Philobiblon

A quite balanced piece in the Economist about the differences between the brains of men and women.

There are a number of problems with these studies. One, according to Dr Hines, is science’s bias towards reporting positive results, so that research which shows no differences is likely to get lost. Another is that because differences between the sexes are so often popularised and played up in the popular media, people tend to pay them disproportionate attention.
For example, although it is commonly held that there are reliable differences between the verbal abilities of males and females, Dr Hines suggests this is not exactly correct. She says that the results of hundreds of tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension show there is almost no gap between the sexes. Though teenage girls are better at spelling than teenage boys, the only aspect of verbal ability that is known to show a sex difference in adults is verbal fluency (the ability to produce words rapidly). For example, when asked to list as many words as possible that start with a particular letter, women usually come up with more than men. Furthermore, even when there are differences in ability between the sexes, research suggests that the scale of these differences is often smaller than people generally believe.

I still think it underplays the cultural factors however. Last week after a friend had a baby I went out to buy a congratulatory card. I couldn’t find one, NOT ONE, specifically “congratulations on your new baby” card that wasn’t either definitely pink or blue. So in the end I choose a nice gender-neutral picture of a puppy, a card meant for any general purpose.