So what ARE these differences between men and women?

Kim!!

Thanks kim.

But Fast, brains are plastic and by the time any man or woman is taking a competency based test, they will have been socialised as to "men are better at Maths, women at languages"

I mentioned upthread an experiment where just saying to men and women before the test which gender typically performed better on a specific type of Maths test changed the outcome vs a control group.

I am not saying that there are no innate differences. I am saying that it is very difficult and perhaps impossible to devise tests for those differences which exclude socialisation, as per Trills's post.

I consider that we do not know, and that acting as if some differences are innate is dangerous and potentially damaging if they are not. So it is best to treat everyone as an individual and not assume that they will be a certain way because of their sex.

I don't see how it's seriously possible to argue that there are not innate differences of neurology and psychology between the sexes, without arguing that the brain is a completely isolated mechanism that is not influenced by the body (which would be a very peculiar argument indeed).

If people have radically different bodies, as men and women do in various ways, then those differences are going to affect the way they think and feel. In terms of gender, PMT and menopause are two obvious examples.

As far as I'm aware, some of the most proven and widely accepted brain differences include:

• Men perform more highly at maths-based intelligence tests and school-work; women more highly at language-based ones.

• The average IQ of men and women is about equal (some studies put mens' slightly higher, but not to a statistically significant extent). However the variance among men is considerably larger - there are more male idiots and more male geniuses.

• Women have more connections between the two hemispheres of the brain.

• Womens' processing of language is more evenly shared between the two hemispheres. There is some interesting data about stroke victims and the like where certain parts of one hemisphere are damaged. I can't remember exactly which syndrome it was, but one of the ones where a particular aspect of language is lost but the other aspects survive. They found that men lost this capacity far more gravely than women, because the original capacity was much more focused in one hemisphere, whereas the women could just use the other hemisphere to compensate.

Of course ALL of these differences (and probably many more) are only to do with averages, and don't negate the existence of all kinds of individuals among both sexes.

'As a social constructionist....' I can see the glasses you wear mean you see things differently. I am (was) an evolutionary biologist -this taints how I see things. If you accept that sexes in animals in other species act differently through a combination of genes/environment, then I feel you have to accept this is the same in humans, even though those evolutionary-derived behaviours might be exaggerated (or indeed, minimised) by social conditioning.

Himalaya - you're perfectly accurate to point out that the behaviour of a male defending the tribe has to have the main outcome of selfishly reproducing the male's own genes. As tribes were generally small, the men would be defending their own children and wives - an immediate and direct effect of the survival of the man's genes.

I should have said in my last post that of course I also have a bias. I was brought up pre "Women's Lib" and at school we were actually made to recite the rhyme about boys being made of puppy dogs tails and girls being made made of sugar and spice. I do try and look at it in an unbiased way though and much of the science does point to male and female brains being different. If I'm forced to generalise I would say that women are more in touch with their emotions and more maternal.
I actually prefer women to men but I would miss male company if I only had contact with women. Men are more on my wavelength. To give one example I am very much into gadgets and "boys toys". I find men are for more likely to discuss all the ins and outs of them whereas women's attitude is a more practical "what can they do for me".
It works the other way round of course. I have a good female friend who works in an office with only men and she hates it. She likes nearly all of the men but she says "what can I talk to a load of men about".

LeBFG

YY - agree with your outline.

And the hunter/gatherer thing - the idea that hunting was better as a food source than gathering and that hunter/gatherer represents some kind of flintstones version of 1950s breadwinner/housewife roles is a modern hang-up. Hunting animals was much more about winning status than getting reliable nutrition.

"The males' main purpose may have been protection of the tribe rather than bringing home the bacon so to speak." .....kinda.....but in evolutionary terms (which is what we are talking about if we are talking about innate tendencies) it doesn't make sense to talk about 'the males main purpose to the tribe' - but in terms of 'the behaviors main purpose to the gene' i.e. innate tendencies tended to be selected for where they promoted transmission of individual genes whether this was good for the tribe (or the individual) or not.

If people are happy to accept physical differences, the null hypothesis would be that there are other differences too, both caused genetically and hormonally. Social conditioning also clearly plays a big role. It is like intelligence, how much is genetics and how much upbringing? Clearly, there are elements of both.

Obviously it will be almost impossible to separate conditioning from genetics so the debate will run and run. There have been rare cases of people brought up as the opposite gender and most have not ended happily. One example below:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11814300

A lot of what one gets in these "feminist" discussions is anecdotal, of the type: "I was a tomboy", "I always preferred sciences", "I preferred to play rugby with the boys". Clearly we are talking about two bell shaped distributions with substantial overlap, so this is not really evidence.

I think there is a degree of genetic inheritability of "traits" in both sexes, that individuals of both sexes have behaviours predisposed by where they fall on the testosterone/progesterone and other hormones spectrum, and that all the rest is social conditioning.

Wot snatch said. Lots of gathering (by everyone), very little hunting

There are so many differences between the sexes it's really difficult to list. To start with: metabolic rate higher in men, women are more fatty, men are taller, men have bigger feet, men have proportionally greater lung capacity, in the blood: men have more blood clotting factors, more oxygen carrying capacity, women have more white blood cells. In terms of behaviour: testosterone has a lot to answer for: more agression and risk-taking behaviour in men.

We are moderately sexually dimorphic. When compared with monogamous animals, we are more sex dimorphic, have greater rates of unfaithfulness and fathers invest less in offspring. When compared with polygamist species, we are less dimorphic, there is more paternal investment in offspring and we are more faith.

Hard to believe all this is due to environment. No surprises that the male and female brains aren't identical. Men and women are genetically different. Added to this is the enviroment: male foetuses are bathed in testosterone before birth. Boys also have a testosterone surge at four or something. I would be greatly surprised if there were no measurable differences between the sexes in pre-pubescents quite frankly. Note: you can have measurable differences between sexes even where there is a lot of overlap of variation between individuals.

THe hunter/gather thing is quite interesting. Gathering was more productive and secure source of food. Hunting animals was too uncertain and very costly energetically. They think it might just all have been male posturing (definately to be seen today in my corner of the woods) and preparation for the spats with other tribes. The males' main purpose may have been protection of the tribe rather than bringing home the bacon so to speak.

Inde in what ways do you think men and women see the world differently and which of those ways is innate vs learned?

The problem with these books is that they are written by people with a bias and also they know their target audience and are likely to write the book with that in mind. That is why Susan Pinker's point about peer reviewed articles is important.
The bottom line for me is I agree with the feminist goal to make society more equal but I do think that male and female brains are different. It's not so much differences in skills. I think that males and females see the world in a different way. Googlyeyes made a good point when she said she wasn't just attracted to her husband because of physical differences. I feel the same way about my wife.

Mooncup - I don't think Pinker in The Blank Slate is arguing for biological determinism. The way individuals develop is a combination of genes and environment.

Bertie "Men and women definitely tend to follow behaviour and reaction patterns which are markedly different but IMO this must be due to cultural conditioning, because it is seen as so out of the ordinary for someone to conform to the "wrong" gender stereotype." .... I just don't think this is true. Men and women tend to follow behaviour and reaction patterns which are marginally different, there is a lot of overlap between the two groups. I don't see two groups of rigidly defined people conforming to stereotypes.

I loathed The Blank Slate but it is so many years since I read it that I can't remember exactly why. Partly the smugness of tone and partly the cherry-picking of evidence for biological determinism, I think. I suspect his views have moved on since then as his new book is about how levels of violence have decreased in modern culture; would be interesting to read the two together.

People are individuals and we all vary widely. It's far more useful and accurate to say that there are differences between people, than to generalise about men and women. There are just so very many exceptions to the so-called "rules", that it makes the rules/stereotypes meaningless.

I read Delusions of Gender, after recommendations on here. I know it is a favourite, but I found it disappointing.

I would recommend Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate to read alongside.

YY Mooncup.

Yes, I don't think many feminists argue that we know for certain that there are no population differences between male and female. Just that a) it is really hard to separate out cultural factors and b) that the overlap between the sexes is massive.

Those of us using anecdotes of the 'I hate shopping' variety are not trying to prove definitively that there are no population differences - simply that anecdotes of any type (whether 'I hate shopping and love DIY' or the 'my little girl loves dolls and my son loves trains') are totally meaningless in scientific terms.

Delusions of Gender is a great book.

I think there are definitely differences but I think that it's mainly cultural - there's a bit in the equality illusion which detailed a study done on 13 month old babies, and it was noted that although a high proportion of the parents stated that they treated their girl and boy children the same, the responses to the same behaviours from girls and boys were different.

Men and women definitely tend to follow behaviour and reaction patterns which are markedly different but IMO this must be due to cultural conditioning, because it is seen as so out of the ordinary for someone to conform to the "wrong" gender stereotype.