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WHO SAYS A WOMAN CAN'T BE EINSTEIN?

Yes, men's and women's brains are different. But new research upends the old myths about who's good

at what. A tour of the ever changing brain

THERE WAS SOMETHING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ABOUT Harvard University President Larry

Summers' speech on gender disparities in January. In his first sentence, he said his goal was

"provocation" (rarely a wise strategy at a diversity conference). He called for "rigorous and careful"

thinking to explain the gender gap among top-tier tenured science professors. But he described his pet

theory with something less than prudence. The most likely explanations, he said, are that 1) women are

just not so interested as men in making the sacrifices required by high-powered jobs, 2) men may have

more "intrinsic aptitude" for high-level science and 3) women may be victims of old-fashioned

discrimination. "In my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just

described," he announced.

Cue the hysteria. The comments about aptitude in particular lingered, like food poisoning, long after the

conference ended. For weeks, pundits and professors spouted outrage and praise, all of which added

up to very little. Then came the tedious analysis of faculty-lounge politics at Harvard, as if anyone

outside Cambridge really cared.

The rest of us were left with a nagging question: What is the latest science on the differences between

men's and women's aptitudes, anyway? Is it true, even a little bit, that men are better equipped for

scientific genius? Or is it ridiculous--even pernicious--to ask such a question in the year 2005?

It's always perilous to use science to resolve festering public debates. Everyone sees something

different--like 100 people finding shapes in clouds. By the time they make up their minds, the clouds

have drifted beyond the horizon. But scientists who have spent their lives studying sex differences in

the brain (some of whom defend Summers and some of whom dismiss him as an ignoramus) generally

concede that he was not entirely wrong. Thanks to new brain-imaging technology, we know there are

indeed real differences between the male and the female brain, more differences than we would have

imagined a decade ago. "The brain is a sex organ," says Sandra Witelson, a neuroscientist who

became famous in the 1990s for her study of Albert Einstein's brain. "In the last dozen years, there has

been an exponential increase in the number of studies that have found differences in the brain. It's very

exciting."

But that's just the beginning of the conversation. It turns out that many of those differences don't seem

to change our behavior. Others do--in ways we might not expect. Some of the most dramatic

differences are not just in our brains but also in our eyes, noses and ears--which feed information to our

brains. Still, almost none of those differences are static. The brain is constantly changing in response to

hormones, encouragement, practice, diet and drugs. Brain patterns fluctuate within the same person, in

fact, depending on age and time of day. So while Summers was also right that more men than women

make up the extreme high--and low--scorers in science and math tests, it's absurd to conclude that the

difference is primarily because of biology--or environment. The two interact from the time of

conception, which only makes life more interesting.

Any simplistic theory is "doomed to fail," says Yu Xie, a sociology professor at the University of

Michigan. Xie's research on women in the sciences was cited by Summers in his statement, and Xie

has spent every day since trying to explain the intricacy of human behavior to reporters. "I don't exclude

biology as an explanation," he says. "But I know biological factors would not play a role unless they

interacted with social conditions."

Unless one appreciates that complexity, it would be all too easy to look at the latest research on the

brain and conclude, say, that men may not in fact make the best university presidents. For example,

studies show that men are slightly more likely to say things without realizing how their actions will affect

others. And as men age, they tend to lose more tissue from a part of the brain located just behind the

forehead that concerns itself with consequences and self-control. Generally speaking, the brain of a

female is more interlinked and--if one assumes that a basic requirement of the post is to avoid dividing

the faculty into two sweaty mobs--may be better suited for the kind of cautious diplomacy required of a

high-profile university leader. Of course, to borrow a line from Summers, "I would prefer to believe

otherwise."

Now that scientists are finally starting to map the brain with some accuracy, the challenge is figuring out

what to do with that knowledge. The possibilities for applying it to the classroom, workplace and

doctor's office are tantalizing. "If something is genetic, it means it must be biological. If we can figure

out the biology, then we should be able to tweak the biology," says Richard Haier, a psychology

professor who studies intelligence at the University of California at Irvine.

Maybe Summers' failure was not one of sensitivity but one of imagination.

LESSON 1: FUNCTION OVER FORM

SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR SEX differences in the brain since they have been looking

at the brain. Many bold decrees have been issued. In the 19th century, the corpus callosum, a bundle of

nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, was considered key to intellectual

development. Accordingly, it was said to have a greater surface area in men. Then, in the 1980s, we

were told that no, it is larger in women--and that explains why the emotional right side of women's brains

is more in touch with the analytical left side. Aha. That theory has since been discredited, and scientists

remain at odds over who has the biggest and what it might mean. Stay tuned for more breaking news.

But most studies agree that men's brains are about 10% bigger than women's brains overall. Even

when the comparison is adjusted for the fact that men are, on average, 8% taller than women, men's

brains are still slightly bigger. But size does not predict intellectual performance, as was once thought.

Men and women perform similarly on IQ tests. And most scientists still cannot tell male and female

brains apart just by looking at them.

Recently, scientists have begun to move away from the obsession with size. Thanks to new brainimaging

technology, researchers can get a good look at the living brain as it functions and grows.

Earlier studies relied on autopsies or X rays--and no one wanted to expose children or women, who

might be pregnant, to regular doses of radiation.

The deeper you probe, the more interesting the differences. Women appear to have more connections

between the two brain hemispheres. In certain regions, their brain is more densely packed with neurons.

And women tend to use more parts of their brain to accomplish certain tasks. That might explain why

they often recover better from a stroke, since the healthy parts of their mind compensate for the injured

regions. Men do their thinking in more focused regions of the brain, whether they are solving a math

problem, reading a book or feeling a wave of anger or sadness.

Indeed, men and women seem to handle emotions quite differently. While both sexes use a part of the

brain called the amygdala, which is located deep within the organ, women seem to have stronger

connections between the amygdala and regions of the brain that handle language and other higher-level

functions. That may explain why women are, on average, more likely to talk about their emotions and

men tend to compartmentalize their worries and carry on. Or, of course, it may not.

"Men and women have different brain architectures, and we don't know what they mean," says Haier.

By administering IQ tests to a group of college students and then analyzing scans of their brain

structure, Haier's team recently discovered that the parts of the brain that are related to intelligence are

different in men and women. "That is in some ways a major observation, because one of the

assumptions of psychology has been that all human brains pretty much work the same way," he says.

Now that we know they don't, we can try to understand why some brains react differently to, say,

Alzheimer's, many medications and even teaching techniques, Haier says.

Even more interesting than the brain's adult anatomy might be the journey it takes to get there. For 13

years, psychiatrist Jay Giedd has been compiling one of the world's largest libraries of brain growth.

Every Tuesday evening, from 5 o'clock until midnight, a string of children files into the National

Institutes of Health outside Washington to have their brains scanned. Giedd and his team ease the kids

through the MRI procedure, and then he gives them a brain tour of their pictures--gently pointing out the

spinal cord and the corpus callosum, before offering them a copy to take to show-and-tell.

Most of the kids are all business. Rowena Avery, 6, of Sparks, Nev., arrived last week with a stuffed

animal named Sidewalk and stoically disappeared into the machine while her mom, dad and little sister

watched. In preparation, she had practiced at home by lying very still in the bathtub. Her picture came

out crystal clear. "The youngest ones are the best at lying still. It's kind of surprising," Giedd says. "It

must be because they are used to hiding in kitchen cabinets and things like that."

Among the girls in Giedd's study, brain size peaks around age 11& 12. For the boys, the peak comes

three years later. "For kids, that's a long time," Giedd says. His research shows that most parts of the

brain mature faster in girls. But in a 1999 study of 508 boys and girls, Virginia Tech researcher Harriet

Hanlon found that some areas mature faster in boys. Specifically, some of the regions involved in

mechanical reasoning, visual targeting and spatial reasoning appeared to mature four to eight years

earlier in boys. The parts that handle verbal fluency, handwriting and recognizing familiar faces matured

several years earlier in girls.

Monkeys are among our most trusted substitutes in brain research. This week a study in the journal

Behavioral Neuroscience shows that stage of life is also important in male and female rhesus monkeys.

In a sort of shell game, young male monkeys proved better at finding food after they saw it hidden on a

tray--suggesting better spatial memory. But they peaked early. By old age, male and female monkeys

performed equally well, according to the study, which was led by Agnès Lacreuse at the Yerkes

National Primate Research Center. All of which suggests that certain aptitudes may not be that different

between males and females. It just depends on when you test them. (We'll have more to say about

those monkeys in just a bit.)

LESSON 2: THE SEGREGATION OF THE SENSES

SO HOW DO WE EXPLAIN WHY, IN STUDY after study, boys and men are still on average better at

rotating 3-D objects in their minds? As for girls and women, how do we explain why they tend to have

better verbal skills and social sensitivities?

The most surprising differences may be outside the brain. "If you have a man and a woman looking at

the same landscape, they see totally different things," asserts Leonard Sax, a physician and

psychologist whose book Why Gender Matters came out last month. "Women can see colors and

textures that men cannot see. They hear things men cannot hear, and they smell things men cannot

smell." Since the eyes, ears and nose are portals to the brain, they directly affect brain development

from birth on.

In rats, for example, we know that the male retina has more cells designed to detect motion. In females,

the retina has more cells built to gather information on color and texture. If the same is true in humans,

as Sax suspects, that may explain why, in an experiment in England four years ago, newborn boys were

much more likely than girls to stare at a mobile turning above their cribs. It may also help explain why

boys prefer to play with moving toys like trucks while girls favor richly textured dolls and tend to draw

with a wider range of colors, Sax says.

Likewise, women's ears are more sensitive to some noises. Baby girls hear certain ranges of sound

better. And the divergence gets even bigger in adults. As for smell, a study published in the journal

Nature Neuroscience in 2002 showed that women of childbearing age were many times more sensitive

than men to several smells upon repeated exposure. (Another study has found that heterosexual

women have the most sensitive smell and homosexual men have the least.)

Rest assured, Sax says: none of that means women are, overall, better than men at perception. It just

means the species is internally diverse, making it more likely to survive. "The female will remember the

color and texture of a particular plant and be able to warn people if it's poisonous. A man looking at the

same thing will be more alert to what is moving in the periphery," he says. "Which is better? You need

both."

LESSON 3: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE BRAIN

UNTIL RECENTLY, THERE HAVE BEEN TWO groups of people: those who argue sex differences

are innate and should be embraced and those who insist that they are learned and should be eliminated

by changing the environment. Sax is one of the few in the middle--convinced that boys and girls are

innately different and that we must change the environment so differences don't become limitations.

At a restaurant near his practice in Montgomery County, Md., Sax spreads out dozens of papers and

meticulously makes his case. He is a fanatic, but a smart, patient one. In the early 1990s, he says, he

grew alarmed by the "parade" of parents coming into his office wondering whether their sons had

attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Sax evaluated them and found that, indeed, the boys were not

paying attention in school. But the more he studied brain differences, the more he became convinced

that the problem was with the schools. Sometimes the solution was simple: some of the boys didn't

hear as well as the girls and so needed to be moved into the front row. Other times, the solution was

more complex.

Eventually, Sax concluded that very young boys and girls would be better off in separate classrooms

altogether. "[Previously], as far as I was concerned, single-sex education was an old-fashioned leftover.

I thought of boys wearing suits and talking with British accents," he says. But coed schools do more

harm than good, he decided, when they teach boys and girls as if their brains mature at the same time.

"If you ask a child to do something not developmentally appropriate for him, he will, No. 1, fail. No. 2,

he will develop an aversion to the subject," he says. "By age 12, you will have girls who don't like

science and boys who don't like reading." And they won't ever go back, he says. "The reason women

are underrepresented in computer science and engineering is not because they can't do it. It's because

of the way they're taught."

So far, studies about girls' and boys' achievements in same-sex grammar schools are inconclusive. But

if it turns out that targeting sex differences through education is helpful, there are certainly many ways to

carry it out. Says Giedd: "The ability for change is phenomenal.

That's what the brain does best." A small but charming 2004 study published in Nature found that

people who learned how to juggle increased the gray matter in their brains in certain locations. When

they stopped juggling, the new gray matter vanished. A similar structural change appears to occur in

people who learn a second language. Remember that new research on spatial memory in rhesus

monkeys? The young females dramatically improved their performance through simple training, wiping

out the gender gap altogether.

In a recent experiment with humans at Temple University, women showed substantial progress in

spatial reasoning after spending a couple of hours a week for 10 weeks playing Tetris, of all things. The

males improved with weeks of practice too, says Nora Newcombe, a Temple psychologist who

specializes in spatial cognition, and so the gender gap remained. But the improvement for both sexes

was "massively greater" than the gender difference. "This means that if the males didn't train, the

females would outstrip them," she says.

Of course, we already manipulate the brain through drugs--many of which, doctors now realize, have

dramatically different effects on different brains. Drugs for improving intelligence are in the works, says

Haier, in the quest to find medication for Alzheimer's. "We're going to get a lot better at manipulating

genetic biology. We may even be better at manipulating genetic biology than manipulating the

environment."

Until then, one solution to overcoming biological tendencies is to consciously override them, to say to

yourself, "O.K., I may have a hard time with this task, but I'm going to will myself to conquer it." Some

experiments show that baby girls, when faced with failure, tend to give up and cry relatively quickly,

while baby boys get angry and persist, says Witelson at Ontario's Michael G. DeGroote School of

Medicine at McMaster University. "What we don't know is whether that pattern persists into adulthood,"

she says. But in her experience in academia, she says she knows of at least a couple of brilliant women

who never realized their potential in science because they stopped trying when they didn't get grants or

encountered some other obstacle. "It's much better," she says, "for people to understand what the

differences are, act on their advantages and be prepared for their disadvantages."

LESSON 4: EXPECTATIONS MATTER

WE HAVE A TENDENCY TO MAKE TOO MUCH of test-score differences between the sexes (which

are actually very small compared with the differences between, say, poor and affluent students). And

regardless of what happens in school, personality and discipline can better predict success when it

comes to highly competitive jobs.

One thing we know about the brain is that it is vulnerable to the power of suggestion. There is plenty of

evidence that when young women are motivated and encouraged, they excel at science. For most of

the 1800s, for example, physics, astronomy, chemistry and botany were considered genderappropriate

subjects for middle-and upper-class American girls. By the 1890s, girls outnumbered boys

in public high school science courses across the country, according to The Science Education of

American Girls, a 2003 book by Kim Tolley. Records from top schools in Boston show that girls

outperformed boys in physics in the mid-19th century. Latin and Greek, meanwhile, were considered the

province of gentlemen--until the 20th century, when lucrative opportunities began to open up in the

sciences.

Today, in Iceland and Sweden, girls consistently outperform boys in math and physics. In Sweden the

gap is widest in the remote regions in the north. That may be because women want to move to the big

cities farther south, where they would need to compete in high-tech economies, while men are focused

on local hunting, fishing and forestry opportunities, says Niels Egelund, a professor of educational

psychology at the Danish University of Education. The phenomenon even has a name, the Jokkmokk

effect, a reference to an isolated town in Swedish Lapland.

Back in the States, the achievement gap in the sciences is closing, albeit slowly. Female professors

have been catching up with male professors in their publishing output. Today half of chemistry and

almost 60% of biology bachelor of science degrees go to females. Patience is required.

Next, Summers may want to take up the male question. In all seriousness. Why do so many more boys

than girls have learning disorders, autism, attention-deficit problems and schizophrenia? Why are young

men now less likely to go to college than women are? And what to make of a 2003 survey that found

eighth-grade girls outperforming boys in algebra in 22 countries, with boys outscoring girls in only three

nations? If we're not careful, the next Einstein could find herself working as a high-powered lawyer who

does wonders with estate-tax calculations instead of discovering what the universe is made of.

INSIDE THE BRAIN

Even after reaching maturity, the human brain is constantly changing in response to hormones, habits,

diet and drugs

Parietal lobe

Once thought to be large in females than in males. Not true

Corpus callosum

A bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. It develops at different rates in boys

and girls

Prefrontal cortex

The CEO of the brain, also called the area of sober second thought. Women may use the prefrontal

cortex more often in conjunction with the amygdale when processing emotions

Amygdala

Men may handle more of their emotions in this area, which is less wired to the parts of the brain that

handle language

Cerebellum

Long thought to play a role in physical coordination, this area also supports activities of higher learning

like math, music and advanced social skills. Like the corpus callosum, it matures at different rates in

boys and girls

PHOTO (COLOR): Occipital lobe

PHOTO (COLOR): Hippocampus

PHOTO (COLOR): Temporal lobe

PHOTO (COLOR): Basal ganglia

PHOTO (COLOR): FRONT ROW Standing out in a physics class at Caltech

PHOTO (COLOR): SHOW-AND-TELL The NIH's Giedd looks for clues in brain scans

PHOTO (COLOR): ALL WOMEN Smith College grads benefit from single-sex classes

~~~~~~~~

By Amanda Ripley

With reporting by Nadia Mustafa, New York; Deirdre van Dyk, New York and Ulla Plon, Lulea

SCIENCE IS STILL A MAN'S WORLD

The great majority of scientists and engineers in the U.S. are men, but that has less to do with

differences in the brain than with academic history. The balance is changing, slowly, as more women

pursue advanced degrees

THE DOCTORAL GAP

Three decades ago, women received only 1 of every 10 science and engineering Ph.D.s. Today,

women earn one-third of all science doctorates

AT THE TOP OF THE IVORY TOWER

Women occupy 29% of science and engineering positions at U.S. educational institutions. But they fill

only 15% of those positions at the top 50 research universities in these fields:

Sociology 36

Psychology 34

Political Science 24

Biology 20

Astronomy 12

Chemistry 12

Economics 12

Computer science 11

Chem. Engineering 11

Civil engineering 10

Mathematics 8

Mech. Engineering 7

Physics 7

Elec. Engineering 7

LIFE OUTSIDE ACADEMIA

In government and the private sector, women occupy just under one-quarter of science and engineering

jobs. As in the academic world, men dominate jobs in the physical sciences and engineering

Percentage of women, by field

Health sciences 49

Psychology 46

Social sciences 29

Biology 27

Mathematics 14

Computer science 13

Physical sciences 13

Engineering 7

GRAPH: Doctoral degrees awarded in science and engineering, in thousands



GRAPH: Percentage of women in tenured and tenure-track positions at the top 50 U.S. research

departments

GRAPH: Employed doctoral scientists Men 77%, Women 23%

WILL TODAY'S GIRLS CHANGE THAT?

When young, boys and girls don't differ much on math tests, but that small gap grows in adolescence.

That doesn't make either sex smarter in that subject or other sciences

LITTLE EARLY DIFFERENCE

Math scores on national tests for fourth-graders have been improving, with no statistically significant

differences between boys and girls

THE SAT SPLIT

Girls score about 7% lower on the math part of the SAT. One factor may be that more girls than boys

from lower-income families take the test

GETTING AHEAD

Boys outperform girls on Advanced Placement exams before college, but that may change as more

girls take the elite tests each year

Average grade on AP exam, 2004

Boys Girls

Biology 3.23 2.90

Calculus AB 3.09 2.82

Chemistry 2.97 2.63

Physics B 2.84 2.37

Computer science A 2.91 2.48

TAKING THE LEAD

Women have outnumbered men in college for more than a decade, and now more are receiving

bachelor's degrees in science fields too

GRAPH: NAEP math test, fourth grade

GRAPH: Average SAT score, math, Boys 537, Girls 501

GRAPH

GRAPH: Bachelor's degrees awarded in science and engineering, in thousands



Copyright © Time Inc., 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be duplicated or

redisseminated without permission.

COMMENTS

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Angelus
15:07 Jun 22 2015

answer... we really are different.



it's friggin biology.



mess around with it at school and you favour someone else... the answer? Pass.

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dabbler
07:18 Jun 24 2015

EVOLUTION. WOMAN are slipping out of the stereotype rolls it is not going to happen poof like. It will take gens to come. Look at Russia for a model.

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RaynesAsylum
20:02 Jun 24 2015

Thank you both for your insight! Much appreciated!

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Vann
07:36 Nov 24 2015

Taken from above



"He called for "rigorous and careful"

thinking to explain the gender gap among top-tier tenured science professors. But he described his pet

theory with something less than prudence. The most likely explanations, he said, are that 1) women are

just not so interested as men in making the sacrifices required by high-powered jobs, 2) men may have

more "intrinsic aptitude" for high-level science and 3) women may be victims of old-fashioned

discrimination."



One and Two for a reason is bullshit. Its mostly #3.



I have to admit I only read about a third of the above.



Men and women are different. The main thing is that each "process" info differently.



I have seen women far more intelligent than the "boss" (who is male) get shuffled off or made to quit. In general men are threatened by a intelligent woman. Simple as that. Since men can feel this way they tend to do anything and everything to not allow women to reach the top as they say. So geee wonder why there isn't all that many women at the top of the science pile?



I am not saying that men feeling threatened by a woman is the main reason, just that it happens a lot.



If i owned a company, i would have it stocked with women. Why? When it comes to business, a smart woman is vicious and that is what ya want.



I saw above something about test results between girls and boys. Pretty sure the tests were written by a man. My point here is that most of just about everything in the past.... test wise, biz wise , pick anything...is geared to and by men.



The game is rigged against women, simple as that.



The guy I quoted above is the reason there are no women in top tier science positions. Check his attitude and the underlying contempt for women. The same guy probably decides who gets on the whatever he is on.



Or was it all just a provocation to get a convo going?



Ding ding

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RaynesAsylum
06:10 Nov 25 2015

not just a convo piece...it was for a class assignment and i wanted to make sure I included a man's perspective. Thanks for your input! It is greatly appreciated.

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