Another week, another study rehashing the old debate about differences between men’s and women’s brains. Stanford University researchers are the latest to reveal that, wait for it, a person’s sex can be judged based solely on their “brain organisation”. Now we know that … Well, now we know precisely nothing we didn’t already. Namely, there are differences in male and female bodies, since reproduction demands specific capacities in women that it doesn’t in men, and vice versa.
Beyond that, we still don’t fully understand the interplay between nature and nurture in anything human, and this study isn’t going to help. It has long been established that young boys and girls behave differently due to the influence of different hormonal environments in the womb. What is also understood by the most respected researchers is that these differences between boys and girls might be pretty unimportant as people get older.
Just over 100 years ago it was taken as axiomatic that women could not be Cabinet ministers, prime ministers, combatants in the Armed Forces, or handle full voting rights. Yet we now see female chess champions and attorney generals, and we see the normalisation of most things deemed biologically and universally out of the question 100 years ago.
Surely, then, it follows that we are on shaky ground taking certain physiological metrics today and running with them, inferring from brain organisation some kind of gendered social organisation that is “natural”. Indeed, some are busy reviving just such arguments, and studies like these can be grist to their mill. They believe that, at the end of the day, we women are just happier and better off chained to the sink, bearing babies, and letting hubby do all that stressful professional stuff out in the world. No thanks.
Another week, another study rehashing the old debate about differences between men’s and women’s brains. Stanford University researchers are the latest to reveal that, wait for it, a person’s sex can be judged based solely on their “brain organisation”. Now we know that … Well, now we know precisely nothing we didn’t already. Namely, there are differences in male and female bodies, since reproduction demands specific capacities in women that it doesn’t in men, and vice versa.
Beyond that, we still don’t fully understand the interplay between nature and nurture in anything human, and this study isn’t going to help. It has long been established that young boys and girls behave differently due to the influence of different hormonal environments in the womb. What is also understood by the most respected researchers is that these differences between boys and girls might be pretty unimportant as people get older.
Just over 100 years ago it was taken as axiomatic that women could not be Cabinet ministers, prime ministers, combatants in the Armed Forces, or handle full voting rights. Yet we now see female chess champions and attorney generals, and we see the normalisation of most things deemed biologically and universally out of the question 100 years ago.
Surely, then, it follows that we are on shaky ground taking certain physiological metrics today and running with them, inferring from brain organisation some kind of gendered social organisation that is “natural”. Indeed, some are busy reviving just such arguments, and studies like these can be grist to their mill. They believe that, at the end of the day, we women are just happier and better off chained to the sink, bearing babies, and letting hubby do all that stressful professional stuff out in the world. No thanks.