Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds

by Gina Rippon

Overview

A breakthrough work in neuroscience and an incisive corrective to a long history of damaging pseudo-science, finally debunking the myth that there is a biological binary between male and female brains.
 
For decades if not centuries, science has backed up society’s simple dictum that men and women are hardwired differently, that the world is divided by two different kinds of brains—male and female. However, new research in neuroimaging suggests that this is little more than “neurotrash.”
 
In this powerfully argued work, acclaimed professor of cognitive neuroimaging Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that bombard us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mould our ideas of ourselves and even shape our brains. Taking us back through centuries of sexism, The Gendered Brain reveals how science has been misinterpreted or misused to ask the wrong questions. Instead of challenging the status quo, we are still bound by outdated stereotypes and assumptions. However, by exploring new, cutting-edge neuroscience, Rippon urges us to move beyond a binary view of our brains and instead to see these complex organs as highly individualised, profoundly adaptable, and full of unbounded potential.

Rigorous, timely and liberating, The Gendered Brain has huge repercussions for women and men, for parents and children, and for how we identify ourselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524747022
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/27/2019
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Professor Gina Rippon is an international researcher in the field of cognitive neuroscience based at the Aston Brain Centre at Aston University in Birmingham. Her research involves the use of state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate developmental disorders such as autism. She is a regular contributor to events such as the British Science Festival, New Scientist Live and the Sceptics in the Pub series. In 2015 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association for her contributions to the public communication of science. 

She is also an advocate for initiatives to help overcome the under-representation of women in STEM subjects. As part of a European Union Gender Equality Network, she has addressed conferences all over the world. She belongs to WISE and ScienceGrrl, and is a member of Robert Peston’s Speakers4Schools programme and the Inspiring the Future initiative.

Read an Excerpt

[from] Chapter 1: Inside Her Pretty Little Head—the Hunt Begins
Women . . . represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and . . . are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. —Gustave Le Bon, 1895
 
For centuries, women’s brains have been weighed and measured and found wanting. Part of women’s allegedly inferior, deficient or fragile biology, their brains were at the heart of any explanation as to why they were lower down any scale, from the evolutionary to the social and the intellectual. The inferior nature of women’s brains was used as the rationale for frequently proffered advice that the fairer sex should focus on their reproductive gifts and leave education, power, politics, science and any other business of the world to men.
 
While views about women’s capabilities and their role in society varied somewhat over the centuries, a consistent theme throughout was “essentialism,” the idea that differences between female and male brains were part of their “essence,” and that these brains’ structures and functions were fixed and innate. Gender roles were determined by these essences. It would be going against nature to overturn this natural order of things.
 
An early version of this story starts, but unfortunately does not end, with a seventeenth-century philosopher, François Poullain de la Barre, bravely questioning the alleged inequality of the sexes. Poullain was determined to have a clear-eyed look at the evidence behind the assertion that women were inferior to men, and was careful not to accept anything as true just because it was how things had always been (or because some appropriate explanation could be found in the Bible).
 
His two publications, On the Equality of the Two Sexes: A Physical and Moral Discourse in Which Is Seen the Importance of Undoing Prejudice in Oneself (1673) and On the Education of Women, to Guide the Mind in Sciences and Manners (1674), show a startlingly modern approach to issues of differences between the sexes. Poullain even tries to show how women’s skills can be equated with those of men; there’s a charming section in his treatise on sexual equality where he muses that the skills required of embroidery and needlework are as demanding as those required to learn physics.
 
Based on his studies of findings from the then new science of anatomy, he made a startlingly prescient observation: “Our most accurate anatomical investigations do not uncover any difference between men and women in this part of the body [the head]. The brain of women is exactly like ours.” His close examination of the different skills and dispositions of men and women, boys and girls, drew him to the conclusion that, given the opportunity, women would be just as capable of benefiting from the privileges which were then only offered to men, such as education and training. For Poullain, there was no evidence that women’s inferior position in the world was due to some biological deficit. “L’esprit n’a point de sexe,” he declared: the mind has no sex.
 
Poullain’s conclusions were strongly against the prevailing ethos; at the time of his writing, the patriarchal system was firmly entrenched. The “separate spheres” ideology, with men fit for public roles and women for private, domestic ones, determined a woman’s inferiority, necessarily subordinate to her father and then to her husband, and physically and mentally weaker than any man.
 
It was downhill all the way after that. Poullain’s views were largely, to his disappointment, ignored when they were first published (at least in France), and had little impact on the established view that women were essentially inferior to men, and would be unable to benefit from educational or political opportunities (which was, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they were not, with notable exceptions, given access to education or political opportunities). This remained the prevailing view throughout the eighteenth century, with little attention to it as a matter worthy of debate.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Whac-A-Mole Myths xi
Sex, Gender, Sex/Gender or Gender/Sex:
A Note on Sex and Gender xx
 
Part One
Chapter 1: Inside Her Pretty Little Head— the Hunt Begins 3
Chapter 2: Her Raging Hormones 25
Chapter 3: The Rise of Psychobabble 45
Chapter 4: Brain Myths, Neurotrash and Neurosexism 72
 
Part Two
Chapter 5: The Twenty-First-Century Brain 103
Chapter 6: Your Social Brain 120
 
Part Three
Chapter 7: Baby Matters— To Begin at the Beginning (Or Even a Bit Before) 145
Chapter 8: Let’s Hear It for the Babies 169
Chapter 9: The Gendered Waters in Which We Swim—The Pink and Blue Tsunami 198
 
Part Four
Chapter 10: Sex and Science 235
Chapter 11: Science and the Brain 262
Chapter 12: Good Girls Don’t 282
Chapter 13: Inside Her Pretty Little Head—a Twenty-First-Century Update 309
Chapter 14: Mars, Venus or Earth?—Have We Been Wrong About Sex All Along? 327
Conclusion: Raising Dauntless Daughters (and Sympathetic Sons) 346
 
Acknowledgments 359
Notes 363
Index 413

Editorial Reviews

Where the book really shines—not surprisingly—is in the details about the science of the brain: what we know and what we do not. Rippon's explanation of how we've studied the brain in the past, and how recent technological advances are giving us increasingly precise tools to do so, is endlessly interesting.

The New York Times Book Review - Emily Oster

"A treasure trove of information and good humour, The Gendered Brain offers thought-provoking perspectives on the latest debates about sex, gender and the brain."
--Cordelia Fine, author of Testosterone Rex

"A smart and witty addition to the literature on sex differences. Gina Rippon is one of the most outspoken scientists in this area, and she debunks a whole host of sexist stereotypes in her new book."
--Angela Saini, author of Inferior

"A brilliant and thorough debunking of the popular myths around sex differences in brains and behaviour."
--Dr. Emily Grossman, broadcaster

From the Publisher

★ 2019-05-26
An authoritative debunking of the notion of a gendered brain.

In her debut book, Rippon (Cognitive Neuroimaging/Aston Univ., Birmingham) examines sex-difference research and finds a dismaying history of bad science and an abundance of design flaws, inadequate controls, and innumeracy. Neurosexism abounds, she asserts, citing studies and naming names with assurance and a touch of acerbity. She calls misconceptions about gender differences "whac-a-mole" myths: Mistaken assumptions, she writes, have "been variously whacked over the years but can still be found in self-help manuals, how-to guides and even in twenty-first-century arguments about the utility or futility of diversity agendas." Further, research findings are often misinterpreted by the press, creating in the public imagination an inaccurate picture of the so-called "male" or "female" brain. Rippon notes that the view of a gendered brain, which has a long history, is stubbornly persistent today. She cites both social psychologist Gustave Le Bon's 1895 declaration that women "represent the most inferior forms of human evolution" and Google engineer James Damore's 2017 blog about the biological causes for the absence of women in technology. Looking at numerous scientific studies, the author sees surprisingly little evidence for brain sex differences in newborns. Rather, she argues, the differences in behavior and interests between boys and girls, and men and women, can be explained by the impact of a gendered world on the human brain. As she notes, gender clues surround children from birth. Attitudes and unexamined assumptions can be toxic, and toys, sports, clothing, and colors have a powerful impact. Young children, writes Rippon, are social sponges, especially attuned to social rules, and their experiences in a pink-vs.-blue world can change the way their brains form. Ultimately, her message is that a gendered world will produce a gendered brain. The result, unfortunately, is that boys and girls are shaped with different expectations and are often driven down career different paths.

Well-crafted and thoroughly documented, this is a must-read for parents, teachers, and anyone of either sex who cares for children.

Kirkus Reviews