Men Versus Women

In my neuropsychology class that I recently finished, we learned about sex differences in cognitive functioning. The book published the results of a number of studies done on different areas of cognitive and motor abilities. So the question you've been dying to know - who is more gifted, men or women? - has finally been answered. See the results below:

Men scored points (do better) in: target throwing and catching, mental rotation, spatial navigation, geographical knowledge, and mathematical reasoning.

Women scored points in: fine motor skills, spatial memory, computation, sensitivity to sensory stimuli, perceptual speed, sensitivity to facial and body expression, visual recognition memory, fluency, and verbal memory.

Men: 5 Women: 9

Of course the scoreboard is in jest. But it illustrates three key points.

1. We put values on skills. Most people would argue with the results, saying that certain skills are more important than others. But this way of thinking has historically led to men being considered better than women. What if we learned to value skills other than strength and mathematical ability as important? What if we learned to value diversity?

2. We love to be associated with the "better group." This has more to do with your reaction to the findings than the findings itself. I'm betting that you did not passively interpret the results. If you are a man, I can hardly imagine that you did not question at least some of the findings. If you are a woman, I'm sure you feel at least slightly empowered by the findings.

3. Men aren't necessarily smarter than women. In the past, women were thought to be incapable of handling complex thought because they were too fragile. While women have gained headway in working professions, proving this to be far from true, there still remains some stereotypes that they are not as smart as men. However, research seems to indicate otherwise.

As a final warning, there is more variability within than between the sexes so don't take it as gospel that one sex will always be better than the other sex at that skill. The reality is far from that. In fact, I don't even know exactly how much better each sex is than the other for the skills. My point was really to provoke thought, not to show who is better.

See Kolb and Whishaw (2003). Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology.