Wonderings about brains and being good at things.

I don't understand what 'historical backlog of "genius"' means?

Does she not mean that there's a history of people identify male scientists as 'geniuses' and defining the term based on them?

If so, that's not a million miles off.

It's true there are women scientists who did research now recognized as very good, but who aren't well-known. But it's also true there must have been lots of women who never got past the first hurdle of being told that history was against them and scientific geniuses were men.

"in this world, the historical backlog of 'genius', particularly in physics, is overwhelmingly male."

FFS, do you actually know anything about women's history?! No, of course you don't, why would you? Unless of course you care to seek it out, which if you did you'd end up asking yourself how any woman managed to become a famous scientist at all. Hard to become a famous scientist when you're not allowed an education, or when you've been taught that too much learning will damage your ovaries or that no man will touch you with a barge pole and when you're actually barred from graduating or practising, or conducting your research.

Women weren't supposed to occupy the public domain, it was considered unseemly. All very well for girls to go down the mines to pull the coal but when a middle class woman wanted to go down the mines to analyse the coal for her research, that was unladylike and not allowed.

You see, that's the problem, all that should be in the past but it's not because no one teaches that truth, so girls go on looking back in history and thinking they couldn't do it when in reality it was because they weren't allowed to do it.

messyisthenewtidy
"Besides, even if you accept Baron Cohen's idea that the extremes of ability and disability belong to men, that still doesn't explain the imbalance that exists in the STEM industries, because the size of that imbalance is much larger than the supposed difference in ability between the average man and average woman. "

On the contrary, I would expect the STEM industries to recruit the cream-of-the-crop from the population. Hence a small gender disparity in the extreme end the IQ spectrum, could reasonably be expected to lead to a non-proportional representation of that 'genius'-rich gender in STEM industries.

messyisthenewtidy
"I don't see anyone endlessly discussing whether or not men have the innate ability to cut it in the physics world. Maybe if they did, we would find boys confidence slipping."

I don't approve of idle speculation regarding 'gender' abilities; someone can either perform or they can't. But as for the reason no questions male abilities in physics? Sir Isaac Newton. Before this descends into a tit-for-tat name game, my point is that whilst there are many brilliant female scientists in this world, the historical backlog of 'genius', particularly in physics, is overwhelmingly male.

Why would you assume that a social psychological approach was not as accurate as a scientific one? Especially when you consider that science isn't entirely objective in practice.

Besides, even if you accept Baron Cohen's idea that the extremes of ability and disability belong to men, that still doesn't explain the imbalance that exists in the STEM industries, because the size of that imbalance is much larger than the supposed difference in ability between the average man and average woman.

Maybe, just maybe, part of the difference can be down to the fact that we are still having this conversation after hundreds of years. I don't see anyone endlessly discussing whether or not men have the innate ability to cut it in the physics world. Maybe if they did, we would find boys confidence slipping.

Has to be a combination of both, imo. I can't see how physiological differences don't impact on the brain although I also agree that nuture has a huge part to play.

That said, I agree with whoever said that the differences only matter at the extremes of the bell curves. For the vast majority of people the brain differences between a man and a woman can't be picked apart from the nuture influences and I do agree with Uppercut that the absence of evidence doesn't prove anything, it just shows that you haven't designed an experiment that gets to the core of the problem probably because nature and nuture are so intertwined.

For what it is worth, I haven't read Cordelia Fine's book but I did read the exchange of views between her and Baron Cohen in the Psychologist a couple of years ago which did go on for several issues and I have to say he was more convincing than she was but I think that is probably because she took a social psychological approach and Baron Cohen's approach was more scientific. I don't like the' ASD is extreme maleness' argument idea either but the rejection of that idea doesn't necessarily mean the rejection of his findings on gender differences in prenatal and neonatal brains. He also makes the very valid point from a feminist point of view that if we blame social determinisim for the all the differences in gender we are effectively putting some of the blame onto the parents (along with society in general of course) for whatever gender specific weakness like ASDs their children may have which I would have thought is not something we want to be getting into surely?

Whatever the difference in the average male/female brain is, it's minimal and is nothing compared to the barrage of social factors at work.

Personally I think that one of the biggest factors in socialisation is that people tend to follow in the footsteps of people like them. If a girl sees that a particular hobby or subject is full of boys then she will be less likely to choose it and vice versa. It is a confidence problem too as girls are told in a myriad of subtle ways that they do not have the brain for technical things and so when they find it hard they give up, whereas a boy might continue because he knows that boys are capable, having an abundance of role models and a lack of messages, ranging from the obvious to the subliminal, that he isn't able.

I don't know why people focus on extremes like autism because that is not where the difference lays, rather it lays in the different experiences of the average boy and the average girl.

Is there a sex bias in standard IQ tests? Is there a cultural bias?

Studies carried out many years ago (I can't remember where I read it but a long time ago(brain failure) suggested that there was both a cultural and sex bias. Men usually score higher but on average only a couple of points. The same tests were carried out on different people around the world and found that their scores were very low.

It has been found that some isolated tribes in south america do not have words for certain colours or even basics like left and right. So does this make these people less intelligent? I think it simply proves that our range of abilities and to what degree these are developed are primarily determined by environmental factors and social conditioning.

Structural differences in brains are caused by environmental factors. Nature/nurture is a transaction, they are too entwined to Seperate and therefore it's virtually impossible to tell whether there are any sex differences in cognition.
But one true factoid is that there are more differences between individuals than between the sexes.

It's probably a mixture a nature and nurture whether they are presented in equal measure I don't know and will differ from person to person although although boys or girls would be more likely to lean towards a certain direction and we are speaking in generalities here. There are structural differences between the sexes brains and an array of chemicals and hormones which affect the brain in different ways and they also vary in concentration between the sexes.

Baron-Cohen is extremely selective in his account of what constitutes male or systemising characteristics. he dismisses skill at legal reasoning and analysis as a systemising type skill, for example - well he'd have to, given the numbers of females excelling at law, these days. but in reality the analysis and application of rules is the systemising-type skill par excellence (where both ds and I excel).

Lotta - the toilet comment was from a primary school teacher (though not in school, at a playgroup). She regularly makes comments like that. I die a little inside each time.

I am known as a bit of a feminist nutter though. In my professional environment, it was considered perfectly ok to use the phrases 'man up' and 'cry like a girl'.

Look up Maccoby and Jacklin's review on google scholar.

upper - I'm not autistic; I just think his work is fucking annoying. Not a very subtle critique maybe!

He didn't have to call it 'extreme male brain' and his idea of what makes a genius seems quite bizarre to me (and designed to reinforce the kind of image of genius that Woolf is taking shots at in A Room of One's Own).

But yes, certainly, time will tell if there's a correlation with sex. I don't mean to call it either way - I was just suggesting one reason I know of why people still aren't sure about autism.

There's no evidence. I know Simon Baron Cohen is researching this with newborns but there is no evidence - as yet.

Of course environmental factors come into play as soon as baby is born and it's impossible to Seperate nature/ nurture as one affects the other and vice versa.

Later on, hormones cause differences. But in terms of cognition? Nah, no evidence.

Aboutlastnight
"There is no definitive scientific evidence that Menander women are cognitively different.

It is social engineering/ expectations at play."

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and proving environmental factors are at play does not automatically exclude the possiblity of gender-based genetic influences.

No

There is no definitive scientific evidence that Menander women are cognitively different.

It is social engineering/ expectations at play. But these environmental factors can change the shape of the brain meaning that men and women may become more disposed to certain ways of thinking.

YoullLaughAboutItOneDay, it really does get you down, doesn't it? You may have seen me ranting on here about colleagues (I work in Early Years) who are forever coming out with stuff about how boys and girls are different. My favourite was the one who said 'obviously we all want to be 'women's lib' and everything but boys and girls just are different'
It drives me around the flaming bend when parents do it but when professionals do it too, I think it's just downright ignorant! And it's so dangerous too - what are we to make of little boys and girls who don't behave how they are 'supposed' to behave based on their gender? Where does that leave them and how does it leave them feeling?

I find that people who are invested in the whole 'innate differences' theory also tend to have less than progressive views about equality within adult relationships. The colleague who talks the most about boys and girls being different is also the first to talk about 'man flu' and other sexist claptrap

I suspect it's some of both. Obviously men and women are biologically different and it would make sense for brains to have the tendency to support this, so the gender responsible for childbirth has (on average) greater nurturing instinct, etc.

I've read that you can define "masculine" and "feminine" tendencies, but then show that both men and women have a spectrum of these tendencies to some extent, and there is a lot of overlap. The social conditioning and nurturing then tends to polarise thing worse than they should be by only reinforcing certain traits.

And then the effect gets mistaken for the cause and you get the "men can't..." and "women can't..."

You'llLaughAboutItOneday, I'm with you on the boy-girl comments. I only have DS's so missed the opportunity to anti-pink a daughter but I always make a point of commenting to other people's little girls "You're clever" or "Brilliant kick" etc!

Try a little experiment if you have a two year old Ozzie - next time you are at a playground, turn your back and see if you can tell just from listening whether a mother is talking to a girl or a boy. It is amazing how clear the difference is.

Cordelia Fine also details some interesting experiments, particularly (I think this is her book) one where babies were dressed in a white babygro and then given to an adult to play with being told either the correct or the opposite gender to their real gender. Adults quickly ascribed many 'boy' characteristics' - he's so strong, isn't he physical - to babies they were told were male. And the same for females. They did that even if they were given a girl and told it was a boy (and vice versa) so they weren't picking up on anything in the child.

I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this stuff at the moment, so here are some of the things I have heard in the last fortnight:

-DD2 (aged one), climbing a railing: "Ooh, it's just like having a boy";
-DD2 playing with a doll: "Ahh, a typical girl"
-Boy hits DD2 over the head with a toy: "Sorry, he's just such a boy" Followed by a little giggle;
-DD1 (three) says she doesn't want me to come with her to the toilet at playgroup: "That's girls for you";

• Overheard conversation at playgroup: "Well, of course, boys potty train so much later than girls. He will get there.";
• Mixed group of children with sticks: "Ah, boys just love sticks don't they" (despite the fact that two of the group were girls,three boys);
• DD2 had to choose a particular product in pink, blue or yellow. She chose pink. Fine. Later on she told me, apropos of nothing, that she 'had' to choose pink because she was a girl. I asked what she meant, and she pointed out that every girl she knew had the pink one and every boy the blue one.

If I think about it too long I get all defeated and maudlin, so I have to try not to.

Women are increasingly being diagnosed with autism, though. There's some suggestion the smaller numbers of women/girls diagnosed is a fault of the diagnosis, rather than an indication of actual different numbers, if that makes sense.

Mind you, I would say this, because I think Baron-Cohen's thing about autism-extreme male brain-genius is a bit crap.

At the extreme ends of intellectual ability men dominate. I suspect this is primarily biological; men feature far more frequently on the autism-disorder spectrum and this is linked to both very high and very low IQs. But for the great majority, as comixminx points out, overlap between the two genders means that general statements about male/female abilities aren't particularly valid.

'On the 'boyish' traits. Almost every time your son has waived a stick or climbed into a puddle, he will have received societal reinforcement of that behaviour'

Absolutely. Most of us have an unconscious bias towards gendered play and experiences. Even tiny children are so aware of what they are 'expected' to do and so sensitive to the reactions of the adults around them.

There's only one thing sadder than hearing a 3 year old boy say 'dolls are for girls' and that's hearing a parent say that this kind of preference is innate, and nothing to do with the messages they have been sending their child from birth about what they 'should' be playing with