[Yoruichi-san]

I've been reminiscing about the past, and I remember one incident that had a huge impact on me:

I used to do math contests, where you went in and took a test and then they had an awards ceremony where they called the top ten on stage and then gave out the awards from starting from 10th place. I'd always be fine when taking the test, but when it came time for the awards ceremony I'd get really really nervous, because I always felt like if I didn't do well, my parent's wouldn't love me...

Anyways, since I was so nervous, I'd never pay attention to the other contestants, I'd always be focused on listening to the announcer call out the names. After one particular time (which I succeeded in attaining 1st place ), I was walking off-stage when this woman came up to me. She congratulated me and told me how nice it was to see a girl up there on stage and winning, and I realized that I had been the only girl in the top ten. I had never really thought about it before, but from then on out, I paid more attention, and I noticed the ratio was always in favor of guys. Where I went to college, the ratio was 2:1 guys to girls.

Since I don't believe that guys are inherently smarter than girls, especially since scientist have not found any significant differences in the male/female brains that would suggest such, I wondered why it is that females are often under-represented in intellectual circles. (Here at BrainDen, however, we have definitely proven that girls can be just as smart as guys ;P)

One of my theories is this:

Society pressures females to put extra time and energy into superficial concerns and stresses, such as makeup, clothing, dieting, etc, which occupies their minds and makes it difficult to focus on larger issues and more intellectual problems, whereas males have much less of these stresses and can spend more of their thought ability and focus on thinking about intellectual problems.

The fact that I've never really cared about said things may be what has given me an advantage compared to some of my fellow females ;P.

I'm wondering what other BrainDenizens' takes on the issue are...

[Guest]

Okay, yes, I agree that males tend to do better than females at these tasks and there are more famous male physicists than females, etc. In fact, that is kind of the whole point of this thread. Females are under-represented in these areas. My question is WHY? Why females in general are worse off at 3-dimensional problems, etc. I think it is due to social pressures, not to fundamental differences. I.e. boys are encouraged to play with Legos and girls are encouraged to play with dollhouses by culture and society, so guys get a better handle on spacial problems. I myself played with Legos, and I have been at least on-par with my male associates all my life ;P.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that aptitude in 3-dimensional problems is correlated with playing with Lego (substitute some other aptitude if you prefer, similarly it is obvious that Lego doesn't do the job on its own, but for illustrative purposes we'll take Lego to stand in for various things of that nature).

Does this mean that you owe your aptitude in that area to the fact that you were encouraged to play with Lego?

In my experience it is not at all unusual for girls to be given Lego or encouraged to play with it. There may be some difference between boys and girls in the extent to which they are encouraged to play with Lego, but personally I think the difference is minor, especially in early development. What is probably more significant is the degree of interest that boys and girls show in their Lego, which in later years will of course manifest itself in boys owning more Lego than girls (and social pressure for both sexes to conform to gender norms). If the difference in interest is the root cause, then perhaps you simply showed more interest in your Lego than most girls, and consequently received further encouragement (and more Lego) as a result.

Here's a scientific study to back me up on that: Connellan et al 2001. Various studies have made similar findings, but this one in particular was set up to test newborn babies, before any significant social influence could have taken place. Male and female babies were shown a face and a "mobile" (with scrambled facial features on it). The findings were that female babies showed a preference for looking at the face and male babies for looking at the mobile. The implication is that there is an innate preference in female babies for social objects, and in male babies for mechanical objects. I'd question the reliability of drawing exactly that conclusion from the data, but there does at least seem to be evidence of some innate difference here.

To get another angle on innate male/female brain differences, this article is interesting in that it refers to findings of brain differences caused by both hormones and sex chromosomes independently.

If you really believe that male and female brains start off the same on average, I think you are flying in the face of a lot of evidence and the majority of scientific opinion. Perhaps a more interesting question would be whether those differences manifest only in preference and behaviour, or whether they are directly responsible for differences in ability. Going back to the Lego, it could be that males have a better aptitude for 3D problems because male children show a preference for Lego, and playing with the Lego then causes more brain cells to be built up in certain areas of the brain.

So now we have 3 interpretations of your own personal situation:

1) You were encouraged to play with Lego, which resulted in development of an aptitude (such encouragement being unusual for a girl)

2) You have an innate aptitute which caused you to be interested in Lego (this innate aptitude being unusual for a girl)

3) You have an innate preference which caused you to be interested in Lego, which resulted in development of an aptitude (this preference being unusual for a girl)

In my opinion the first explanation is insufficient. It may be true, but makes more sense if combined with the others. There's probably a degree of truth in all three, but I prefer the third. Admittedly my reasons for preferring this over the 2nd interpretation are more to do with my own personal outlook on life than specific evidence. I like to focus on people's ability to develop their own mental skills, rather than assume it's all predestined from birth. However, if male/female differences are due more to innate preference than innate ability, they are still due to innate differences. You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

[Yoruichi-san]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that aptitude in 3-dimensional problems is correlated with playing with Lego (substitute some other aptitude if you prefer, similarly it is obvious that Lego doesn't do the job on its own, but for illustrative purposes we'll take Lego to stand in for various things of that nature).

Does this mean that you owe your aptitude in that area to the fact that you were encouraged to play with Lego?

In my experience it is not at all unusual for girls to be given Lego or encouraged to play with it. There may be some difference between boys and girls in the extent to which they are encouraged to play with Lego, but personally I think the difference is minor, especially in early development. What is probably more significant is the degree of interest that boys and girls show in their Lego, which in later years will of course manifest itself in boys owning more Lego than girls (and social pressure for both sexes to conform to gender norms). If the difference in interest is the root cause, then perhaps you simply showed more interest in your Lego than most girls, and consequently received further encouragement (and more Lego) as a result.

Here's a scientific study to back me up on that: Connellan et al 2001. Various studies have made similar findings, but this one in particular was set up to test newborn babies, before any significant social influence could have taken place. Male and female babies were shown a face and a "mobile" (with scrambled facial features on it). The findings were that female babies showed a preference for looking at the face and male babies for looking at the mobile. The implication is that there is an innate preference in female babies for social objects, and in male babies for mechanical objects. I'd question the reliability of drawing exactly that conclusion from the data, but there does at least seem to be evidence of some innate difference here.

To get another angle on innate male/female brain differences, this article is interesting in that it refers to findings of brain differences caused by both hormones and sex chromosomes independently.

If you really believe that male and female brains start off the same on average, I think you are flying in the face of a lot of evidence and the majority of scientific opinion. Perhaps a more interesting question would be whether those differences manifest only in preference and behaviour, or whether they are directly responsible for differences in ability. Going back to the Lego, it could be that males have a better aptitude for 3D problems because male children show a preference for Lego, and playing with the Lego then causes more brain cells to be built up in certain areas of the brain.

So now we have 3 interpretations of your own personal situation:

1) You were encouraged to play with Lego, which resulted in development of an aptitude (such encouragement being unusual for a girl)

2) You have an innate aptitute which caused you to be interested in Lego (this innate aptitude being unusual for a girl)

3) You have an innate preference which caused you to be interested in Lego, which resulted in development of an aptitude (this preference being unusual for a girl)

In my opinion the first explanation is insufficient. It may be true, but makes more sense if combined with the others. There's probably a degree of truth in all three, but I prefer the third. Admittedly my reasons for preferring this over the 2nd interpretation are more to do with my own personal outlook on life than specific evidence. I like to focus on people's ability to develop their own mental skills, rather than assume it's all predestined from birth. However, if male/female differences are due more to innate preference than innate ability, they are still due to innate differences. You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Okay, I have already said that I agree that there are innate differences b/w males and females physiologically. What I don't agree with is that this causes females to naturally do worse in intellectual fields than males. I.e. I think a girl and a boy raised under the exact same circumstances would do exactly as well as each other.

And since I know my past, I can tell you that it is 1). My parents raised me, "encouraged" (aka pressured) me to have the interests they wanted me to have. As someone who was shy and didn't socialize, (i.e. had no friends ) I never really tried to fit in with the social pressures of being female, plus I never really thought of myself particularly as a girl (unless it was something I was proud of beating the boys in ;P), and that's how I developed.

But your innate preference theory is interesting. There definitely may be innate differences due to evolution, but as those skills are no longer needed for survival, I think the population is becoming more balanced and the differences are being reduced.