So what ARE these differences between men and women?

[Lottapianos]

Yes yes, I'm aware of several obvious differences for those of you sniggering at the back!

On several threads recently I have seen posters talk about how men and women are different but equal and lots of reference to the 'inherent' or 'inbuilt' differences between men and women. I'm a bit mystified because as far as I'm aware, the only inherent
differences between men and women relate to anatomy, physical skills (speed and strength), getting pregnant, giving birth and breastfeeding.

What else do you consider an inbuilt, innate difference between men and women? Or feel free to agree with me that the only differences are biological and all other differences are socially constructed

I've read Lise Eliot, thanks. Am all for balance

I believe absolutely that social conditioning is incredibly powerful. And i know that the developing brain is very plastic. I just can't get away from the feeling that it's wrong to assume that there is nothing BUT social conditioning at play. To me that's a step too far, and possibly wishful thinking.

And I also can't get my head round the fact that I'm asked to provide proof that male and female brains are different but then people can say things like 'well I'm a woman and I don't like shopping/ gossiping/ shoes' and this is taken as evidence in itself that men and women AREN'T different!!!

This subject is particularly interesting to me as I have 2 NT (neurotypical) children, a boy and a girl, and then I also have a son who is severely autistic. I would defy anyone who knows him and his level of disability to claim that he has been socially conditioned in any way. And yet he is stereotypically male in most of his behaviour and interests.

googleyes: I don't think the fact that I and others said we didn't like shopping, gossiping etc. was meant to be evidence that men and women aren't different. It was more to express irritation at the assumption that women do like shopping, gossiping, shoes etc. - the general lazy stereotyping about about how men and women act and what they are like.

Thus my tongue in cheek remark that I must be a man with the wrong bits i.e. because I like stuff that the stereotypers say men should like I must be a man.

I am sure we are all a mixture of nature and nurture although I hold firm to the view that there are more differences between individuals of the same sex than there are between the sexes generally.

It is interesting what you say googleyes about your autistic son. More girls are now being diagnosed as autistic. Why? Because in the past it was thought that autism was almost always a male condition i.e. it was stereotyped as male.
So, girls were missed because the stereotypers could not get their heads round the fact that girls can be autistic too. Thankfully, we now know better.

Googly I am sorry to hear about your son. I wonder, do you know any girls who are similarly autistic, are they stereotypically female? What are your son's particular interests?

I think the issue is that there isn't an experiment or test that is possible to do to isolate nature from nuture. But we can see powerful effects of psychological experiments such as telling a group their gender (either gender) does badly on a type of test that indicate a lifetime effect of gender expectations will be strong.

Don't be sorry, he's delicious

His particular interests are trains and cars, and he will happily spend hours on youtube watching clips (self-selected) of cars crashing, racing and being fixed by mechanics. Similarly with trains. In his particular case, I would say that his autism DOES present as a case of (stereotypical) extreme male brain (lack of desire to communicate anything but practicalities, obsessive interest in narrow subjects, desire to collect and order things, attention to detail etc), but I can only speak for him.

What I can say is that he has no desire or ability to imitate and and so very definitely follows his own path in life, determined by his own innate interests. If anything, we, and the therapists who worked with him at home before he started school tried to direct him towards more 'girly' toys such as dolls, teddies and tea sets, using them to role play various situations that would be helpful for his learning and communication skills.

On the other hand my dd and ds are each an intriguing mix so I don't know what the hell to think half the time. DD adores everything pink and glittery (SO unlike me) but is also an adrenaline junkie who has buckets of energy and is incredibly physical. DS2 would play with various vehicles all day long, and wants to grow up to be a superhero but his favourite programme is 'Chloe's Closet', and he is soft, gentle, and scared of speed/ heights/ boisterous play to quite an alarming degree!

TheDoctrine...that's a very interesting point re girls with severe autism. There are a couple at my son's (very small) school and as far as I know they do love dolls/ babies/ glitter and are also much more keen to communicate and verbalise. But I don't know them or their families well

I saw a moderately scientific programme on TV about fathers, which said that men's testosterone levels are the lowest in their adult lives in the week or so after the birth of their children. They said this was to aid bonding, suggesting pre-historic man was very much involved with child rearing.

I don't know if this means men are less nurturing than women (other than with their children), but then women have major hormonal changes when they give birth too, so maybe not.

What everyone else said about overlapping bell curves.
It is a mistake to think that there are no differences at a population level.
It is a mistake to think that these differences define individual men and women as more different than similar.

But Himalaya, on a population difference for a given attribute, say spatial reasoning, I don't think it would be possible to distinguish innate factors from social factors, would it?

Not easily, but things like cross cultural studies can help - if there is difference which is observable in European and Asian countries then it is more likely to be nature. If it is only a measurable difference in one place and not in another then it is more likely to be cultural.

Hmm I suppose it depends on how different the cultures are. If you have any specific study in mind I'd love to read about it/them.

I've just googled this subject and found this interesting article www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/10/gender-gap-myth-cordelia-fine. The heading on the article is "Gender gap a scientific myth" but when you read the article even Cordelia Fine doesn't seem to claim that. The article quotes psychologist Susan Pinker as saying there are observable differences immediately after conception and the studies that have found this have been published in peer reviewed journals.

I have to say I agree with Susan Pinker's rather than Cordelia Fine's conclusions. Having said all that I can see why feminists would rather play down the science. The obvious reason being that as others have pointed out their is an overlap in the difference between the sexes. You can't say for instance that because there is an observable difference in map reading skills between the sexes that every woman must be crap at it and every man good. We should treat people as individuals and not prejudge them based on sex or anything else for that matter.

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.

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.

YY Mooncup.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

Spot on eBook
inde, what differences between male and female brains are you thinking of?

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.

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

'In terms of behaviour: testosterone has a lot to answer for: more agression and risk-taking behaviour in men'

As a social constructionist, I would argue that little boys are encouraged to take more risks than girls, as it's part of the 'boys will be boys' attitude which is still so prevalent. They get encouraged and rewarded for risk-taking and so learn that it's a good thing to do, and something that is expected of them. Equally, I have seen parents respond very differently to children showing agression, depending on the child's sex.

I said in my OP that I obviously accept biological differences like size, strength, speed but I'm interested what people think about differences in behaviour between the sexes, and what role biology plays v what role environment plays.

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.