Pink Brain Blue Brain: How small differences grow into troublesome gaps – and what we can do about it by Lise Eliot. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Boston, New York. 2009. (402 pages) and The Sexual Paradox: Extreme Men, Gifted Women And The Real Gender Gap. By Susan Pinker. Random House Canada. 2009. (368 pages). Reviewed by Donald R. Officer.
Two authors, both highly articulate and trained in the sciences of the developing mind have scrutinized much of the same evidence respecting sexual differences between males and females starting in the womb and progressing over total life spans. Yet they have drawn significantly different conclusions. Both have written thorough, fascinating books that explore issues of enormous importance to our future as a culture. Equally fascinating, considering the long view, neither book could have been conceived, let alone written, a generation ago.
If you are male or the parent of boys and listen to Susan Pinker, the future looks discouraging indeed. Differences in mortality rates and susceptibility to illness have been actuarially confirmed by statistics for some time. Improvements in medicine and life style savvy have improved prospects for both sexes, but the outcome odds still favor females by noticeable amounts from cradle to grave. At least as important as their genetic endowment, the behavior of males throughout their lives greatly increases their risk and for that matter their embrace of inappropriate risk. Meanwhile as a demographic, boys and men are increasingly less prepared for the challenges of our times.
The factual base for gender inequality is hard to dispute although such a sweeping range of evidence would be difficult for anyone to keep in context. Furthermore, attribute ranges within each sex are greater than average discrepancies between the two sexes. What is historically striking is the complete reversal between the conclusions suggested by current evidence versus the traditional belief that the male is superior in every meaningful way. Susan Pinker was formerly a clinical psychologist and has become an advice columnist for the Globe and Mail so she does not work in a vacuum. She was struck from the early days of her career by the disproportionate number of boys compared to girls at risk. Her book addresses the gap between old myth and new reality.
In Pink Brain Blue Brain neuroscientist Lise Eliot looks at the same statistics and performance data then examines the science. Without discounting the divergent outcomes Pinker emphasizes, Eliot wonders if maybe some of our conclusions about gender gaps are too accommodating of the apparent evidence or even self-fulfilling. Are we selling boys short the way we short changed girls for so many centuries? In her book and at the Festival rostrum she said resoundingly, yes. She cites sophisticated studies to support her position. Time and again minor discrepancies in research results have been exaggerated. Boys are presumed to be poorer listeners and readers, too frisky to be asked to sit still or plain immature much the way girls were presumed incapable of serious mathematics or spatial discrimination in years past.
Using meta analysis methodology, Eliot discovered studies in areas as diverse as sensory sensitivity and empathy in effect cancel each other out. Expectations of adult role models have been demonstrated to reinforce ethnic and class stereotypes. In every society, ours included, we are always creating portals for prejudice to enter. Throughout most of the world, girls still face an upward struggle just to get a modest education. Forget about equality. However, here in North America many old or developing world assumptions have been turned upside down.
Some of the drive for the new stereotyping may come from well-motivated, if wrong-headed politically correct affirmative action policies that indirectly discourage males of every age. Still, there may be more unacknowledged forces in play. Boys are labeled less capable by many helping professionals of both sexes while a school system dominated by female pedagogues is inherently if sometimes unconsciously biased against the socialized tendencies of so many boys who slip between the cracks. All this is well documented by sociologists elsewhere.
Years ago as an equal opportunities coordinator I discovered a perfect storm in the making that threatened males in the workplace in a truly perverse way. Simply put, the senior ranks of many organizations were filled by the old boys network. However, like alpha males in the wild, the senior managers sought ways to limit the competition from below or outside. Female candidates generally performed better at undesirable mid level positions than their male counterparts anyway, and so became the key to executive security. Even the most competitive females were generally beholden to male mentors yet were not really part of the club. Conveniently socialized to be more deferential and to not rock the boat, women were promoted through a quota policy at the expense of men. Early in these programs many highly qualified women, previously held down by systemic inequity, came out of the woodwork. However, as time wore on, the need to keep up the numbers ran into supply problems. The bar was lowered for fortuitously placed women and the men around them took angry or discouraged note.
That was then, but today the presumption that girls have an intrinsic edge is more entrenched as both our guest authors recognize. Science, as David Cayley explained in another session, is a part of society and subject to all its influences or preferences despite claims to disinterested objectivity. Picture the Nazi doctors measuring the skulls of executed camp inmates. Susan Pinker seemed to ask, if a bit obliquely, that the Festival audience encourage action on evidence of male inferiority. She did not specify what form that might take. However, if Lise Eliot’s conclusions come closer to the truth, we may become collectively guilty of a huge wrong against half the population in an attempt to redress another one just as great.
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Pink Brain Blue Brain: How small differences grow into troublesome gaps – and what we can do about it by Lise Eliot. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Boston, New York. 2009. (402 pages) and The Sexual Paradox: Extreme Men, Gifted Women And The Real Gender Gap. By Susan Pinker. Random House Canada. 2009. (368 pages). Reviewed by Donald R. Officer.
Two authors, both highly articulate and trained in the sciences of the developing mind have scrutinized much of the same evidence respecting sexual differences between males and females starting in the womb and progressing over total life spans. Yet they have drawn significantly different conclusions. Both have written thorough, fascinating books that explore issues of enormous importance to our future as a culture. Equally fascinating, considering the long view, neither book could have been conceived, let alone written, a generation ago.
If you are male or the parent of boys and listen to Susan Pinker, the future looks discouraging indeed. Differences in mortality rates and susceptibility to illness have been actuarially confirmed by statistics for some time. Improvements in medicine and life style savvy have improved prospects for both sexes, but the outcome odds still favor females by noticeable amounts from cradle to grave. At least as important as their genetic endowment, the behavior of males throughout their lives greatly increases their risk and for that matter their embrace of inappropriate risk. Meanwhile as a demographic, boys and men are increasingly less prepared for the challenges of our times.
The factual base for gender inequality is hard to dispute although such a sweeping range of evidence would be difficult for anyone to keep in context. Furthermore, attribute ranges within each sex are greater than average discrepancies between the two sexes. What is historically striking is the complete reversal between the conclusions suggested by current evidence versus the traditional belief that the male is superior in every meaningful way. Susan Pinker was formerly a clinical psychologist and has become an advice columnist for the Globe and Mail so she does not work in a vacuum. She was struck from the early days of her career by the disproportionate number of boys compared to girls at risk. Her book addresses the gap between old myth and new reality.
In Pink Brain Blue Brain neuroscientist Lise Eliot looks at the same statistics and performance data then examines the science. Without discounting the divergent outcomes Pinker emphasizes, Eliot wonders if maybe some of our conclusions about gender gaps are too accommodating of the apparent evidence or even self-fulfilling. Are we selling boys short the way we short changed girls for so many centuries? In her book and at the Festival rostrum she said resoundingly, yes. She cites sophisticated studies to support her position. Time and again minor discrepancies in research results have been exaggerated. Boys are presumed to be poorer listeners and readers, too frisky to be asked to sit still or plain immature much the way girls were presumed incapable of serious mathematics or spatial discrimination in years past.
Using meta analysis methodology, Eliot discovered studies in areas as diverse as sensory sensitivity and empathy in effect cancel each other out. Expectations of adult role models have been demonstrated to reinforce ethnic and class stereotypes. In every society, ours included, we are always creating portals for prejudice to enter. Throughout most of the world, girls still face an upward struggle just to get a modest education. Forget about equality. However, here in North America many old or developing world assumptions have been turned upside down.
Some of the drive for the new stereotyping may come from well-motivated, if wrong-headed politically correct affirmative action policies that indirectly discourage males of every age. Still, there may be more unacknowledged forces in play. Boys are labeled less capable by many helping professionals of both sexes while a school system dominated by female pedagogues is inherently if sometimes unconsciously biased against the socialized tendencies of so many boys who slip between the cracks. All this is well documented by sociologists elsewhere.
Years ago as an equal opportunities coordinator I discovered a perfect storm in the making that threatened males in the workplace in a truly perverse way. Simply put, the senior ranks of many organizations were filled by the old boys network. However, like alpha males in the wild, the senior managers sought ways to limit the competition from below or outside. Female candidates generally performed better at undesirable mid level positions than their male counterparts anyway, and so became the key to executive security. Even the most competitive females were generally beholden to male mentors yet were not really part of the club. Conveniently socialized to be more deferential and to not rock the boat, women were promoted through a quota policy at the expense of men. Early in these programs many highly qualified women, previously held down by systemic inequity, came out of the woodwork. However, as time wore on, the need to keep up the numbers ran into supply problems. The bar was lowered for fortuitously placed women and the men around them took angry or discouraged note.
That was then, but today the presumption that girls have an intrinsic edge is more entrenched as both our guest authors recognize. Science, as David Cayley explained in another session, is a part of society and subject to all its influences or preferences despite claims to disinterested objectivity. Picture the Nazi doctors measuring the skulls of executed camp inmates. Susan Pinker seemed to ask, if a bit obliquely, that the Festival audience encourage action on evidence of male inferiority. She did not specify what form that might take. However, if Lise Eliot’s conclusions come closer to the truth, we may become collectively guilty of a huge wrong against half the population in an attempt to redress another one just as great.