Women and men:
Are we forever destined to think differently?
by Tom Stafford
The headlines
The Australian: Male and female brains still unequal
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis: Gender
disparities in cognition will not diminish
The
Economist: A variation in the cognitive abilities of the two sexes may
be more about social development than gender stereotypes
The story
Everybody has an opinion on men, women and the difference (or not)
between them. Now a new study has used a massive and long-running
European survey to investigate how differences in cognitive ability are
changing. This is super smart, because it offers us an escape from
arguing about whether men and women are different in how they think,
allowing us some insight into how any such differences might develop.
What they actually did
Researchers led by Daniela Weber at Austria's International Institute
for Applied Systems Analysis analysed data collected as part of the
European Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement. This includes data
analysed in this study from approximately 31,000 adults, men and women
all aged older than 50. As well as answering demographic questions, the
survey participants took short quizzes which tested their memory,
numeracy and verbal fluency (this last item involved a classic test
which asks people to name as many animals as they could in 60 seconds).
Alongside each test score, we have the year the participant was born in,
as well as measures of gender equality and economic development for the
country where they grew up.
What they found
The results show that as a country develops economically, the
differences in cognitive ability between men and women change. But the
pattern isn't straightforward. Differences in verbal fluency disappear
(so that an advantage on this test for men born in the 1920s over women
is not found for those born in the 1950s). Differences in numeracy
diminish (so the male advantage is less) and differences in memory
actually increase (so that a female advantage is accentuated).
Further analysis looked at the how these differences in cognitive
performance related to the amount of education men and women got. In all
regions women tended to have fewer years of education, on average, then
men. But, importantly, the size of this difference varied. This allowed
the researchers to gauge how differences in education affected cognitive
performance.
For all three abilities tested, there was a relationship between the
size of the differences in the amount of education and the size of the
difference in cognitive performance: fewer years of education for women
was associated with worse scores for women, as you'd expect.
What varied for the three abilities was in the researchers'
predictions for the situation where men and women spent an equal amount
of time in education: for memory this scenario was associated with a
distinct female advantage, for numeracy a male advantage and for verbal
fluency, there was no difference.
What this means
The thing that dogs studies on gender differences in cognition is the
question of why these differences exist. People have such strong
expectations, that they often leap to the assumption that any observed
difference must reflect something fundamental about men vs women. Here,
consider the example of the Australian newspaper which headlined their
take on this story as telling us something about "male and female
brains", the implication being that the unequalness was a fundamental,
biological, difference. In fact, research often shows that gender
differences in cognitive performance are small, and even then we don't
know why these differences exist.
The great thing about this study is that by looking at how gender
differences evolve over time it promises insight into what drives those
difference in the first place. The fact that the female memory advantage
increases as women are allowed more access to education is, on the face
of it, suggestive evidence that at least one cognitive difference
between men and women may be unleashed by more equal societies, rather
than removed by them.
Tom's take
The most important thing to take from this research is - as the
authors report - increasing gender equality disproportionately benefits
women. This is because - no surprise! - gender inequality
disproportionately disadvantages women. Even in the area of cognitive
performance, this historical denial of opportunities, health and
education to women means, at a population level, they have more
potential to increase their scores on these tests.
Along with other research on things like IQ, this study found
systematic improvements in cognitive performance across time for both
men and women - as everyone's opportunities and health increases, so
does their cognitive function.
But the provocative suggestion of this study is that as societies
develop we won't necessarily see all gender differences go away. Some
cognitive differences may actually increase when women are at less of a
disadvantage.
You don't leap to conclusions based on one study, but this is a neat
contribution. One caveat is that even though indices such as "years in
education" show diminished gender inequality in Europe, you'd be a fool
to think that societies which educated men and women for an equal number
of years treated them both equally and put equal expectations on them.
Even if you thought this was true for 2014, you wouldn't think this
was true for European societies of the 1950s (when the youngest of these
study participants were growing up). There could be very strong societal
influences on cognitive ability - such as expecting women to be good
with words and bad with numbers - that simply aren't captured by the
data analysed here.
Personally, I find it interesting to observe how keen people are to
seize on such evidence that "essential" gender differences definitely do
exist (despite the known confounds of living in a sexist society). My
preferred strategy would be to hold judgement and focus on the remaking
the definitely sexist society. For certain, we'll only get the truth
when we have an account of how cognitive abilities develop within both
biological and social contexts. Studies like this point the way, and
suggest that whatever the truth is, it should have some surprises for
everyone.
(The author is a Lecturer in Psychology and
Cognitive Science at University of Sheffield and this article was
originally published in The Conversation) |