'Women can read maps — they just need Lego '

[ErrolTheDragon]

Report in The Times today on Gina Rippon speaking at the Hay Festival

Women can read maps — they just need Lego

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/who-says-women-can-t-read-maps-they-just-need-lego-kdlp5x2nw?shareToken=e523367a117a4ca5c3927f8270a4bbc1

I'm pleased to say that DD did indeed have a lot of Lego (and k'nex which imo is even better), and began with a megablocks self-build pink fairy castle.

Goosefoot i do understand wha vyou are saying but i think people get nervous when there are small statistical differences between groups as they get latched onto and suddenly being statistically less likely to have good map skills means noone expects you to have these skills or gives you the opportunity to try and the small difference becomes a huge gaping gap

Not just this comment but a few others, but yes, I think this is what people worry about.
But I don't think it is a useful approach.
The desire to avoid stereotypes is probably doomed. People notice when there are patters, demographic or otherwise. It's rather like asking people not to notice than men are more violent than women. If it's true, you likely notice, and if you notice, you can't un-notice, and your brain begins to use those patterns to draw conclusions and make predictions. It can't operate any other way, categorisation and pattern recognition are te basis of a lot of cognition.
So we can ask people to recognise that these patterns are generalisations, and so the fact that most engineers are men does not mean women cannot be engineers, and to realise that there may be social elements that need to considered as well. People not only tend to think that is fair, they recognise it to be factually true. (History notwithstanding, the belief that women were only suited to work in the home has not been historically consistent and I would say has other significant causes besides seeing generalised differences in interests and abilities.)
But when we ask people to not notice the patterns they see, or which seem to be suggested by science, that's a little different, it involves elevating ideology over and against observation and experience, we are asking them not to examine it too closely, or to read the "wrong" kinds of things or at least if they do to make sure they find a reason to dismiss them. And of course, don't ask questions about things that might give answers that are problematic, and question the motives of those who do.

All of these are very bad intellectual habits, and perhaps ones that we should all recognise. Because they don't stay confined to questions about men and women, or questions about race. I know some people ask, how could those who accept the "science" of transgenderism do it without being idiots - perhaps it is because they have been trained to think that way about ideas that have ideological or justice implications.

"Some of them include extremely young babies doing things like looking at faces, or other objects, and seeing how long they hold their interest."
I presume you mean things like "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" from 2000? ( Simon Baron-Cohen and all that!) Found via Google BTW. Although looking at the paper itself, AND then seeing that Cordelia Fine cited and discussed it at length in 'Delusions of Gender', I'm not convinced.

Interestingly enough, even long-standing and seemingly oft-repeated effects like the new borns and replicating tongue protrusion have been challenged:

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160505133848.htm

(Sorry, can't find the exact reference I meant, this will have to do!).

Don't apes have culture and socialisation? Actually, DO we know if apes distinguish the sex of their infants and treat them differently? Humans certainly do!

Given the face and non-face examples used in the 2000 paper, I'm not convinced. Is the Thatcher illusion relevant here (which works across apes and humans)? Okay, stuff I can find seems to indicate that processing of faces changes a lot up to 6 months anyway, so possibly, if there is a sex-related difference at some point, this gets adjusted as face recognition algorithms are developed.

The original paper, using a 'mobile' of scrambled features versus a face, and reading that as boys supposedly prefer 'mechanical' seems a bit of a reach. To me, it seems more about FACES, and to humans, faces are distinguishable, and convey a LOT of information. Even if at the start, male and female processing is a bit different, I would be very surprised if they didn't end up at the same point, since to ALL humans, doing the correct thing with faces is still pretty crucial. And in the process, a lot of room for socialization to take effect.

I guess I'm just really sceptical about taking this (if true), to be the great blue/pink objects/people split that some want it to be. And don't get me started on the male apes prefer cars, girl apes prefer pans thing as well..................

I'm afraid I can't take Fine very seriously. She has a bad tendency to present one paper, suggest that it is wrong, and draw a conclusion, without acknowledging that there are actually a lot of studies she hasn't even mentioned. Her perspective is not particularly in line with the weight of opinion in her field, which is pretty moderate.

I think characterising this kind of research as being about pink brain/blue brain is going to create a lot of push to back a particular perspective. Is that really what most people are saying, or what they "want" it to be? I don't really think that's true.

I guess I'm just really sceptical about taking this (if true), to be the great blue/pink objects/people split that some want it to be.

Have a look at the images I posted yesterday. It's one of those overlapping bell curves issues.

It's not 'men are like this, women are like that', it's more that men are more likely to have some attribute than women are (but lots of women have it too, and some men don't).

The issue here for me I guess, is that ANY results here have a great social impact, AND so many of us think we already know the answers!

I guess the issue for me here is not what Fine says as a whole, BUT is she right what she says about THIS paper? DO other papers support what was said in 2000? Weight of opinion I'm suspicious of! The whole pink brain/blue brain thing is that it is already a common trope, so many ordinary folks BELIEVE it is true, so that finer (no pun intended!) points of what the academic papers actually say is lost. Let's face it, most people struggle with anything beyond the overlapping bell curves piccies.

I like starting from a position of WHY might we expect in humans (as opposed to say, songbirds or any really sexually dimorphic species) brains to be sexed? Okay, development etc may be effected by sex, but shouldn't we expect the aim to be how to take that and come to the SAME result, rather than different? Whereas many people, even those who have agreed that women do perhaps have souls and all that, think they just KNOW that men and women are different, that our brains MUST be different.

Damn, but I REALLY would like to know what we do know about sex differences amongst early hominids, and whether or not chimps know the sex of their infants? Come on Mumsnet, any primate specialists who know?

We are doing our science in a highly sexually dimorphic environment, that's the problem!

The Simon Baron-Cohen paper was pretty inconclusive. This is what I wrote about it in a previous thread.

I don't know if there are differences, but if there are, they are unlikely to be absolute - in other words if you took the results of tests from one baby at random, you would not be able to tell from its preferences whether it was a boy or a girl.

For example, in this study, the results of one test (whether a child had a preference for looking at a face or a mobile), the results for boys were 25.0% face, 43.2% mobile and 31.8% no preference. For girls 36.2% face, 17.2% mobile and 46.6% no preference.

So if a baby preferred looking at a mobile, it is more likely to be a boy than a girl, but a fair number of girls also had this preference. If a baby preferred to look at a face or had no preference, it is more likely to be a girl, but you could not be anywhere near certain of this.

This is typical of most sex differences, and should never be used to say 'boys are like this and girls are like that'.

With only 102 babies in the study (44 boys, 58 girls), I'm not sure of the statistical significance of the results.

But is there really anyone who talks about absolute sex differences? I suppose you might meet someone like that, in which case by all means argue with it but I think that is really quite rare, so it's a straw man in most discussions.

And really that's not just on this issue, most science is about generalisations and averages and statistical significance, that's how it works.

I like starting from a position of WHY might we expect in humans (as opposed to say, songbirds or any really sexually dimorphic species) brains to be sexed?

Because we see it in a lot of other mammals including ones who share recent common ancestors? Because it seems likely that differing reproductive roles might favour differences in thinking? Because the effect of different chromosomes or hormones seem likely to influence the development of many complex systems in the body?

But in the end - why not? There often seems to be a very large element of being scared of what we might find.

But is there really anyone who talks about absolute sex differences?

I thought that was what started this thread.

From the original article.

A study for Girlguiding last year found that girls as young as seven felt boxed-in by gender stereotypes.

Girls just hear 'girls can't do that', and think they can't. So yes, the idea of absolute sex differences is at the heart of this.

Also men who 'identify as' women, think they're women because they have some attribute which is more commonly found in women - why don't they just think they're men who have some attributes which are more common in women? Their quest is to find that there is such a thing as a ladybrain - which would mean absolute sex differences. But of course if they found they did have a ladybrain, it would just prove that there was no such thing, because it could also be found in a man.

science might be about those things - but most people aren't scientist. there is a lot of policy made on hearsay basically.

• But is there really anyone who talks about absolute sex differences? I suppose you might meet someone like that, in which case by all means argue with it but I think that is really quite rare, so it's a straw man in most discussions.

And really that's not just on this issue, most science is about generalisations and averages and statistical significance, that's how it works.*

Yes, you know that, I know that, everyone with tolerable scientific literacy knows that. And yet, as OldCrone just said, we still have people who'll say 'women can't read maps'. I've mentioned (many times) before the YR1 teacher who told my DD 'girls can't be builders'. Well, fortunately DD knew that was bollocks (aided perhaps by having built the DIY pink castle etc etc!) and carried on building things, but some of her classmates might have gathered that 'girls cant' is a valid concept.

I guess my take is that what makes us human, able to even ask the question 'but do I really feel like a proper female, what should a proper female feel like?', and even invent the concept of gender identity for gawds sake, AFAIK no other species possesses that level of self-reflection. They just get on with shit, even when they really DO have a brain that is half male and half female ( www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150916-these-animals-are-male-on-one-side-and-female-on-the-other ).

I guess I've just had far too much of hearing -- you like physics, why are you doing a boy's subject? You can't be good at maths, maths is for boys. Well, Martina plays tennis just like a man, no surprise really. Which one of you is the man (asked of myself and my good lady wife!). In everyday situations, many people treat males and females as if they are totally separate species.

Then add in that infamous New Scientist illustration for early man, which had only ONE female (who appeared to be brushing her hair),...................

I think when people talk that way they are usually making a generalisation too - they know some women can read maps. Lots of people tend to apply generalisations too widely, even when they know that there are exceptions though.

But as far as girls (and I suspect boys too) feeling boxed in by stereotypes, I don't think there is anything to be gained from discrediting reasonable research or scientific theories on sex differences.

The idea of a transgender spirit or whatever fails without discrediting the science too, I think. The best arguments around it are all about a medical issue related to identity formation.

In the end, I am not convinced there is a cure for stupidity. We need more real science education, a lot of it is really bad including some of the stuff that is supposed to be most pro-science, and something better would probably help. So would more education around clear thinking in the larger sense. But the older I get the more I think maybe some people just aren't able to form rational opinions.

• I think when people talk that way they are usually making a generalisation too - they know some women can read maps. Lots of people tend to apply generalisations too widely, even when they know that there are exceptions though.

Yes - the problem is all too often a generalisation is expressed as an absolute in normal non-scientific discourse. (How many discussions descend into tedious NAMALT because someone slips and says 'men...' instead of 'some men...' !)

In the end, I am not convinced there is a cure for stupidity.

Let's look at it this way -- most of our evolution happened in small groups, where our main concern was not getting eaten/finding enough to eat/producing the next generation. All this extra stuff, like being able to do (or invent, let's not assume we are all platonists!) abstract mathematics, is all just extra. And everyone around today, even the incurably stupid, has come from a long line of survivors. They may not be interesting as far as some of us are concerned, but their genes know how to keep going..............

(I guess this is the it's just another religion, we've invented plenty of those, as well as some really wacky belief systems, view of gender).

If anyone is interested, here’s a link to an article discussing investigations into gender differences in the spatial abilities of babies. (Not the Baron-Cohen work.)

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00558/full

On another tack, suppose you find yourself in the following situation.

You are approached by a young woman who is keen to pursue a career in STEM. There are certain visuospatial tasks that she is struggling with in the classroom and she has noticed that a few other female students are also finding the tasks challenging while the male students are on the whole experiencing fewer difficulties. (Think of the real-life example mentioned by OldCrone upthread.) The young woman is having doubts about her abilities and her ambitions. You are aware of the body of research pointing to the tendency for men to be better than women at such visuospatial tasks.

How would you respond to this young woman?

Would you:

a) Proceed from a standpoint of doubting the veracity of the research as it doesn’t accord with your own beliefs about the capabilities of women. Decide not to mention it for this reason and also because you suspect the young woman will succumb to stereotype threat if you do and her performance will only get worse. So you merely try to bolster her confidence, tell her she’s intelligent and encourage her to persevere.

Or

b) Tell her about the research because you believe that, ultimately, knowledge is power, knowledge brings enlightenment, even if that knowledge is unpalatable. Make sure she understands the notion of the overlapping bell curves, that there are some women who are better than some men but, yes, there is evidence that men as a group perform better than women at certain spatial tasks. And encourage her to read the - surprisingly accessible - research for herself, to adopt an attitude of calm curiosity rather than indignation about the whole matter.

Personally, I would go for b). In the end, it’s better to be honest and open about the research that’s out there, even if you are sceptical about it. However, I’d make sure that I presented the information within the context of a broader, optimistic message:

The brain is wonderfully plastic. There are tried and tested ways of improving visuospatial abilities.

You only need to reach the point of being good enough in spatial tasks. Spend some time becoming competent in such foundational sub-skills but realise that creativity and intelligence cut in at a higher level and are far more important, in combination with technical knowledge, experience and a certain amount of doggedness!

Just a thought, it's interesting that we think so much about the tasks that men seem to have an edge in. There are also ones that women seem to have an edge in as a group. I know in my own military trade, there was one set of tasks that many of the female students struggled with, while there was another set where they excelled compared to many of the male students. The latter I suspect was down to brain differences though the former perhaps not, or not directly. But there were quite a few women who ended up working in the area where they excelled.

Let's look at it this way -- most of our evolution happened in small groups, where our main concern was not getting eaten/finding enough to eat/producing the next generation. All this extra stuff, like being able to do (or invent, let's not assume we are all platonists!) abstract mathematics, is all just extra. And everyone around today, even the incurably stupid, has come from a long line of survivors. They may not be interesting as far as some of us are concerned, but their genes know how to keep going..............

I am a platonist, so no argument about discovering complex mathematics.
I often think about this idea of people being survivors when I am frustrated about people not thinking for themselves, and gender is a good example. I wonder if a whole tribe made up of people who question everything and are happy to be counter-cultural would survive for long.

I find it quite comforting in some ways. Though I also feel like it may kill us all.

Lol it’s always me doing the navigating because DH can’t (and won’t!) read maps. But then I have never been into girly stuff and spent my childhood being a tomboy playing boys games.

Now I am wondering just what tasks your female students excelled at relative to their male counterparts - and vice versa - Goosefoot! (Excuse me for being nosey if it's top secret.)

OutwiththeOutCrowd

The women tended to struggle with memorising and identifying different types of equiment and vehicles, like airplanes. A lot of the men were quite interested in the sort of thing, they had been into building models or hobbyists or playing war based games, whereas almost no women were, so the men had a lot more knowledge to start. I'm not sure if that accounted for all of it, but the interest difference was marked, even though everyone knew that it was important to learn.

Women were very good at looking at aerial photography, which was very detail oriented, required patience, and involved looking for small items, repeating patterns, and such.

Boring work in both cases, unless you like it.

Outwith - the better choice of (a) or (b) in terms of producing improved rather than degraded performance probably depends a lot on the character of the girl in question (that character being itself a product of nature and nurture).

In the context of children perhaps (b) may be too sophisticated an approach and (a) may be safer, more likely to do no harm and some good.

Errol I agree with you that you would have to proceed more cautiously with younger girls.

Goosefoot, that’s fascinating!

Actually I’m not surprised by your observations.

My DS could bore for Britain on the topic of warplanes and their weapons - he’s memorised all sorts of plane specs and has played endless computer games involving aerial battles.

And I’ve read that women are particularly good at picking out the small details of repeating patterns from ‘noise’. I had been wondering if you were going to say cryptography, which relies on similar skills. Historically, women have been very strong in that area.

*Lol it’s always me doing the navigating because DH can’t (and won’t!) read maps. But then I have never been into girly stuff and spent my childhood being a tomboy playing boys games"

I don't think girly stuff and the ability to navigate etc. are mutually exclusive. Not in my experience anyway.

Women were very good at looking at aerial photography, which was very detail oriented, required patience, and involved looking for small items, repeating patterns, and such

Photographic interpretation is something I am very interested in. When I was younger, I seriously considered joining the RAF so that I could make it my profession.

My views on sex differences are largely Darwinian.

Why would evolution select for greater special awareness in men but not in women?

Our ancestors swung through the same trees - one sex with children on their backs.