SPIKED REVIEW interviews CORDELIA FINE
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On neurosexism
Published in 2010, The Delusions of Gender: the Real Science Behind Sex Differences was a tour de force of calm, reasoned iconoclasm. Its author, Cordelia Fine, now an associate professor of psychology at Melbourne Business School, systematically debunked the claims made for there being essential neurological and psychological differences between the sexes.
To those who claimed that the testosteronal surges during pregnancy, which affect the sex of a child, also shaped the male/female brain, Fine offered a detailed, scathing rebuke: ‘Does accuracy on a mental rotation test at age seven correlate with amniotic testosterone? No. Does a four-year-old’s skill at copying a block structure, understanding number facts and concepts, and counting and sorting increase with higher levels of amniotic testosterone? No, it decreases in girls, and has no relationship in boys. Puzzle solving? No. Classification skills (for example, “find all the small ones”)? No. A test of spatial ability? No.’
And to those who cite the countless tests which purport to show that women are more empathetic, better at reading body language than men, or that men are whizzes at puzzle solving, better at logical thinking than women, Fine pointed out that the tests themselves primed participants to adopt stereotypical gender roles. Prime the tests differently, offer payment in return for the correct identification of people’s emotional states from their body language, for example, and men perform no differently to women.
Over and over again, Fine showed that gender was not the product of biology, neuro- or otherwise; it was the product of an environment in which gender remains salient. We decided to catch up with Fine to discuss gender ahead of the publication early next year of her new book, Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds.
spiked review: ‘It’s hardly news that women are more empathetic than men, or that they tend to play more of a caring role’, wrote a female broadsheet commentator earlier this year. A Conservative peer echoed these sentiments when backing Theresa May for UK prime minister: ‘I think people feel that at a time of turmoil, a woman will be more practical and a bit less testosterone-driven in their approach. More collaborative, more willing to listen to voices around the table, less likely to have an instantly aggressive approach to things.’
It seems that the belief that men and women are fundamentally different, that we have different types of brain, remains commonplace. So is there any more evidence for such claims as ‘women are more empathetic than men’, or ‘men are more rational/logical than women’?
Cordelia Fine: There are two main problems with these kinds of claims (‘if we put a woman in the role, she’ll be more this, while a man will be more that.’) First of all, even when there are average differences between the sexes on some kind of characteristic, there is usually so much overlap that knowing a particular individual’s sex isn’t that helpful for guessing whether they’re going to value supposedly masculine values like social status, prestige, control and dominance or assumedly feminine values like caring for others. A review of sex differences in these values across 70 countries found that, generally, differences were so small that your chance of guessing someone’s sex from their score was barely above chance.
These kinds of claims also ignore the power of organisations’ norms and culture in shaping how people behave (and who moves up the ladder). By saying, ‘we need to be a bit more caring, less aggressive and listen to others so let’s bring in a woman’, the underlying message is that the problem lies, not in the system, but in the inevitable fact that ‘boys will be boys’. Of course, this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t worry about increasing the number of senior women in male-dominated organisations, which could go some way to eroding hyper-masculine norms and destigmatising supposedly ‘feminine’ values and ways of behaving. But we shouldn’t insult men by assuming that they’re only capable of behaving in an aggressive, autocratic, callous fashion.
Finally, there’s a side effect to this point of view. The idea that women are perfectly suited to ‘mopping up the mess’ – as opposed to leading towards bold visions in good times – seems to lie behind the so-called ‘glass cliff’ phenomenon (identified by University of Exeter psychologist Michelle Ryan), whereby women tend to be chosen for precarious leadership positions.
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