Women are drastically underrepresented when it comes to executive jobs. For example, in the state of California only 10.4% of women hold the highest paid executive jobs, and 47% of companies contain only men in their boardroom. Based on these numbers, it appears that either companies are scared to put women in the executive positions or fewer women are qualified or skilled enough for the executive positions compared to men. However, there is also the possibility that the way the brain works differently for both genders plays a significant role. If the brain causes men and women to think differently it could cause men and women to have different priorities and excel at different skills. Therefore, I am intrigued with the question, are the male and female brain dissimilar? This is important to understand, because our brain is what controls us as humans. Understanding how the brain works for males and females will help us further understand each other.
Sandra Witelson is a neuroscientist who has spent much of her career studying the brains functions, and how they differ in women and men. In an interview done in, “"Science Suggests Men and Women Think Differently,” she explained her thoughts on the male and female brain. When asked about the significant differences in the male and female brain that she discovered through her research, she replied: “The very first one that I reported was that when a young boy is doing things relevant for reading, he is using one side of his brain. He uses the other side for non-reading skills. In a girl, there is much more of a bilateral involvement in these skills. So, in the normal six-year-old, the brain is organized to do the same task, but it's organized in a very different way.” In other words,...
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Both male and female brains are different and extends into a difference of what they can
Gould, Stephen J. "Women's Brains." Fields of Reading. 6th ed. Ed. Nancy R. Comley et al. New York: St. Martin's, 2001.
...ignificant evidence for my research argument indicates that the nature of gender/sex consists of a wide consensus. The latter is significant to original sex differences in brain structure and the organized role through sex differential prenatal hormone exposures through the term used in the article as (the ‘hardwiring’ paradigm). The article is limited to scientific shortcoming that presents neuroscientific research on sex and gender for it lacks an analysis that goes beyond the observed results. The article is based on neuroscience studies and how it approached gender, yet the article suggests that gender should be examined through social, culture studies, ethnicity and race. This article will not form the foundation of my research but will be used a secondary material. The neuroscience evidences will be used to support my argument and will be used as an example.
The assumption is that men and women are fundamentally different, that women are for example naturally more empathetic or emotionally-centered. In particular the belief she questions is that differences between the sexes can be easily explained by "natural" sex differences in the brain. One example of this that she lambasts involved researchers examining brain activity while men and women performed an emotion-matching test and subsequently taking the findings as concrete support for the idea that men are naturally more rational and women more emotional2. Brain activity during these tests was at least partially present in different regions of the brain depending on the sex of the participant, but the use of these minor differences to reverse inference a psychological state from brain activity is fundamentally flawed.3 Less activation in an area can actually mean that the connections have become more "streamlined" as expertise has increased and the activation of different regions of the brain is also highly context
In the brain, “females have a larger hippocampus and a deeper limbic system than males, which allows them to feel the full range and depth of the emotional spectrum,” which makes women more emotional than men (Lorenzo Jensen III). Most women do seem much more emotional and attached than most men. Women are also better at handling stress than men are. When oxytocin is released, “during stressful events. But female estrogen combines with oxytocin to produce a calming effect” (Lorenzo Jensen III). Men and women are in fact different on an anatomical level, leaving no room for bias, science not only shows, but, prove, that women are biologically different than men in some
The Victorian Era recognized the left side of the brain as the logical, reasoning, speech giving side. The left hemisphere was often “associated with masculinity, whiteness, and civilization” (Stiles 884). Dr. Jekyll displays all left-hemisphere qualities: masculinity, whiteness, logic, intelligence, and humanness (Stiles 885). Conversely, the right side of the brain controlled the emotions deeming it feminine and “only for women” (Stiles 884-85). This side of the brain had few exceptions to femininity (showing great gender bias, odd during
Do humans let their gender define their capability to learn? In the “The Gender Gap at School,” David Brooks talks about how “Male reading rates are falling three times as fast as among young women’s” (Brooks 391), because teachers are not providing equal reading interest in both genders. However, gender does not play a role in males capability to succeed in their education for reading. “The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognizing how we are” (Adichie).
It is proven that the male and female brains differ, but can one prove that it affects the behavior? Many scientists would agree that ones behavior is determined by his/her gender. Although others are convinced that social conditioning is the cause for the differences between the male and female, it is very unlikely that biological differences play no role in behavior. The male and female brains differ not only by how they work, but also on the size. For example, Natalie Angier and Kenneth Chang, neuroscientists, have shown that the women’s brain is about 10 percent smaller than the male’s, on average, even after accounting for women’s comparatively smaller body size. Three brain differences that affect ones behavior are the limbic size, the corpus collosum size, and the amount of gray and white matter.
In Margaret Matlin’s textbook The Psychology of Women, the first consistent theme discussed is in regards to gender differences. Contrary to popular belief, psychological gender differences are typically small and inconsistent. Throughout the text, there are numerous situations, examples, and statistical data to support these findings. One example is the lack of gender differences in cognitive abilities. Matlin (2012) states, “Unfortunately, however, when people who are not experts discuss gender comparisons in thinking, they almost always emphasize gender differences. Meanwhile, they ignore the substantial evidence for gender similarities” (143). When people who
Connell: Chapters 4 “Sex Differences & Gendered Bodies”: I found this entire chapter quite intriguing, but I really appreciate the way that Connell approaches the ways in which males and females differ and yet she also points out how there is no significant difference in brain anatomy and function between sexes. I found the statement by neuroscientist Lesley Rogers incredibly interesting, she states, “The brain does not choose neatly to be wither a female or a male type. In any aspect of brain function that we can measure there is considerable overlap between females and males” (p.52). This statement when paired with information about the affect social processes have on the body it is mind boggling to realize, as Connell states, “biology bends to the hurricane of social discipline” (p.55). It is unnerving to think that I am merely a product of my society. Not only has society shaped my beliefs, values, manners and religion, but it has also shaped my physical body? If I understand this correctly, it is incredibly disturbing.
It has been a time-consuming belief that women have better multi-tasking skills than men. Multi-tasking involves doing several tasks at once. Multi-tasking uses short-term memory. If women are better at multi-tasking than men, it would seem that they would have better short term memory as well. “In general, the gender-related differences include a wide range of processing skills. It has been shown that females recall the appearance of others better than males and score higher on tasks involving manipulation of phonological and semantic information, episodic and semantic memory, verbal learning, verbal analytical working memory, object location memory, fine motor skills and perceptual speed, while males tend to score higher on tasks involving visuospatial working memory fluid reasoning, and positional reconstruction, or when spatiotemporal analyses are required (González, 2013).” Memory is one the most important cognitive domains in order to have an everyday function. Memory processes storing, encoding, and retrieving information. Short-term memory is the function that temporarily retains stimuli that just have been perceived and is involved in the frontal and temporal cortices.
Lewis, Tanya. "How Men's Brains Are Wired Differently than Women's." Scientific American Global RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Communication is an essential part of human life. People perceive things in a different way because of ethnic background differences, attitudes and beliefs, etc. These differences may affect our ability to communicate with our counterpart. Therefore, it is necessary to keep our mind open so that we can reduce the risk of communication breakdown. Men and women are different as everyone knows that. However, their differences are no just physiological and anatomical. Recent researches have concluded that there are remarkable differences between the two genders in the way their brains process information, language, emotion, cognition etc. Scientists have discovered the differences in the way men and women carry out mental functions like judging speed, estimating time, spatial visualization and positioning, mental calculation. Men and women are strikingly different not only in these tasks but also in the way their brains process language. This could account for the reason why there are overwhelmingly more male mathematicians, pilots, mechanical engineers, race car drivers and space scientists than females. On the other hand, there are areas in which women outperform men. Women are naturally endowed with better communication and verbal abilities. They are also effective than men in some of the tasks like emotional empathy, establishing human relations, carrying out pre-planned tasks and creative expressions (Kimura 1999).
Men and women have always had their differences, but do those make their lives easier compared ? Both sexes have certain aspects to overcome the opposite sex, yet neither is better than the other. A woman comes into the world and is expected to act certain ways, to follow certain rules, and to be as feminine as she can just be, otherwise man comes into the world and is expected to be strong and being able to do everything only because he is a man. The idea of getting together and planning to become a family should equal both men and women, family is something that both should speak and express their oppinions. Though often times happen when man and woman meet each other, and they feel some kind of feeling that they are born for each other, something that we often called our second half. However after some years of marriage one of the partners feel that he or she isn't loved enough as he/she used to be, and many kinds of contradiction come along. The reason why partners don't get along and understand each other the way they used to is various.The fact that men and women are different is well known. Some of these defferences are constant and some are not, some have changed in the past and some are about to change in the future. Women are very emotional and communicating creatures, though men are more realistic and problem solvers,that's the reason why they have different conceptions of family life and relationship.