Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

by Cordelia Fine

In the early 1980s, highly gifted boys identified by the SMPY outnumbered girls 13 to 1. By 2005, this ratio had plummeted to 2.8 to 1.19

immigrants from countries like Romania, Russia and the Ukraine, who manage on the whole to keep their end up when it comes to participating in these prestigious competitions and programmes. The success of this group of women continues into their careers. These women are a hundred times more likely to make it into the maths faculty of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford or University of California

mathematical eminence is not fixed, or hardwired or intrinsic, but is instead responsive to cultural factors that affect the extent to which mathematical talent is identified and nurtured, or passed over, stifled or suppressed in males and females.

when students are encouraged to see maths ability as something that grows with effort – pointing out, for example, that the brain forges new connections and develops better ability every time they practise a task – grades improve and gender gaps diminish (relative to groups given control

women who knew the sex of their unborn baby described the movements of sons and daughters differently.

‘[o]ld patterns and expectations have broken down, but new ideas seem fragmentary, unrealistic, and often

colour-coding for boys and girls once quite openly served the purpose of helping young children learn gender distinctions. Today, the original objective behind the convention has been forgotten. Yet it continues to accomplish exactly that,

‘only boys like cold water, right Dad?’

children appear to seize on any element that may implicate a gender norm so that they may categorize it as male or

‘Everybody has a penis; only girls wear barrettes.’

this peer feedback seems to influence children’s behaviour, making it more

mothers almost always label gender-neutral characters in picture books as

Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti; Why Men Don’t Iron; and Why Men Don’t Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes.)

has shown that this is especially the case when groups are made visually distinct, and authority figures use and label the groups. In one study, three- to five-year-old preschoolers in two child-care classrooms were randomly assigned to the Blue group or the Red group.

gender labelling was associated with more gender-stereotypical

children under age six, putting a gender label on a gender-neutral toy is a reliable way of creating gender-stereotypical behaviour.

http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2008/11/educational-neuro-nonsense-or-return-of.html, accessed September 2, 2009.

For details, and contrast with maturational viewpoint, see (Westermann et al., 2007), in particular figure 4, p. 80. Also (Lickliter & Honeycutt, 2003; Mareschal et al., 2007).