I read something about this, and there was a comment by some genetic
scientist (forgive the vagueness of my memory) that these differences made
little difference to ability and that male and female brains have much more
in common than not: ie, that the reasons why there are so few women in
tenured positions in Harvard had little to do with sex differences in the
brain and a lot to do with social traditions at Harvard.
No one can have children of both sexes (as I do) and deny that there are
innate differences from birth, inflected infinitely through individual
personalities and histories. However, it's what is _made_ of those
differences that often bother me.
Best
A
On 7/3/05 8:14 AM, "Douglas Clark" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I jusat thought I would report that I have just started reading Simon
> Cohen-Baron's book on sex differences which he held back for five years to
> obtain a suitable climate. RE the Harvard fuss it is interesting. He is a
> professor at Cambridge and has studied the subject for twenty years
> specialising in autism.
>
> The guts of his findings are that the male brain is programmed for systems
> and the female for empathy. Normal distributions (bell curves) occur so you
> can have a man with a female brain and vice versa. And a percentage have a
> 50-50 mix. It will be interesting to see how the book develops but he stated
> his main finding in the first chapter.
>
> system versus empathy.
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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