There is no such thing as "female" and "male" brains, nor is there a reason "why men don't listen and women can't read maps", research proves
Biology or culture?
The study of the differences in the brains of men and women is actually quite a young discipline in the history of science. In the late 1990s, scientist Nirao Shah decided to focus on the neural circuits that regulate gender-specific behaviours in mating rituals, parenting and also in acts of aggression. It is this behaviour that is essential for the survival and continuation of the (human) species. Thus, he said, how women and men behave in given situations is innate rather than learned, and so evidence of this should be found in brain structures. And these should therefore differ with respect to gender. Although initially his research was not received with much enthusiasm, in the last decade, thanks to a range of modern technologies, it has indeed been possible to gather a lot of evidence that there are some differences in how female and male brains are structured. But do they really explain the different behaviours of women and men?
What is neurosexism?
While it is still common to ask questions about whose brain works "better" in any respect, it is an imaginary dead end. The fact that there are differences in the brains of women and men certainly does not mean that one sex or the other is "better" or "smarter". Yet, especially in the early days of related research, many experts made a number of missteps, fell into stereotypes or were too hasty to interpret gender differences as biological rather than cultural. This is why they also faced accusations of so-called neurosexism.
One "neurosexist" example for all: one of the related studies on gender differences in brains was presented in the American media by its authors, who said that "men have six and a half times more brain grey matter than women, while women have ten times more white matter than men", followed by jokes about men's talent in mathematics and women's uncanny ability to manage several things at once. Ironically, regardless, for these differences to manifest themselves in practice, women would have to have heads about 50% bigger than theirs. And would it surprise anyone that in 2017 a Google engineer calmly presented the reasons for women's shortcomings in technical and leadership roles as purely biological? Simply put, the hunt for demonstrable proof of female inferiority has been going on for years. The question remains, then, how to properly grasp the differences that female and male brains exhibit.
What about the stereotypes?
The male brain is about 10% larger. That's a fact. But it has nothing to do with intelligence or any disposition of the person. In fact, brain size is proportional to body size, and according to scientists, there are even fewer differences in the brains of women and men than in other internal organs such as the heart, lungs or kidneys (yes, these are even more than 20% larger in the case of men). But beyond that, according to many scientists, all the other "findings" concerning the "brain predispositions" of women and men are just unsubstantiated theories that work with stereotypes.
It is simply "out there" to claim that women are more gifted at soft skills because of brain structure, just as they are more intuitive because of neural connections, while men in turn are more adept at motor skills. One can also come across the belief that female and male brains process serotonin differently, which supposedly means that women are more prone to anxiety and depression. Of course... it wasn't that long ago that men were also treating female hysteria, so perhaps it's not surprising that similar concepts of mindset have persisted to this day...
So what's it like?
But whatever you may think about what gender differences in brains do/do not cause, extensive research that has analyzed the many available studies of the human brain has a clear result: there is no such thing as a female and male brain. "Male and female brains differ slightly, but the key finding is that these differences are due to brain size, not gender. In contrast, sex differences in brain size are small and inconsistent once the size of individuals' heads is taken into account," one of the authors, Dr. Lise Eliot, then summarized very clearly. Her research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, then summarizes that women's brains are approximately 11% smaller than men's relative to their body size. And when the brain is smaller, it means that there is an increased ratio of grey matter relative to white matter and a higher ratio of connections between and within the brain hemispheres.
As Dr. Eliot finally concluded, "This means that the differences in brain size between men with large and small heads are as great as the differences in brain size between the average man and woman. Importantly, none of these size-related differences can account for differences in behaviors between men and women, such as empathy or spatial skills." So if anyone ever again claims to you that "men don't listen and women can't read maps" (due to some sort of "brain chimera"), refer them straight to the proper (neuroscientific) limits...
