When a woman persists with a high-level maths course or runs as a presidential candidate, or a father leaves work early to pick up the children from school, they are altering, little by little, the implicit patterns of the minds around them. As society slowly changes, so too do the differences between male and female selves, abilities, emotions, values, interests, hormones and brains – because each is inextricably intimate with the social context in which it develops and functions.
The End (more or less).
I didn't highlight any of Fine's criticism of Baron-Cohen's work on baby girl/boys looking at faces vs. mobiles. It seemed persuasive enough, but as you'd expect, Baron-Cohen disagrees strongly:https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/book-reviews
Baron-Cohen's review of this book is, well, mixed. He likes Fine's roundup of social psychology, but he "would part ways with Fine ... in her strident, extreme denial of the role that biology might play in giving rise to any sex differences in the mind and brain."
(Oof, "strident"? You could've picked a better word there, mate)
Moreover, he makes some good counterarguments against Fine's criticisms of his experiments. It's a little inside-baseball but it all matters. I haven't read Baron-Cohen's papers so I don't feel qualified to judge either way.
Even so, I think that Fine's larger point holds, that individual studies showing only marginal differences (if any) between sexes are being used to justify and perpetuate sex discrimination. And any reader will find value in her roundup of studies showing how easily we can fool ourselves into being sexist.
So: yes, 4/5 stars.
