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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

So what ARE these differences between men and women?

111 replies

Lottapianos · 16/10/2012 13:17

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

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 Smile

OP posts:
Trills · 22/10/2012 19:50

I agree with minipie.

Really bloody similar actually.

LurcioLovesFrankie · 22/10/2012 19:51

Digerd, you do realise that chimps are matriarchal, don't you? So I guess the ones at the front were in fact the alpha females.

LurcioLovesFrankie · 22/10/2012 19:54

Actually, may have to correct that - think it's maybe bonobos I was thinking of. But the social behaviour is quite complex and certainly not of the "one stag who established dominance at rutting time, lots of hinds" vatiety: www.janegoodall.ca/about-chimp-behaviour-social-organization.php

kim147 · 22/10/2012 19:55

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Himalaya · 22/10/2012 21:42

Minipie - but if we'd evolved like that we wouldn't really be us though would we Grin

ScarePhyllis · 22/10/2012 22:07

I agree with minipie. The differences really are pretty minimal - I'll talk about the language studies FastLoris mentioned, because they're all I can offer an informed opinion on.

Women have more connections between the two hemispheres of the brain.
It's been claimed that the corpus callosum, the white matter that connects the two hemispheres, is larger in women on average after you adjust for brain size. This would be the only sexual dimorphism in the anatomy of the brain after you adjust for average size. People have concluded from this that there might be differences between men and women in how the hemispheres communicate. However, there have been a series of more recent studies, some using different measuring techniques, that find either no evidence for a sex difference or only a very weak effect. So the evidence is inconclusive at best right now.

Womens' processing of language is more evenly shared between the two hemispheres.
This was a 1995 paper that claimed it found lateralization differences (ie differences in which hemisphere is used for processing) between men and women on language processing tasks - more strongly lateralized in men. BUT - they only found a difference (and a fairly weak one at that) for one of the processing tasks they tested. In the other tasks, and in studies other people have done, no effects were found. It also wasn't clear to me that they had adequately controlled for the fact that tasks were presented visually, so you have the processing associated with reading in the mix as well; and, I think worryingly, nobody on the research team was a linguist. The lead researchers were paediatric neurologists, and they published in Nature, which is not exactly known unto linguists as a top-ranking specialist psycholinguistics journal ... Again, no conclusive evidence.

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.
It's not clear that these studies were comparing like with like - there is a dispute over this result within the field because the size of the brain lesions may not have been the same in the male and female groups. And the papers also showed that women were affected more by damage to certain parts of the left hemisphere (left anterior frontal cortex) than men were. So it is not as simple as "Man brain heavily lateralized, Woman brain super duper multitasking in both hemispheres".

My guess is that if/when effects are found for language, they will be pretty minimal. And it's vair difficult to tease out the effects of socialization if you are working with older subjects.

It's important to remember when you read anything about sex differences (or, well, about anything really) that there is both a publication bias - people are less likely to publish research that demonstrates a null hypothesis - and a reporting bias - because media outlets tend to pick up only on those stories which reinforce stereotypes or which are !ZOMGWackyBrainScience stories.

kim147 · 22/10/2012 22:13

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

ScarePhyllis · 22/10/2012 22:21

Yes, exactly.

-And in conclusion, we found no difference between men and women at all.
-Well that's not going to win you a Nobel, is it? Piss off and think of something that might be different so we can apply for a grant for it.

Grin
FastLoris · 22/10/2012 22:49

Thanks Phyllis those are good points, yes. FWIW I agree that the differences are probably fairly minimal. Given that there are considerable differences between the brains of different individuals, of either sex, it could well be that any differences due to sex are dwarfed by other factors.

FastLoris · 22/10/2012 23:00

Trills,

"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."

Would you equally consider the opposite - that acting as if differences are NOT innate is dangerous and potentially damaging when they ARE?

"So it is best to treat everyone as an individual and not assume that they will be a certain way because of their sex."

Totally agree with that. But that's the only sensible way to approach anything to do with averages anyway. Even those most firmly on the nature side of this argument aren't claiming that it means there are things all men can't do that women can, or vice versa. If a particular population contains 2 people of one sex that are brilliant at something for every 1 person of the opposite sex, then it still follows from that that you need to acknowledge that any individual of either sex might be, and should be judged without prejudice.

Trills · 23/10/2012 09:04

What's more potentially dangerous, a false positive or a false negative?

It's a good question. Of course it depends on the feature or ability or inclination in question.

And just because something is not fixed at birth doesn't mean that you can, as an adult, change it.

I do feel that when it comes to differences between groups we (human beings) find it easy to say "these two groups are different" rather than "these two groups are similar", so I think we are more inclined to over report differences.

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