Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (37 page)

96  
Janice Turner, ‘Planet Boy’,
The Times
, 21 April 2003

97  
Ian Sample, ‘Gay men and heterosexual women have similarly shaped
brains, research shows’,
Guardian
, 16 June 2008, describing findings from Ivanka Savic and Per Lindstrom, ‘PET and MRI show differences in cerebral asymmetry and functional connectivity between homo- and heterosexual subjects’,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, 16 June 2008, retrieved 18 June 2008 from
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/06/13/0801566105.abstract

98  
Mark Liberman, ‘Annals of essentialism: sexual orientation and rhetorical asymmetry’, Language Log, 18 June 2008, retrieved 20 June 2008 from
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=256

99  
Murat Yucel et al, ‘Hemispheric and gender-related differences in the gross morphology of the anterior cingulate/paracingulate cortex in normal volunteers: an MRI morphometric study’,
Cerebral Cortex
, 11, 1 (January 2001), 17–25, p17

100  
C D Good et al, ‘Cerebral asymmetry and the effects of sex and handedness on brain structure: a voxel-based morphometric analysis of 465 normal adult human brains’,
NeuroImage
, 14, 3 (September 2001), 685–700, p692

101  
Thomas Barrick et al, ‘Automatic analysis of cerebral asymmetry: an exploratory study of the relationship between brain torque and planum temporale asymmetry’,
NeuroImage
, 24, 3 (February 2005), 678–91, p692

102  
Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson, ‘Mapping Brain Asymmetry’,
Neuroscience
, 4, 1 (January 2003), 37–48, p43

103  
Christine de Lacoste-Utamsing and Ralph L Holloway, ‘Sexual dimorphism in the human corpus callosum’,
Science
, 216 (1982), 1431–2

104  
Lorraine Dusky, ‘Just like a woman’, 2 March 2005, Salon.com, retrieved 30 October 2008 from
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2005/03/02/gender_differences/index1.html

105  
Susan Pinker,
The Sexual Paradox
, op cit, p116

106  
Other writers have joined this debate: for instance, Steven Pinker says, ‘The brains of men differ visibly from the brains of women in several ways … Portions of the cerebral commissures, which link the left and right hemispheres, appear to be larger in women, and their brains may function in a less lopsided manner than men’s.’ Steven Pinker,
The Blank Slate
, op cit, p347; Simon Baron-Cohen says, ‘Women’s brains, interestingly, have a thicker corpus callosum (the connective tissue between the two hemispheres, which allows for better communication between them)’, Simon Baron-Cohen, ‘Scientists have sex on the brain’,
Guardian Weekly
, 4 February 2005

107  
John Gray,
Why Mars and Venus Collide
, op cit, p38

108  
Other commentators have popularised the same idea, for instance, the talk show host Phil Donahue commented that this original study showed that females had a corpus callosum ‘as much as 40 per cent larger’, and that this was the basis for ‘women’s intuition’. Quoted in Katherine M Bishop and Douglas Wahlsten, ‘Sex differences in the human corpus callosum: myth or reality?’,
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
, 21, 5 (1997), 581–601

109  
Katherine M Bishop and Douglas Wahlsten, ibid, p590

110  
As Susan Pinker puts it in
The Sexual Paradox:
‘MRI studies show that males have most language functions localised in the left hemisphere. Meanwhile, most females use both hemispheres for language.’ Susan Pinker, op cit, p45

111  
Micheal D Phillips et al, ‘Temporal lobe activation demonstrates sex-based differences during passive listening’,
Radiology
, 220 (July 2001), 202–7

112  
‘Why men don’t listen’, BBC, 28 November 2000, retrieved 10 July 2008 from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1044805.stm

113  
‘Why men don’t listen’,
Daily Mail
, 29 December 2000

114  
Iris E C Sommer, André Aleman, Anke Bouma and René S Kahn, ‘Do women really have more bilateral language representation than men? A meta-analysis of functional imaging studies’,
Brain
, 127, 8 (August 2004), 1845–52. It’s interesting that this meta-analysis was carried out by scientists who did agree with the idea that there are significant sex differences in cognitive abilities, but they couldn’t see any evidence for them in the physical brain, concluding: ‘It is therefore not likely that differences in language lateralization underlie the general sex differences in cognitive performance, and the neuronal basis for these cognitive sex differences remains elusive.’ p1845

115  
For discussion of the ‘file-drawer’ problem see for instance: John T E Richardson,
Gender Differences in Human Cognition
(Oxford University Press, 1997), p9; Caplan and Caplan, ‘The perseverative search for sex differences in mathematics ability’ in Gallagher and Kaufman eds,
Gender Differences in Mathematics
(Cambridge University Press, 2005), 25–47; Mark Liberman, ‘Innate sex differences: science and public opinion’, Language Log, 20 June 2008, retrieved 22 June 2008 from
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261
Erin McClure, ‘A meta-analytic review of sex differences in facial expression processing and their development in infants, children, and adolescents’,
Psychological Bulletin
, 126 (May 2000), 424–53

116  
For instance, if you look at studies on rodents’ brains, which can be experimented on in ways that we cannot with humans’, changes to their environment have been shown to increase the size or density of particular brain regions. Melissa Hines,
Brain Gender
, op cit, p196

117  
Eleanor A Maguire, David G Gadian, Ingrid S Johnsrude, Catriona D Good, John Ashburner, Richard S J Frackowiak and Christopher D Firth, ‘Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers’,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
, 97, 8 (11 April 2000), 4398–403

118  
Similarly, when subjects in a test were given a three-month period of juggling practice, that led to an increase in grey-matter density in the area of the temporal cortex that was assumed to process that sort of task. After the practice stopped, the brain area changed back. Draganski, Gaser, Busch, Schuierer, Bogdahn and May, ‘Changes in grey matter induced by training’,
Nature
, 427 (22 January 2004), 311–12

119  
Melissa Hines,
Brain Gender
, op cit, p196

120  
Sherwood Washburn and Chet Lancaster, ‘The Evolution of Hunting,’ in Richard B Lee ed,
Man the Hunter
(Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968), p296

121  
Allan and Barbara Pease,
Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps
(London: Orion, 1999), p13

122  
Kristen Hawkes, ‘Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity’,
American Journal of Human Biology
, 15 (2003), 380–400

123  
Description of life among the Agta people of the Sierra Madre, Melvin Konner, ‘Hunter-gatherer infancy and childhood, the !Kung and others’, in Hewlett and Lamb eds,
Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods
(London: Transaction, 2005), 19–64, p55. See also Rayna Reiter ed,
Toward an Anthropology of Women
(London: Monthly Review Press, 1975); Frances Dahlberg ed,
Woman the Gatherer
(Yale University Press, 1981)

124  
Barry Hewlett, quoted in Joanna Moorhead, ‘Are the men of the African Aka tribe the best fathers in the world?’,
Guardian
, 15 June 2005

125  
Craig B Stanford, ‘The ape’s gift: meat-eating, meat-sharing and human evolution’, in Frans B M De Waal,
Tree of Origin
(Harvard University Press, 2001), 97–117, p115

126  
Natalie Angier,
Woman: An Intimate Geography
(London: Virago,1999), p347

9: Stereotypes

  
1  
Simon Baron-Cohen,
The Essential Difference
, op cit, p11

  
2  
Steven Pinker, ‘The science of sex difference’,
The New Republic
, 14 February 2005

  
3  
Ashley Herzog, ‘Will feminists again attempt to censor science?’,
Town Hall
, 13 March 2008, retrieved 31 October 2008 from
http://townhall.com/columnists/AshleyHerzog/2008/03/13/ will_feminists_again_attempt_to_censor_science

  
4  
Mark Liberman, ‘More functional neuroanatomy of science journalism’, Language Log, 18 March 2008, retrieved 30 October 2008 from
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005472.html

  
5  
Martin Newland, ‘Why women prefer talking to sex’,
Daily Mail
, 13 September 2006

  
6  
Tracey Shors, ‘The mismeasure of woman’,
Economist
, 3 August 2006

  
7  
Dr Matthews Duncan, quoted by William Withers Moore, president, at the fifty-fourth annual meeting of the British Medical Association, Brighton 1886, as reported in
Lancet
, 2 (1886), 315, cited in Joan N Burstyn, ‘Education and sex: the medical case against higher education for women in England’,
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
, 117, 2 (April 1973), 79–89, p84

  
8  
Henry Maudsley, ‘Sex in mind and education’,
Fortnightly Review
, 15 (1874), 466–83, cited in Joan N Burstyn, op cit

  
9  
G T W Patrick, ‘The Psychology of Women’,
Popular Science Monthly
47 (1895) 209–225, cited in Stephanie A Shields, ‘Functionalism, Darwinism and the psychology of women: a study in social myth’,
American Psychologist
, 30 (1975), 739–54

10  
Anne Fausto-Sterling,
Myths of Gender
(New York: Basic Books, 1985) pp38–9

11  
Edward O Wilson,
On Human Nature
((1978), London: Penguin, 1995), p129. See also Edward O Wilson,
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
(Harvard University Press, 1975)

12  
Victoria Brescoll, Marianne LaFrance, ‘The correlates and consequences of newspaper reports of research on sex differences’,
Psychological Science
, 15, 8 (August 2004), 515–20

13  
See Rosie Boycott, ‘Why women don’t want top jobs, by a feminist’,
Daily Mail
, 22 April 2008

14  
Helena Cronin, ‘Scientists reveal what changed their minds’,
Daily Telegraph
, 31 December 2007

15  
S J Spencer, C M Steele and D M Quinn, ‘Stereotype threat and women’s math performance’,
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
, 35, 1 (1999), 4–28

16  
Zoe Brennan and Emma Smith, ‘Driving tests: collision of the sexes: is the chief tester right about women drivers?’,
The Times
, 13 February 2005

17  
N C Jonathan Yeung and C von Hippel, ‘Stereotype threat increases the likelihood that female drivers in a simulator run over jaywalkers’,
Accident Analysis and Prevention
, 40, 2 (March 2008), 667–74

18  
Shelley J Correll, ‘Constraints into preferences: gender, status and emerging career aspirations’,
American Sociological Review
, 69, 1 (February 2004), 93–113

19  
‘Conservatives may begin with a preference for biological explanations for sex differences and also read conservative newspapers containing more biological explanations for sex differences. Such reading may further justify and reinforce pre-existing opinions about the causes of sex differences.’ Victoria Brescoll and Marianne LaFrance, ‘The correlates and consequences of newspaper reports of research on sex differences’, op cit, p520

20  
See also: Shelley J Correll, ‘Gender and the career choice process: the role of biased self-assessments’,
American Journal of Sociology
, 106, 6 (May 2001), 1691–730. Studies carried out by Correll suggested here that ‘Boys do not pursue mathematical activities at a higher rate than girls do because they are better at mathematics. They do so, at least partially, because they think they are better.’ p1724

21  
Statistics from the Judiciary of England and Wales, 1 April 2008, retrieved 10 October 2008 from
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/keyfacts/statistics/women.htm

22  
Sex and Power 2008
(Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2008), retrieved 2 November 2008 from
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/Documents/EHRC/SexandPower/Sex_and_Power_2008.pdf

23  
Brendan Burchell, Colette Fagan, Catherine O’Brien and Mark Smith,
Working Conditions in the European Union: The Gender Perspective
(Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2007), retrieved 24 January 2009 from
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2007/108/en/1/ef07108en.pdf;
statistics for the UK discussed in Sarah Womack, ‘Career women work longer hours than men’,
Daily Telegraph
, 2 December 2007

24  
Not Having It All: How Motherhood Reduces Women’s Pay and Employment Prospects
(Fawcett Society, 2009), retrieved 25 July 2009 from
http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/documents/NotHavingItAll.pdf

25  
Andrew Sullivan, ‘The he hormone’,
New York Times
, 2 April 2000

26  
Mary Carmichael, ‘The cheating man’s brain’,
Newsweek
, 12 March 2008; quoting Marvin Zuckerman, psychologist and author of a 2006 book called
Sensation Seeking and Risky Behavior
.