Women are more stressed by social exclusion than men, who are stressed by possible future tests of their intelligence. Men tend to adopt a more aggressive response to stressful situations while women prioritise taking care of themselves and their children. A reason for these different reactions to stress is probably based on hormones. The hormone oxytocin, which is best known for its roles in female reproduction and which as we have seen plays a role in orgasms, is released during stress in both men and women. In women, however, oestrogen tends to enhance oxytocin, and the result is that they become calmer and get together with other women for support. The bonds that form help fill emotional gaps and lower risks. By contrast testosterone, produced in high quantities by men under stress, reduces the effects of oxytocin and causes a fight-or-flight response. Cortisol, which is released by the adrenal gland, increases in women exposed to psychosocial stress, and, because cortisol increases appetite, long-term or chronic stress can lead to weight increases.
Across many real-world domains, men engage in more risky behaviour than women. A study by Ginsburg found that boys took more physical risks than girls at both sites when visiting a tube chute and a suspension bridge. Other previous studies had showed that boys were more likely to approach and touch environmental hazards than girls. Sex differences are thus pronounced in attitudes to risk, with men demonstrating more inclination to seek attention and less sensitivity to punishment, and women being consistently more punishment-sensitive. Women experience more daily stress, and often these are family problems and health-related events relating to others, such as children. Men are more frequently affected by stressful events related to work or money.
Goldstein and his co-workers have described how male and female brains differ in activity in response to stressful stimuli, and in women there is attenuation in cortical arousal circuitry that differs from that found in men. From an evolutionary point of view, it is important for the female during mid-menstrual cycle to judge optimally whether an approaching male represents an opportunity for successful mating or for fight or flight. Thus females may have been endowed with a natural hormonal capacity to regulate the stress response. From an evolutionary point of view this mechanism would have been inappropriate for the male, whose prime responsibility was for protection of the species, necessitating a constant fight-or-flight behavioural response. When under stress, women tend to have increased heart rates, and men tend to have greater changes in blood pressure.
As Kret and her colleagues have pointed out, brain areas involved in processing social signals are activated differently by threatening signals from male and female facial and bodily expressions, and their activation patterns are different in men and women. Male participants pay more attention to the female face, as shown by increased amygdala activity. They show a clear motor-preparation response to threatening male body language, while women do not. Testosterone level in men is a good predictor of aggressive behaviour when looking at angry or fearful male faces. By contrast, as we have seen, oxytocin can cause relaxation and sedation as well as reduced fearfulness and reduced sensitivity to pain and it may be vital in the reduction of the fight-or-flight response in females. There is also a physiological reaction in the response to stress or danger which is different in men and women. If you come up quietly behind a women and say ‘boo’, she will probably have quite a violent physical reaction as her autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary body functions, has a lower threshold of arousal to threat. Men are less easily frightened than women.
Women do better than men at recognising bodily action and emotion, as well as facial emotion. They are able to understand subtle facial expressions better and faster than men, though no difference has been found between male and female participants in recognising highly expressive stimuli. Men are less able to identify negative emotions, and are less accurate in distinguishing negative facial expressions such as fear, disgust, sadness or depression. But both sexes are better able to process female facial expressions than those of males, probably because female expression tends to be more exaggerated. Interpersonal communication through non-verbal emotional cues is also more developed in women than in men. Women are quicker and more accurate at identifying changing vocal intonation, and at understand non-verbal communication like small changes in facial expression. This could be genetically determined as females have evolved to care for children, and these characteristics are present in children at a very early age.
Girls and boys under the age of twelve cry with the same frequency, but then a difference develops and women cry more than men. Men and women cry differently. Women are more likely to make crying noises and produce streams of tears down their cheeks, while men cry more quietly and shed fewer tears. The reason for the difference is probably physiological because men’s tear glands are smaller than women’s; though there is also a social inhibition. Women smile more than men, and Azim and co-workers demonstrated in an imaging study that women activate the parts of the brain involved in language processing and working memory more than men when viewing cartoons. They were also more likely to activate with more intensity the part of the brain that brings pleasure in response to new experiences.
There are gender differences in the tendency to pull funny faces and mimic others, with women doing it more than men. Viewing pictures of people, in either a positive or a negative context, generates a much stronger response in women than in men, as we have seen. Men look at a reflection of themselves in a mirror as often as women do–but women look for longer. So a woman spends an average of two years of her life looking at herself in the mirror; a man spends only six months. As Hamann has made clear, women on average retain stronger and more vivid memories for emotional events than men. Women can recall emotional memories more quickly and can recall more of them in a given period of time, and the ones they recall are richer, more vivid and more intense. In general women tend to experience better enhancement of their memory by emotion. The fact that emotional memories tend to be stronger for women may help to explain why they have a greater prevalence of depression and some types of anxiety disorders. Men tend to recall events using strategies that rely on reconstructing the experience, such as scoring a hole-in-one in golf. They more easily recall important experiences that are associated with competition or physical activities. There appear to be differences in the structure and chemistry of the brain for this kind of memory which are affected by hormones. The hippocampus, which is the area in the brain most involved in memory, reacts differently to changing levels of male and female hormones.
It has been suggested that the things that demonstrate a solid personal relationship are quite different for men and women. Men tend to feel closer through shared activities like sports, whereas women are more likely to feel closer through communication and intimate sharing of experience. Women are very good at making relationships that are meaningful and long-lasting. They work very well towards a desired result when collaborating with others. They will encourage someone to complete an assignment, while men are more apt to show a person how to complete the project, the differences possibly respectively reflecting empathy and systemising.
As Vigil describes, compared to boys and men, girls and women report higher levels of negative life experiences, lower self-esteem, and more symptoms of depression following a traumatic experience. This characteristic may be especially emphasised during adolescence, but average levels of self-control are significantly higher among girls than among boys. Women are significantly more positive toward their own gender than men. This effect is already present in primary-school children. Women are more susceptible to negative emotions in their lives as we have seen. Evidence that women apologise more than men is probably explained by men rating their own offences as less blameworthy than a woman would. Women tend to use complaints as a plea for action, while men more often use them to excuse their behaviour or to raise their status. Women tend to report nightmares somewhat more often than men, though older women and girls do not do so.
In relation to mystical beliefs and religion a recent survey found that women are more likely to believe in God and pray more often than men. This may be related to concern for children. Women are also more likely to have supernatural beliefs than men, to believe in astrology, haunted houses and communicating with the dead. Both sexes believe in witchcraft but men have a greater belief in UFOs. A survey in the United Kingdom in 2007 found that belief in telepathy was very strong among women and that one in four consulted their horoscope regularly and believed that horoscopes accurately predicted events. Whether this has a biological cause is not known!
Hertenstein and Keltner have researched gender and the communication of emotion via touch, and found that although it was thought that women would be able to communicate sympathy and happiness through brief touches to the arm of a stranger, whereas with men it would be to communicate anger, in an experiment testing touch in relation to different emotions, there were no gender-related differences in the communication of disgust, fear, envy, embarrassment, sadness, pride, love or gratitude. Sympathy was communicated accurately through tactile contact to the arm only in couples including at least one female; couples consisting of two men communicated sympathy at less than chance levels. Anger, in contrast, was communicated accurately only when the couple included at least one male. Women are more likely than men to perceive a touch from a strange man as unpleasant and an invasion of privacy. The more women perceive a touch from a male stranger as sexual, the less they perceive the touch as warm and friendly, whereas the reverse is true for men receiving a touch from a female stranger.
When men and women talk, in the words of Professor Robert Provine, ‘Females are the leading laughers, but males are the best laugh getters.’ Women laugh more than men, whereas men are more likely to make other people laugh. Gender differences in humour appreciation show that women rate neutral humour, not sexual or hostile humour, higher than do men. Men may have a better sense of humour than women–or so they claim–and there are more male comedians than female. Women are more attracted to men who make them laugh, and both sexes rate female laughter as more ‘friendly’ than male. In general both sexes share much of the same response to humour although they have preferences for different types of humour. Women prefer more anecdotal humour, related to their everyday lives and social situations, while men prefer more risqué subjects. You are more likely to find a man making jokes at the expense of others, and even joking about death, than a woman. Men are also more likely to use humour to cope with stressful situations. But there are many cultural differences in what is considered humorous and defining a joke will differ from country to country. But in general, it is clear that women are more attracted to men who make them laugh, and men are likely to choose women who laugh at their jokes. Personally, I find this very comforting.
9
Mathematics
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
Charlotte Whitton
Women are under-represented in engineering and in academic positions in research at universities, especially in maths and science. In the United Kingdom in recent years only about five per cent of working women were employed in science, engineering or technology, compared to about a third of working men. These figures have persisted despite the fact that women account for nearly half the total workforce. There is also a gender pay gap, as women in science and engineering earn less. Similarly, only ten per cent of board directorships were held by women across fifty-three companies in science and technology, with exclusively male boards still existing in about a quarter of companies. Women in science, engineering and technology are less likely to obtain permanent full-time academic positions. In the United States there are few tenured professors in science-related departments. Why are women under-represented in these subjects?
Of all differences between the sexes in cognitive abilities that might be responsible, differences in mathematical ability have received the most attention. What might be the relative roles of biological and social factors in any such differences? Both will be seen to be involved. A major factor is the choice made by women with respect to the subjects they wish to work in, and both biological and social factors are involved.
As we saw earlier, in ancient times women were the inventors of agriculture and have also been responsible for related inventions throughout history. But in mathematics and other science-related subjects women were absent from very early times, with only a few exceptions. Merit Ptah (about 2700 BC) was an early physician in ancient Egypt, and the first woman we know of by name in the history of medicine. Agnodice was the earliest midwife to be mentioned among the ancient Greeks. She was a native of Athens, where women and slaves were excluded by law from the study of medicine; she attended lectures in midwifery and gynaecology disguised in men’s clothing. From its beginnings in Greece, science was male-dominated. Although women were not excluded from the study of science in ancient Greece they made few contributions. An exception was Hypatia of Alexandria (about 350–415 AD) who wrote texts on astronomy, geometry and algebra, and is remembered for several inventions, including a hydrometer for measuring the specific gravity of liquids, an instrument for predicting the position of heavenly bodies and another for distilling water.
Higher education was denied to women and when universities began in the eleventh century, all except Bologna excluded women. Women made no more progress in the Middle Ages, hardly encouraged by attitudes such as that of St Thomas Aquinas who wrote, ‘A woman is mentally incapable of holding a position of authority.’ But between 1650 and 1710, women made up fourteen per cent of all German astronomers, the most famous being Maria Winkelmann. However, despite her qualifications, she worked at the Berlin Academy only in an unofficial capacity, assisting her husband who had been appointed official astronomer. When she discovered a comet in 1702, the credit went to her husband and not to her, and when he died, she was denied an opportunity to take his post, which was given to a much less qualified man. Even the Enlightenment was not very enlightened. Many believed women’s work should be as wife and mother. Nevertheless Eva Ekeblad, whose discoveries included how to make flour and alcohol from potatoes, became the first female member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1748. Important progress in gender equality was also made by Émilie du Châtelet, who translated Newton’s Principia Mathematica, and by Caroline Herschel the German–British astronomer who identified eight comets, and became the first woman in Britain to be paid as a scientist in 1787.
It was only in 1849, when Elizabeth Blackwell became the first certified female doctor in the United States, that there was any further significant progress. Marie Curie in 1903 became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, and added a second, in chemistry, in 1911 to become a double Nobel Prize-winner. Both prizes were for her work on radiation. In 1906 Alice Perry became the first woman in the British Isles to graduate in civil engineering. Since the beginning of the twentieth century matters have improved greatly, with major scientific contributions being made by women. The windscreen wiper, invented by Mary Anderson in 1903, allowed street cars to operate safely in the rain. Ida Henrietta Hyde was an American physiologist who in the 1930s invented the microelectrode, a small device that electrically stimulates a living cell and records its electrical activity.
Women’s delayed contribution to science does not seem to reflect intellectual weakness, but rather factors such as social prejudice and women’s own preferences. A recent UK government report says that there is evidence that at school, when still under the age of five, girls outperform boys on all aspects of learning and this continues up to the sixth form, though boys get more top grades. This leads to the view that social rather than biological factors must play a major role, and that the negative influence of female stereotypes is significant in excluding women from certain disciplines, for example, engineering and mathematics. In the United States women have received more college degree
s than men every year since 1982, and with each year the gap widens By January 2013 it was over nine million more, according to the US Department of Education. No single factor has been found to cause sex differences in science and maths. Biological differences and the way topics are described and taught could both be involved. A very significant cause could be the influence of teaching which gives rise to a negative stereotype for female mathematicians. For example, by as early as the second grade (around the age of seven) American children expressed the cultural stereotype that maths is for boys, and elementary-school boys identified with maths more strongly than did girls. The findings suggest that the maths gender stereotype favouring boys is acquired early, and that it influences emerging self-concepts of mathematical ability before the age at which there are actual differences in mathematical achievement. Research on stereotypes in children suggests that gender identity disrupts girls’ maths performance as early as five to seven years of age. Girls who are reminded of supposed sex weakness in maths abilities before being tested perform worse than those who are not told of the stereotype. Positive stereotypes, such as a message that girls are very good at maths, can improve performance.
Most elementary-school teachers in the United States and primary-school teachers in the United Kingdom are female. Beilock and her colleagues have found that when female elementary-school teachers are themselves not confident about maths, this anxiety carries negative consequences for the maths achievement of their female students. If teachers pass on the commonly held view that ‘boys are good at maths, and girls are good at reading’ this can have a negative effect on girls in relation to maths. An investigation by Haworth and her team, about whether the sexes differ in science performance before they make important course and career decisions at ages nine, ten and twelve, found there was no evidence for mean sex differences in science performance. At a time when adolescents are making important course choices, girls are performing just as well as boys. Other studies also found no evidence for quantitative or qualitative sex differences in science. Since girls are just as good at science as boys in early adolescence, the lack of women in scientific careers, particularly in the physical and engineering sciences, could be due to social factors.
Why Can't a Man Be More Like a Woman? Page 10