Excerpt #7: Sex and Social Differences between Men and Women

  Over the past 15-20 years neuroscientists and biologists have come to appreciate that there are many more differences between human male and female brains and endocrine systems than we had thought previously.
   We now know that biological sex differences in the womb start some six weeks after conception, with washes of androgens (male hormones, primarily testosterone) at critical times being essential in the development of 'maleness' away from the natural female (XX) template.
   During puberty another rise in male hormones exaggerates and confirms these differences.
   These processes undoubtedly affect positioning along Hans Eysenck's Psychoticism Dimension.
   Dr Ruben Gur is one of the leading researchers in the field of brain differences between the sexes. His research has led to a number of important realisations, such as:-
# The greater amount of the fatty 'white matter' throughout male brains gives them superiority at spatial reasoning.
# The white matter also prevents 'information spread' in the cortex - see Fig 1 - resulting in males tending to pay attention to only one thing at a time. (Which is why men proverbially can't walk and chew gum at the same time!)
# The white matter in females is concentrated in the corpus callosum, This ridge of nerve fibres which connects the two hemispheres of the brain is thicker in females - in other words, there are more connections. Which means female brains are more balanced and better organised. (For this reason, they don't need to be so large - which is why the average woman has a smaller head than the average man.)
# One result of more white matter in the female corpus callosum is that the right side of the brain can join in language tasks - language areas of the brain being primarily in the left hemisphere. This tends to give females superiority in language skills.
According to Michael Gurian, this is why women talk more and can multitask while men tend to concentrate on one thing at a time and favour fewer and shorter verbal exchanges.

   When you add these factors to the biological issues to do with memory and communication we looked at in Chapter 16, even before we consider temperamental and motivational differences, it is vital that men and women make allowances for each other's processing modes.
   In practicality, this is going to make it harder for a woman to grab a man's attention because he tends to focus on one thing at a time - the thing which has greatest value to him. On the other hand, the sheer amount of verbal noise a woman can put out may irritate the man and force him to hunker down even more to focus on the thing which has most value to him at that moment in time.
   How much frustration in relationships these kinds of difficulties cause is reflected in the huge sales of books like 'Why Men don't listen & Women can't read Maps' - the title of which sums up the whole issue, really!
   Then we must consider the way socialisation develops the biological raw material - from the genotype to the phenotype.
   While occasionally very significant variations in male and female roles around the world have been documented, by and large the stereotypes of the more aggressive, task-oriented male and the nurturing, people-oriented female hold up. (This is provided one accepts there is a continuum of extreme Maleness and extreme Femaleness with X gradations in between which are related to Psychocticism.)
   A number of sociologists and social psychologists have carried out studies showing that most men tend to have instrumental 'side-by-side' friendships, centred on doing activities together. By contrast, most women tend to have expressive 'face-to-face' friendships where they talk about their feelings.
   Two quite different approaches to communication in relationships!
   As Dr Deborah Tannen has summed up so clearly: women want to talk about the way they feel; men want to do things - or, at least, talk about doing things.
Evolutionary theorists, like Dr Rhawn Joseph, tend to assign this divergence of approach to necessity in prehistoric times. Primitive men were obliged to communicate only what was necessary to each other while out stalking their prey. Meanwhile, their women, grouped together back in the cave, were forced to reveal their thoughts and feelings to others (self-disclosure) to build up rapport in what would have been tense and quite claustrophobic circumstances.

  Although Talcott Parsons, the influential sociologist, believes these differences are rooted in biology, there is plenty of evidence to show that socialisation reinforces them. For example, Angela Phillips has drawn attention to the way boys are raised to find and express themselves by standing alone, appearing strong, being independent and proving themselves through competition. By contrast, girls are encouraged to develop relationships and gain affiliative skills. According to Phillips, girls spend hours practising emotional skills while boys expend their energies on mastering physical 'doing' skills.