Quote of the Day: On Blogging, Digit Ratio and Gender Equality

[matgb]

In a discussion about the interesting Beeb article on gender differences andrewducker says:

You know, the quality of comments like this, and the breadth of knowledge available on my friends list is one of the reasons I love livejournal.

I'd amend it slightly to say blogging generally, but LJ, with the built in friends list aggregator, does make it very easy to keep in touch with a huge chunk of people with knowledge in specific areas way beyond my own.

Not sure on the research as presented, she's definitely got a point, but as always generalisations can be beaten by specifics--my index and ring finger are roughly the same length, and I definitely show both "male" and "female" traits depending on context, and I know a fair number of women that are a lot more "male" than me in most respects. But on the other hand, I definitely agree that a good mix of talents and a good gender ratio make for a much more succesful office/business in general situations, and I'm always slightly wary when a profession, office or place of work is too skewed one way or the other.

Comments

[wieselkind.livejournal.com]

"If MRI scans show womens' brains operating differently to men, is that because they've already been socialised in such a manner as to cause the differences, or do the differences cause the socialisation?"

Yup I've said this to people and they get huffy and say I'm not arguing properly.

[andrewducker]

If people aren't willing to engage with that question, they don't deserve to argue with you :->

It's a perfectly good question. And the answer is, according to what I've read, "both".

We can tell this at least partially because the structures don't vary by gender, per se, but with testosterone levels. And those are largely confluent with gender, but not entirely, so we can look at high testosterone women and low testosterone men, and see the differences there too.

And of course culture affects our minds - and our minds _are_ our brains, so the way we're treated is going to have an effect on the structure of our brains.

Teasing the two apart is very hard, of course. But there's a fair chunk of evidence that both have an effect, in ways that are sometimes different and sometimes the same.