There Is No Biological Difference Between Male and Female Brains
Lea shared this link with me on another blog. Below it are links to some similar articles and studies:
There Is No Biological Difference Between Male and Female Brains
It’s tempting to think the differences between men and women are hard-wired into our biology, but neuroscience shows that we’re more alike than we think.
by Taylor Lorenz
Pop neuroscience has long been fascinated with uncovering secret biological differences between male and female brains. Just last year, the Google engineer James Damore caused an uproar after publishing a manifesto detailing the various ways women were biologically different from men.
But according to Lise Eliot, a professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School and the author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain, anyone who goes searching for innate differences between the sexes won’t find them.
“People say men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but the brain is a unisex organ. We have the exact same structures,” she said onstage Monday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.“There is absolutely no difference between male and female brains.”
…Eliot said that Damore has a deep misunderstanding of neuroscience and that his letter grossly overstated the role of testosterone in male and female bodies. While testosterone is linked to aggression, it doesn’t offer a universal explanation for male behavior.
“The average male is more aggressive than two-thirds of females,” she said, “but that also means one-third of females are more aggressive than the average male.”
…“We keep looking for a biological difference, finding it, it inevitably gets discredited, and yet we still seem so eager to find another one,” she said.
Eliot blames academia and the media in part for this cycle. Because most scholars know that any small statistical difference between men and women will make headlines, academics, desperate for funding and attention, often focus studies on gender disparities. “You go back to data, analyze it for sex, and if you find a difference, then guess what: You have another paper,” Eliot said.
Read more of that article on The Atlantic
More articles on the same (or similar) issue (there are many more articles about this topic than what I am including here):
There Is No Difference Between Male and Female Brains, Study Finds
There’s No Such Thing as a Male or Female Brain
A new study says the brains of misogynists are also super-dense in regions that control fear and anger. But there’s a twist.
Study finds no real difference between male and female brains
Study: No sex differences in human brain
Your Brain Is a Mosaic of Male and Female
Stereotypically ‘male and female brains’ aren’t real, say scientists
Most people are in the middle of the two groups, having a combination of feminine and masculine characteristics
Scans prove there’s no such thing as a ‘male’ or ‘female’ brain – November 2015
“There are not two types of brain”
When the group [of researchers] looked at each individual brain scan, however, they found that very few people had all of the brain features they might be expected to have, based on their sex.
Across the sample, between 0 and 8 per cent of people had “all-male” or “all-female” brains, depending on the definition. “Most people are in the middle,” says Joel.
This means that, averaged across many people, sex differences in brain structure do exist, but an individual brain is likely to be just that: individual, with a mix of features. “There are not two types of brain,” says Joel.
Everything You Believe Is Wrong: There Is No Such Thing As A Male Or Female Brain
…Indeed, there are some differences in the brains of men and women. Men’s brains are about 10% bigger than women’s brains, which happens to be about the same as our height and weight difference. But women compensate for that smaller size by having more wrinkled brains that also have more gray matter relative to white matter than men, basically allowing more important stuff to get packed into a smaller area.
And indeed, there are some important sex differences in mental health, neuropsychiatric disorders, and learning disorders that are clearly neurobiological.
But most of the differences that stubbornly float around popular culture have been clearly refuted in the scientific literature. A classic example is the idea that the female brain has a larger corpus callosum (the section of the brain that connects the two hemispheres) and less lateralized brains than males. The corpus callosum notion has been a popular idea since a study was published in 1982 that got picked up by Time andNewsweek.
These statements have been extrapolated and translated into the popular belief that women multitask better (and why women are supposedly better at simultaneously calling the doctor’s office, cleaning the kitchen, and helping with homework).
The problem is that these statements have been heavily refuted by multiple independent meta-analyses (which are just large meta-studies that analyze all available studies together), with one of the meta-analytic researchers calling it a “myth.” These studies are more scientifically valid and reliable, but not nearly as sexy, so they don’t get covered.
Neuroscientist Daphna Joel and her team examined the brains of 1,400 individuals (quite different than the typical neuro-imaging study that includes about 10 men and 10 women). They repeatedly find that some individual, small sections of the brain indeed show patterns that are more typical of males or more typical of females (although millions of sections show no difference at all).
However, when they look at all the sections together instead of just a small snapshot, they find only about 3% of people have a brain that is fully “male” or fully “female.” In other words, it is extremely rare to find a consistently pink brain or blue brain. The other 97% of people have brains that are a mosaic of pink and blue. Almost all of us have features common in men and features common in women.
Even neuroscientists can’t tell if an individual brain belongs to a man or woman.
The brains of men and women aren’t really that different, study finds – Nov 2015
Men and women do not have different brains, claims neuroscientist – March 2014
Neuroscientist Prof Gina Rippon claims male and female brains only differ because of the relentless ‘drip, drip, drip’ of gender stereotyping
The idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, with male and female brains wired differently, is a myth which has no basis in science, a professor has claimed.
Neuroscientist Prof Gina Rippon, of Aston University, Birmingham, says gender differences emerge only through environmental factors and are not innate.
Recent studies have suggested that female brains are more suited to social skills, memory and multi-tasking, while men are better at perception and co-ordinated movement.
However, speaking on International Women’s Day, Prof Rippon will claim that any differences in brain circuitry only come about through the ‘drip, drip, drip’ of gender stereotyping.
“The bottom line is that saying there are differences in male and female brains is just not true. There is pretty compelling evidence that any differences are tiny and are the result of environment not biology,” said Prof Rippon.
“You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a girls brain, or that’s a boys brain’ in the same way you can with the skeleton. They look the same.”
Prof Rippon points to earlier studies that showed the brains of London black cab drivers physically changed after they had acquired The Knowledge – an encyclopaedic recall of the capital’s streets.
She believes differences in male and female brains are due to similar cultural stimuli. A women’s brain may therefore become ‘wired’ for multi-tasking simply because society expects that of her and so she uses that part of her brain more often. The brain adapts in the same way as a muscle gets larger with extra use.
“What often isn’t picked up on is how plastic and permeable the brain is. It is changing throughout out lifetime
“The world is full of stereotypical attitudes and unconscious bias. It is full of the drip, drip, drip of the gendered environment.”
Prof Rippon believes that gender differences appear early in western societies and are based on traditional stereotypes of how boys and girls should behave and which toys they should play with.
Segregating the way children play – giving dolls to girls and cars to boys – could be changing how their brains develop, she claims.
“I think gender differences in toys is a bad thing. A lot of people say it is trivial. They say girls like to be princesses. But these things are pervasive in the developing brain and stifle potential.
“Often boys toys are much more training based whereas girls toys are more nurturing. It’s sending out an early message about what is expected in a child’s future.”
Earlier this year Consumer Affairs minister Jenny Willott said that women were being forced into professions that paid less well because of gender stereotyping when they are children.
The Biggest Myth About Our Brains is That They are “Male” or “Female” Lila MacLellan
Let’s Say Good-Bye To The Straw-Feminist by Cordelia Fine
STUDY: Depression Speeds Up Brain Aging
Stereotype Threat, Girls, Women, Text Anxiety, and Choosing Careers
Three Sexist Myths About the Brain, Debunked, by Murali Doraiswamy and Tara Swart
The James Damore Google Tech-Bro Meme Stating that Women are Biologically Unsuited to Work at Tech Professions (Part 1) – (Part 2)
A Study Used Sensors to Show That Men and Women Are Treated Differently at Work
On Men Not Believing Women and Being Blind to the Sexism and Harassment Women Often Endure
Examples of Girls and Women Being Assertive at Work, in Life, Women as Rescuers and Heroines
The “It’s All In Your Head” Diagnosis Is Still A Danger To Women’s Health
Why Does Being a Woman Put You at Greater Risk of Having Anxiety? by Cari Romm
Can Brain Scans Curb the Rising Rate of Suicide? by S. Pinker
Miss Daisy Flower 
Thanks for posting, this was a great read.