknesses and shortcomings of reported research are routinely pointed out and objectively discussed, for all kinds of neutral (or not) subjects. The fact that CR4 readership is predominantly male, should not mean that we allow junk science promoting male social agendas to slip by without question. When it appears on an official GlobalSpec blog, well... so much the worse.

I appreciate the report you provided. I think a lot of the differences/trends we may see between males and females are cultural rather than biological. No argument there.

In fact, I probably should have steered clear of mentioning what the studies pointed out about mathematics and language abilities, because those studies can be very biased or culturally exclusive, as you say. This blog is intended to be about the science of social interactions more than anything else. And more importantly, as I said originally, intelligence is a gender-neutral subject.

What I wanted to establish from the beginning (note the disclaimer in part I) is that this blog post is not intended to be promoting an agenda or establishing gender stereotypes.

But, there are legitimate physical differences in the brain structures of men and women. And I think it's fair to discuss what implications (if any) these differences may have on how we interact and communicate with each other. I did not intend to claim the implications of these studies as hard facts, which is why I mentioned in the disclaimer "please take these implications with a grain of salt". I think it's a fascinating topic to explore, but it's easy to gather perceived implications that can make it hard to talk about objectively.

cheme-w,

Using a disclaimer about agendas and stereotypes is, imho, meaningless, if the blog goes on to post material which is based on weak science and baseless assumptions of causality, and clearly supports agendas and stereotypes.

The statement that "there are legitimate physical differences in the brain structures of men and women" is based on data which I have not personally reviewed at this point in time. However, the inference that physical differences in the brains have a causal role in performance or behaviour is flawed and is not supported. There is a significant and growing body of research indicating that specific aspects of brain physiology are directly altered by the mental and physical activity of the individual in as little as six months. Over a lifetime of culturally determined activities, this might well amount to the appearance of 'legitimate physical differences' in brains of men and women. This clearly contradicts the deterministic (and agenda laden) assumption which you have accepted and presented as fact, professed grains of salt notwithstanding.

I think it's interesting to see how many people get all uptight about the fact that men and women are different. It's no big deal and it isn't a slight to either men or women to say that they are/may be better at certain thinking processes or tasks.

From my standpoint that's the way we were made and it isn't a bad thing. The plan was for men and women to be better equipped for certain things. Women are much better at nurturing their children than men are. Men are better suited to do the hard, physical things of life to provide for their families.

Being equipped in a particular way doesn't make one better or worse, it just makes one different. It takes both a man and a woman to have a family operate in the best possible way. That statement will probably garner flak and maybe generate some controversy but the facts don't lie. Children do better when both the father and mother are around and intentionally involved with their offspring.

There are no hard and fast rules about how men and women operate. We are wired in particular ways but some of our reactions are due to training and environment.

Thanks for putting my thoughts and feelings into better words than I did.

Differences between men and women are not good or bad, they just exist.

This discussion seems to be caught halfway between the 'nature vs. nurture' camps. In the early stages of development, the human embryo is undifferentiated. There are primordial cell clumps that develop into structures that we recognize. Under the influence of hormones, some of these clumps develop into differentiated sex organs. Some of these clumps develop into bones, muscles, nerves, and even brains. But the changes don't stop at birth, baby boys and girls look the same in many ways. Their chests, buttocks, voices, and body hair are all very similar. When our children change during puberty, we aren't surprised when they develop differently. We actually value and enjoy the differences. Admittedly some more than others! We also aren't surprised when men and women have different muscle mass, bone density, and height. These differences are all caused by fundamental differences in the functioning of our biology, and they are all related to our gender.

Furthermore, these differences are all in some way useful. If the primordial cells didn't differentiate into ovaries and testis, humans wouldn't exist. If one of the sexes didn't develop mammary glands, how would newborn babies eat? You might say that women won the lottery on that one, because the hormonal changes caused by the developing baby in the womb make the development and preparation of functioning breasts convenient inside the same body. Besides, the woman is the only one guarantied to be present at the birth.

Society has no influence on the growth of facial hair on men, male pattern baldness, the existence of the menstrual cycle or even the development of breasts on women. Although, their final size may be influenced by society, and surgeons. And finally, there is no social pressure that can make women grow up shorter, than men.

Biologists tell us that they can measure differences between men and women, in the size and activity levels of certain structures of the brain. Differences in structure may cause differences in function, or may not. But, if there are no differences in function, why do these changes occur? Why is it "shameful and disgusting" to examine the possibility that these structural changes may have an effect on how we function?

I'm really not discounting the role of nurturing by parents and society in the development and teaching of children and adults. The way we are raised obviously has a major impact on who we become. However, I don't think that we can rule out any trace of biological influences on all of our areas of development, including mental development.

Why must we place all the blame for sex differences on the upbringing and nurturing of our children? For that matter, why are we talking about blame, or shame, or disgust when we are merely discussing the ways that the sexes differ?

I know I'm going to get attacked for this, but a big issue that's come up recently where I live (Pennsylvania) has been a new law to ban texting and driving. While that law has it's merits, I'm just not to thrilled about the police enforcement part of it.

But now they are talking about passing a law here that bans cell phone use entirely! Although I've heard some states have already adopted this law, I think it's ridiculous. Not when phones now provide the services that they do. GPS navigation for one.

Here is where the differences between the brains of men and women come in...

I am firmly convinced that women cannot talk on a telephone and function the same as men. It seems to me they devote much more of there attention to that conversation than do men. And if they are considering passing a law about talking on a cell phone while driving, they should consider it for women only. If not for the fact they they function differently, just for the fact that they seem to always be on them.

But to be a little less discriminating, I would at least like to see more studies conducted with this issue in mind

That would explain it.