Koel Mukherjee & Kaustav Das
Numerous studies of sex difference over past years have shown subtle stereotypical differences in male and female behavior as well as in cognitive functions. It is commonly believed that men tend to be more aggressive and outperform women on mental tasks involving spatial skills such as mental rotation; whereas women tend to be more empathetic and perform better on verbal memory and language tasks. Findings like these are often exaggerated to reinforce the stereotypes that women are bad at many things, for an example, reverse parking, love to chat etc and continue to believe that, however inconvenient the “truth”, men and women are immutably different.Some assume that behavioural differences between men and women are mostly due to cultural influences, while others argue that sex differences are largely determined by biology. In reality, the situation is far more complex. It lies somewhere in the middle, and involves two related but independent factors, which are often confused or conflated.
The history of sex difference research is rife with innumeracy, misinterpretation, publication bias, weak statistical power, inadequate controls and worse. Biological differences between males and females are found at multiple levels besides the behavioral or cognitive aspect. The myriad brain studies in neuro-science over a few decades worked on conceptualization of the relationships between sex and the brain and heralded as ‘finally’ explaining the difference between men and women which are constantly used by people making assumptions about sex differences–ranging from marketers to politicians and many more. The idea that the brain is responsible for sex/gender differences or imbalances has been with us for a long time, sometimes misappropriated, not only by the mass media but also by the scientists, to reinforce stereotypes and perpetuate myths.The phenomenon of using neuro-scientific practices and results to promote sexist conclusions has been coined as “neurosexism”, the practice of claiming that there are fixed differences between female and male brains, which can explain women’s inferiority or unsuitability for certain roles.In the 18th century, scientists discovered that women’s brains weight on average five ounces less than men’s – something that was immediately interpreted as a sign of inferiority. An 1895, social-psychologist Gustave Le Bon, who declared that women “represent the most inferior forms of human evolution”. Since then, women’s brains have continued to be weighed and measured. This has been underpinned by a belief in “biological determinism” – the idea that biological differences reflect the natural order of things, to be meddled with at society’s peril.
In the field of neuro-science, researchers used modern techniques for detail profiling of brain activity for couple of years, giving researchers access to enormous data-sets. The most obvious difference between the brains of men and women is overall size – men’s brains are, on average, between ten and fifteen per cent larger than women’s. Male brains tend to have a slightly higher proportion of white matter, whereas those of females have a higher proportion of grey matter in most parts of the cerebral cortex. Consequently, the cortex is slightly thicker in women’s brains than in men’s and, according to several studies, is slightly more convoluted as well.But these differences are not related to differences in intelligence. As cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon noted, the difference in brain size has no relationship to differences in hobbies or take-home pay. In some cases, individual studies claiming to show sex differences in certain tasks are misappropriated. For example, according to a tiny post-mortem study published in 1982, the corpus callosum, the massive bundle of nerve fibres connecting the two brain hemispheres, is proportionally larger in women than in men widely reported to mean that women are better at multitasking, even though subsequent work has failed to replicate the results. On the other hand, a more recent study showed that women are marginally better than men at paying attention to sounds presented to both ears simultaneously – this was interpreted by some as evidence that ‘men don’t listen’. Again, many of these claims are accompanied by the assertion that the observed differences between men and women’s brains are ‘hard-wired’ and, therefore, irreversible. As Rippon shows in her book “The Gendered Brain”, the hunt for proof of women’s ‘inferiority’ has more recently elided into the hunt for proof of male–female ‘complementarity’, we need to stop focusing on the binary category of biological sex as their source and fortunately, there is a growing number of people transitioning or living between current binary gender categories. So, this line goes, women are not really less intelligent than men, just ‘different’ in a way that happens to coincide with biblical teachings and the status quo of gender roles. Thus, women’s brains are said to be wired for empathy and intuition, whereas male brains are supposed to be optimized for reason and action.
Here, on the occasion of international women’s day, the discussion was made to accomplish the goal of debunking the concept of a gendered brain.The brain is no more gendered than the liver or kidneys or heart. It may take time to challenge such long-held beliefs. Most of us remain strapped in the “biosocial straitjackets” that divert a basically unisex brain down one culturally gendered pathway or another. But ensuring that scientists, the media and the wider public are aware of the problem is a good place to start.
Koel Mukherjee
Anthropologist, Anthropological Survey of India, Port Blair
and
Kaustav Das
Faculty, Bangabasi College, Kolkata
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