When you think of the 1920´s, what comes to mind? Prohibition? The Roaring Twenties? Whatever it may be, on August 18th of 1920, a monumental decision in American history was made. That decision? Women, for the first time in U.S history, were granted the right to vote. Since then, much has changed in regard of traditional gender roles, but is that all a good thing? Over the years, a number of studies and experiments have taken place with the combined goal of obtaining a better understanding of the sexes. Besides the many obvious differences we see, men and women think, act and make decisions differently. Gad Saad, Ph.D. a professor at Concordia University, studied children in their pre-socialization stage. His goal? To find out whether or not children in this stage could be sexulized as a gender opposite their gender assigned at birth. He found that, “Children who are in the pre-socialization stage of their cognitive development exhibit sex-specific preferences. Hence, by definition, these toy penchants manifest themselves prior to an infant’s capacity to be socialized via learning.” In other words, boys preferred more masculine toys such as trucks, while girls preferred more feminine toys such as dolls. Saad claims this to be true across the board, in all cultures.

Brain Games

Gregory L. Jantz, Ph.D. wrote an article on Psychology Today, where he discusses differences in processing and matter inside the brain. For instance, a male brain uses about seven times more gray matter than a female brain. And a female brain uses nearly 10 times more white matter than their male counterparts. Gray matter areas of the brain are localized and act essentially as an information and action processing center. This means that once men are deeply engaged in any sort of task, they do not demonstrate much sensitivity to the outside world. On the other hand, white matter is what connects processing centers like gray matter to one another. This means women are able to switch between multiple tasks much faster then men. This may also explain why females are more often perceived as better multi-taskers, while men exceed at highly task-focused projects.

Brain Chemistry

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Our brain chemistry plays a very important role in how we think, feel and act. Chemicals such as serotonin, testosterone, estrogen and oxytocin are all processed to different degrees by men and women’s brains. An adult male for example, has about seven to eight times more testosterone than that of an adult female. Side affect’s of having this increased amount of testosterone is more aggressive and impulsive behavior, less of an inclination to sit for long periods of time and less of an incentive to form strong emotional bonds. The hippocampus, otherwise known as the memory center of the brain, is larger and has a denser number of neural connections in female brains. As a result, women absorb more information when it comes to emotions and the five senses. Additionally, male and female brains both develop differently during conception. Females brains for instance, have verbal centers in both the left and right sides of the brain, while men only have one verbal center on the left side of their brain. This explains why women are much more descriptive, while men may only remember parts of the conversation they deem as most important. This also means men are worse at discussing their feelings and displaying emotions. Females have a much higher degree of natural blood flow to the brain due to high amounts of white matter, which causes them to revisit and ruminate emotional memories more often than men. On the flip side, when a man reflects on an emotional memory or experience, they tend to do just that, briefly reflect on it, analyze it, then move on. During this process, they may decide to do something unrelated to what they had just thought about and not reflect on it at all. Because of this, many mistakenly believe that boys would rather avoid their feelings and move on, when in fact they might just rather be doing something active.

Are we Really that Different?

To add some intellectual diversity to this post, I present to you Gina Rippon, a professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging to explain to you the concept of what she calls “neurosexisum,” In an article titled, “Neurosexisum: Women’s Brains are Different from Men’s, not Inferior.” In it she describes neurosexisum as, “the practice of claiming that there are fixed differences between female and male brains, which can explain women’s inferiority or unsuitability for certain roles.” In the 18th century, it was found that women’s brains were on average five ounces less than men’s, which people immediately accepted as a sign of inferiority. She claims that Neurosexist studies that spot sex-dependent activity such as differences in empathy, learning languages or spatial processing have allowed these

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myths to survive. She points to brain imaging and a study regarding the molding of our gender and sexual identity based on our experiences and environment. She continues on and explains that we need to complete more research while also accounting for social status and education. She sites another study claiming Psychologists have begun to see that many of the characteristics we see as masculine and feminine are on a spectrum. “Every brain is actually a mosaic of different patterns, some more commonly found in men’s brains and some in women’s. But none could be described as fully male nor fully female.”

Conclusion

Whatever your opinion is on this very topical and controversial topic, I hope you enjoyed reading my post. The fact remains there are an insurmountable number of differences between the sexes. Supported by years upon years of research. If you read this entire article only to find yourself disappointed, hopefully we could at the very least establish some common ground and create a dialogue of some kind. Please keep in mind I am in no way stating there are no exceptions to the facts I have laid out to you, I am merely stating to you the biological facts that are applicable to the vast majority of people. Genetic mutations, diseases and other ailments can affect a person’s biology, and may alter them in such a way that they do not fit the description of one certain gender.

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