Articles in the Economist about Gender
Aug. 6th, 2006 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningThe Economist had a couple of articles on gender this week, which I thought might interest some of you.
The first is about differences between the sexes - try this link, but you probably need a subscription to see it. It looks specifically at how the brains of men and women work in different ways, as a result of male children recieving large does of testosterone. The stereotypes are generally true (according to the meta-stats) - men are better at spatial tasks, and more physically aggressive; women are better at social skills and "indirect agression" (which in the article sound to me like gossip). Interestingly, in 11-14 year olds, there is no difference in mathematical capability, but by 19-25, men are better at mathematical problem solving.
The interesting bit was in the way that men and women use their brains differently - quite radically so. Men use their "grey matter" more, women their white. Women are also using more of their brain more of the time - both temporal lobes, for instance, in situations when men only use one.
The other article was a leader - "How women won the sex war" (again, this link may not work! - more or less a rehashing of things they've said before, about how women are better placed to run corporations, due to their better adapted social skills.
Which means us blokes are all doomed.
The first is about differences between the sexes - try this link, but you probably need a subscription to see it. It looks specifically at how the brains of men and women work in different ways, as a result of male children recieving large does of testosterone. The stereotypes are generally true (according to the meta-stats) - men are better at spatial tasks, and more physically aggressive; women are better at social skills and "indirect agression" (which in the article sound to me like gossip). Interestingly, in 11-14 year olds, there is no difference in mathematical capability, but by 19-25, men are better at mathematical problem solving.
The interesting bit was in the way that men and women use their brains differently - quite radically so. Men use their "grey matter" more, women their white. Women are also using more of their brain more of the time - both temporal lobes, for instance, in situations when men only use one.
The other article was a leader - "How women won the sex war" (again, this link may not work! - more or less a rehashing of things they've said before, about how women are better placed to run corporations, due to their better adapted social skills.
Which means us blokes are all doomed.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 05:58 am (UTC)It's early in the morning. Let's just assume I've ranted.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 06:14 am (UTC)I am always disappointed when Liam Gallagher sings "you and I will live forever". I mean, how rock 'n' roll is that?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 07:12 am (UTC)The interesting bit was in the way that men and women use their brains differently - quite radically so. Men use their "grey matter" more, women their white.
That's not strictly accurate. The article says that women have a slightly higher percentage of grey matter [neuronal cell bodies] than men, so the corollary of this is that men have a slightly higher percentage of white matter [neuronal axons]. There's no such thing as "using one's grey matter more", because for a neuron to fire, it needs to use both the grey [cell body] bit and the white [axonal] bit.
Women are also using more of their brain more of the time - both temporal lobes, for instance, in situations when men only use one.
Again, allow me to nitpick: all the brain's cells are functioning - albeit sometimes at a relatively low level - all the time, else they'd die. While the research cited does seem to indicate that increases in brain function during a particular task are sometimes more widespread in the female brain, it also points out that this does not necessarily result in different performance on that task - in other words, there is more than one cognitive way of skinning a cat. Part of the finding you cite, about the temporal lobe, may be as a result of the corpus calossum (bit that joins the two hemispheres) being proportionally larger in women.
I get quite annoyed by people's fixation on sex*-differences, because most of the time - as in this article, with one notable exception - it betrays their ignorance [present company excepted!] of statistics, specifically of the normal distribution curve. That is to say, while these things may be true of men or women in general, for any given woman or man, they may very well not be. As one such woman (very good at mental rotation, spatial stuff, navigation by geometry, etc etc), it irritates the pants off me that I am damned a priori by the behaviour of the female population as a whole.
The other thing that irritates me greatly is the way people use this information. I am reasonably content that articles on sex-differencees published in peer-review journals are, in general, decent science, and I have no reason to be suspicious of their findings or motives (though one could always wish for bigger sample sizes). However, when this stuff filters down to the popular media, it is usually used as a stick with which to beat one or other of the sexes, or with some agenda in mind (women can't be good professors; men can't look after children or ask for help). Personally, every time someone says "oh, but men/women can't [whatever]", I want to smack them over the head with a statistics primer. I realise that most people can only work in generalities to remain sane, but I just think of this as sexism. You can't judge an individual's capabilities on the basis of their sex; this can only be done for an entire population.
Sorry, rant over. For now ;)
* I'd prefer to use the word sex because I think of that as a fairly immutable, biological label; gender, to psychologists, is more of a social construct.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 07:29 am (UTC)I use gender instead of sex because of the risk of confusing noun and verb.
And of course you are completely right about the stats.
I think the danger of over-simpliying sex-differences is the risk of stereotyping, but that doesn't mean that in general there may not be things that women do better than men and vice versa. It is just that we should expect all women to be better than all men - and hence we should think about people as individuals.
The patterns can be interesting though - and I have always wondered why I can pack the fridge or the car better than my wife! ("Better" of course means "in ways which suit me"...)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 07:51 am (UTC)The patterns can be interesting though - and I have always wondered why I can pack the fridge or the car better than my wife! ("Better" of course means "in ways which suit me"...)
*g* I'm the packer, at home. Mr Itchy told me the other day, after I'd repacked one of our cupboards with more stuff and made it fill less space, that he thought I'd broken several laws of Euclidian space ;)
("better" does of course mean "to suit me". It's just that I'm right ;)