{DOWNLOAD} Delusions of Gender: the Real Science Behind Sex

DELUSIONS OF GENDER: THE REAL SCIENCE BEHIND SEX DIFFERENCES PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Retrieved August 24, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. London Evening Standard. Evening Standard. TSL Education. The New York Times. Retrieved August 23, The Washington Post. Book claims brain scans sell sexes short". USA Today. Gawker Media. Kirkus Reviews. Nielsen Business Media. June 15, The Psychologist. British Psychological Society. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Despite the large amount of junk science on the topic that is reported in the popular media and in some academic outlets, there are also consistent findings of sex differences that hold up across studies, across species, and across cultures. Most of these are ignored by Fine. PLoS Biology. Lewis Wolpert " — via YouTube. Biology of Sex Differences. The Quarterly Review of Biology. Categories : non-fiction books English-language books Gender studies books Neuroscience books Gender-related stereotypes W. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. More Filters. Dinosaur discourses: taking stock of gendered learning myths. Open Access. View 2 excerpts, cites background. Research Feed. Grounding theology in quotidian experiences of complex gender : a feminist approach. Hormone troubles: Feminist analyses of contemporary neurosciences. Highly Influenced. View 19 excerpts, cites background and methods. View 3 excerpts, cites background. The Politics of Plasticity. Sex and Gender in the 21st Century Brain. The evolving binary: perspectives on infra- and ultrahumanisation. View 1 excerpt, cites background. Related Papers. CORDELIA FINE DELUSIONS OF GENDER PDF

Early science discovered many differences between the male and female brain. And we routinely observe that men and women behave differently. Men are observed to be good at maths whereas women tend to be more empathic. Men think in a more focused way whereas women think more holistically. Those differences have spawned many books driving a wedge between male and female innate abilities and stoking the argument that men and women are just better at different things. We are encouraged by some scientists and pseudo-scientists to assume that the physiological differences explain the psychological differences. As a result, many, in what Fine refers to as neuro-sexism, are enthusiastic to conclude that differences that we see in scans explain what we experience every day in careers, parenting and relationships. No other conclusion makes any sense. But Fine takes us through a journey beginning with the foetal fork, where half of all foetuses are flooded with testosterone at week 12 of pregnancy to become boys. She explores the physiological and psychological differences, concluding that what we see in scans and autopsies does not necessarily demand that resulting behaviours and abilities should be different. Her closing arguments show that social conditioning, right from the earliest days in the womb, is a far more powerful explanation for ultimate differences in preference and ability between the sexes. Perhaps one of the most memorable parts is towards the end. She describes a husband and wife — both scientists - who try very hard to avoid any sexist stereotyping in bringing up their kids. This and other descriptions show the sheer difficulty in avoiding such societal norms as girls in pink and boys in blue. They show just how deep our assumptions are and just how long it will take to flush sexism through the societal system to achieve equality. Delusions of Gender is a must-read for anyone interested in equality. It helps generally in making sense of gender gaps like those in careers and pay. This book mainly focuses on white, middle- to upper-class gender construction and brain research, which makes sense, because most claims about brain sex differences are based on middle- to upper-class white folks. It would be interesting, however, if she wrote a sequel with a wider focus. And occasionally the scientific terms get a tad bit overwhelming, but if you want a readable academic book about neurosexism, you aren't going to find a better, more interesting, more readable book. This book should be on the bestseller list. Everyone should read this. This should be in the waiting room of every maternity ward and in the break room of every public school. I am so glad that I stumbled across this gem of a book, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's funny and substantive, and that is about the rarest a combination there is. View all 3 comments. Shelves: best-of , non-fiction. Well, alright there was this guy: But in an orchestra? Actually number 2 really doesn't exist, which is odd, as women may be ordained in the C of E. Things I have heard, which I really wish I hadn't: 1 An Austrian mother who said they weren't going to send their daughter to the academic secondary school, but to a more vocational type school, "Because an education isn't so important for a girl". When I looked at him somewhat aghast, he said it was because my husband didn't have anyone to play ball with - well to do real sport with, like football. As Cordelia Fine says in her book, you'd think that girls were born without arms or legs. It was always the two girls in the class who had to share a computer. Every week. Well well. View all 55 comments. Jun 24, Simon rated it it was amazing Shelves: gender , non-fiction , politics-and- society. Truly a brilliant book. And laugh-out-loud funny in quite a few places. It's a book so full of interesting information, it's very tempting to write a review in which one relates one's favorite experiments, factoids, or statistics. But I will mostly resist. What I'd like to highlight are two features. We have all heard and perhaps told stories like the following. So I guess these things must be innate after all. In one particularly grating and smug riff on this theme, Steven Pinker is quoted as saying: "there is a technical term for people who believe that little boys and little girls are born indistinguishable and are molded into their natures by parental socialization. The term is 'childless'. An all but obligatory paragraph in contemporary books and articles about hardwired gender differences gleefully describes a parent's valiant, but always comically hopeless, attempts at gender-neutral parenting" But then Fine tells us about the Bems, psychologists who, in the s, decided to try gender-neutral parenting seriously. And what a lot it involved. They also taught their children only to allocate people to a gender on the basis of their anatomy and reproductive functions. In an amusing story, the 4 year old son decided to wear barrettes in his hair to kindergarten. The best efforts of the comically frustrated liberal parents who find their kids acting according to stereotype do not show that differences in gender behavior are innate. As Fine describes, gendering of children is ubiquitous in the culture, and intense to an almost unimaginable degree. Not even the Bem children could avoid it altogether. And children are acutely sensitive to the multiple instructions they receive, in the very air they breathe, about how to conform to their genders. One needs little imagination to see how much more intrusive the pressures on gender conformity will be, even if the parents are like the Bems. This brings me to the second point I want to emphasize. A host of brain researchers now present themselves as radical iconoclasts because they claim that the evidence of fMRIs, etc. Boo hoo! Seen in this light, fMRIs are just the latest fad. Fine has plenty more to say about how shoddy a lot of the research is, how biased the interpretations of it, and so on. But this history is certainly salient enough that anyone presenting themselves as providing scientific evidence for gender differences in psychology and behavior risks looking somewhat ridiculous. And it places a burden on such researchers to be doubly careful about extrapolating from their results. This is even more true in light of the fact that the existence of the claims made for what brain scans show itself influences how well people perform. These irresponsible and popular interpretations of neurological evidence neuro-bollocks as they have been called do not just support the status quo; they reinforce it. In a funny and easy-to-read way, she explodes so much neuro-bollocks, she ought to get a prize for it. View all 13 comments. Jun 01, Thomas rated it really liked it Shelves: nonfiction , feminism , psychology. If I had a dollar for every time someone friend requested me on Goodreads because of my gender "a guy who reads? Are girls biologically geared toward the humanities and males toward the hard sciences? Do women really empathize more th If I had a dollar for every time someone friend requested me on Goodreads because of my gender "a guy who reads? Do women really empathize more than men because of their brain chemistry? Cordelia Fine offers a clear answer: no. In Delusions of Gender , she unravels the myth that we can chalk up gender differences to our neurology. With a keen and unrelenting eye, she examines scientific theories and misconceptions, like the role testosterone plays in the fetus. She dedicates a large portion of the book to knocking down neurosexism. In recent years several individuals have boasted about experiments that use fMRI and PET scans to detect differences in the brain; Fine makes sure to reveal the flaws associated with those studies and why we should be skeptical of the conclusions they espouse. Instead of relying on faulty science, Fine approaches gender differences from a psychological and sociological perspective. As a psychology major, I loved her incorporation of self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotype threat, such as including a study about how women who had to check a gender box either "male" or "female" performed worse on an exam than women who took the test without marking their gender. The section about gender-neutral parenting stood out to me too. It's not enough to just offer our children toys stereotypically associated with the opposing gender, especially when gender distinctions arise so soon. Highly recommended for those interested in feminism, neuroscience, psychology, or gender studies. In contemporary society we often cling to claims made by people with scientific backgrounds, even though some of those claims have no legitimate support. I didn't go into too much depth about all of Fine's arguments in this review, but she invested a laudable amount of effort into Delusions of Gender : the book has about pages of citations, and her writing conveys her passion as well. View all 5 comments. Jun 27, Kaethe Douglas rated it it was amazing Shelves: feminism , science , domesticity , gender , medicine , skepticism , social-issues , education , history , nonfiction. Sorry, that was a long and awkward summation. In justice to the book, I'd prefer to be pithy, funny, and understandable. Fine has tackled an immense and largely thankless task. Next, she's actually gone through all the books and articles making claims about how neurobiology is gender destiny. That task involved a lot of the work of Simon Baron-Cohen, who among other things publishes on autism in a sexist and really annoying way. Then she went through the references of these many works and actually looked at the studies, to show where they were bad, and more often, where they just plain don't say what the authors claim they do. Finally, she puts it all together, along with research from many other areas, in a way that is dryly amusing, occasionally snarky, but I think probably very clear even for those who don't read medical journals for work. Nonexistent sex differences in language lateralization, mediated by nonexistent sex differences in corpus callosum structure, are widely believed to explain nonexistent sex differences in language skills. We've only just begun. It's brilliant and authoritative and she loathes bad science reporting just as much as I do, so of course I love it. But I recommend it to others who might be curious about the topic, as well as those who enjoy seeing bad science thoroughly mocked. Library copy. Israeli study shows that blinding math tests lowers boys' grades and raises girls', just as blinded auditions changed orchestras. Just to be clear: It is not possible to find biological determinants of gender, because gender is learned social behavior, and, as such, varies significantly between social groups and over time. View all 4 comments. I really think all educators need to read this book. Fine's target is the new gender essentialism, the reconstructed sexism that attempts to put women back in their traditional roles as 'unbenders of husbands' brows' and caregivers to children, and to keep them out of politics, mathematics and the sciences, by asserting that they are fitted for their place by essential female abilities and incapacities. In the philosopher John Stuart Mill, in his book The Subjection of Women , was severe on I really think all educators need to read this book. In the philosopher John Stuart Mill, in his book The Subjection of Women , was severe on this fallacy, but like a zombie it just keeps getting up, backed by the bad-science fad of the day. She selects some choice quotes to show us how little the new sexism differs from the old this is a very funny book , then proceeds to dismantle it with a three-pronged attack. First, she explores the construction of gender and explains aspects of the present inequality from her perspective in social psychology. She quotes trans woman Jan Morris who describes her former competence in matters of car-reversing and bottle-opening evaporating after her transition in the face of others' assumptions about her. The power of stereotyping is not to be ignored; Fine quotes study after study to show how strongly most people, whether consciously or not, associate women with empathy and caregiving, and men with maths, science and power, and how priming gender affects subsequent thinking and performance. Simply reminding a candidate that she is a woman drastically reduces her score on a maths test, demonstrating an effect called 'stereotype threat' which is amazingly easy to remove - including an introduction to a test telling participants that 'in ten years of data-gathering, no gender-related performance difference has been found' dramatically boosts the performance of women and girls. Cross-cultural comparisons also prove instructive, making nonsense of ethnocentric gender assumptions. Fine explores how stereotypes and the lack of role models work against women in the workplace and in education. This section is more broadly relevant to racial, social class, disabled, LGBTQ etc representation and the double bind problem of administrators appointing people like themselves on one side, and aspirations being damped by the invisibility of marginalised groups on the other. CVs with female names are rated lower and receive fewer responses than identical ones with male names. Fine also indicts sexist work practices such as entertaining clients in strip- clubs. Stereotypes also operate in the home, where men are conditioned to believe themselves incompetent the hunter brings home the the carcass and collapses to stare into the fire unless jar-opening brawn or plug-wiring brains are required. Fine demonstrates that men are very competent parents. Even rat-dads, with no hormone-tampering, are readily able to raise perfectly adjusted rat-kids. Surveying the data, Fine finds very scant evidence for the assumption that women are more empathic than men; there is no magical female ability to read people's thoughts, and slight differences in young children could easily be due to parents talking more to infant girls. Even this could be due to more exposure to active toys, and in any case hardly constitutes an excuse to exclude women from the workplace. Fine is hilarious when exposing the loaded survey questions that have been used to find gender differences. Research makes it very clear that people will rate themselves higher or lower on abilities stereotyped to or against their gender, especially when that aspect of their identity has been primed. The search for gender-determined ability differences continues with a painstaking survey and critique of the popular literature enthusiastically claiming they exist and the neurological and psychological research which has supposedly found them. Fine is incisive in her discussion and criticism of studies around the effect of testosterone, including play differences, but she is damning when it comes to the shocking dishonesty and misrepresentation employed by 'neurosexist' popular 'science' books. Oh, and if you don't manage to read this book, please take it from me here and now, that anyone trying to persuade you of a gender difference on the basis of pictures from brain scans is to be scornfully ignored. The final section deals with how children are socialised to perform gender. Many parents assume they are providing gender-neutral parenting and 'fall back' on a biological explanation when their little girls demand pink dresses and dolls. Fine shows just how far parents have to go to eliminate the pressure to perform gender by recording the hilarious experience of the Bem family, forced to such lengths as denying that they knew the gender of friends, and erasing beards from picture books. How can a preference for pink be genetic? In Victorian times, it was a male colour, while girls wore tranquil Virgin-Mary blue. Fine demonstrates with survey after survey and study after brilliant study that gender roles are pushed on us by our culture, not our chromosomes. Biology itself is socially influenced and defined; it changes and develops in interaction with and in response to our minds and environment, as our behaviours do. Biology can be said to define possibilities but not determine them; it is never irrelevant but it is also not determinant"' View all 9 comments. Oct 02, Marshall rated it it was ok Shelves: psychology , non-fiction. This nature vs. This book argues against the claim that women and men have different brains and that this difference causes women to be significantly better or worse at some things and men significantly better or worse at others. As far as I knew, few legitimate scientists today make this claim, which is clearly sexist and would justify discrimination, so I was pretty surprised and somewhat skeptical to discover this immense sexist contingent among brain scientists This nature vs. As far as I knew, few legitimate scientists today make this claim, which is clearly sexist and would justify discrimination, so I was pretty surprised and somewhat skeptical to discover this immense sexist contingent among brain scientists and psychologists, some of whom are women. I've heard of some of them. Steven and Susan Pinker were clearly misrepresented. Others, such John Gray, aren't even scientists. This book spends most of its pages presenting psychological studies showing that people are suggestible, that messages from the culture can influence one's confidence and feeling of belonging, even their very identity and personality, and that this can impact their abilities to perform or their interest in a subject. All this does is show that society can influence people, not that brain differences can't. Many of the studies in this book seem legitimate and factual. Some of it was pretty persuasive and really made me think. But the presentation of these studies often seemed to exaggerate them. For example, after discussing subtle ways social cues and whether one feels they belong can influence people to prefer and perform differently, all very reasonable, the book concludes: "A few words to the effect that a Y chromosome will serve in your favor, or a sprucing up of the interior design, is all that it takes to bring about surprisingly substantial changes in career interest. Having seen what effect on career interests a simple, brief manipulation in the lab can have, one can't help but wonder at the cumulative influence of that giant, inescapable social psychology lab known as life. That's a huge exaggeration of the findings. It's also pure speculation based on ideology, not facts based on evidence. Actually, it seems pretty sexist to claim that women are so flimsy and suggestible. It sounds suspiciously like the "delicate flower" argument of traditionalists. Be careful what you say to girls, lest you crush their fragile little spirits! I know it would take a hell of a lot more than "a few words" to talk me out of my dreams. Here's another gem: "This anecdote suggests a workplace environment that tolerates a deep disrespect for women. Now there's some seriously rigorous research. Sometimes she's clearly reaching. Like when she talks about a study that found gender differences in babies who are only one day old. She claims this study was flawed because there could have been some socialization that happened in that one day since their birth. An argument this book uses over and over again is: scientists were wrong before. I can almost hear "neener neener" behind the words. So what? Scientists are wrong all the time. That's how science works. Being wrong isn't cause for dismissal in science. That's what ideology does. Being wrong in the past does not imply claims in the present are false. This is called the continuum fallacy, and it's usually employed by pseudoscience cranks like creationists and global warming deniers. Consider the facts that are not in dispute. We know that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. Men and women are physically different. They have different reproductive systems and different physical proportions. We know that sexual selection is a part of the evolutionary process, and we know that males and females have had vastly different selective pressures, which have manifested as different mating behaviors in all other dimorphic species. So this theory that all of gender psychology is socialized is extremely tenuous. It does not square with what we know about evolution. All that is required to falsify it is evidence of only one difference. It only takes evidence of one innate psychological difference between men and women to prove that there is at least SOME difference. Once that is established, then it's only a question of which differences are genetic and how significant they are. Since that is all that is required, and since this theory is based more on presuppositions from feminist ideology than evidence- based, the easiest way to disprove it is to offer one piece of evidence that coincides with mainstream feminist ideology, so they cannot possibly dispute it. I will do that now: Most psychologists now agree that sexual preference is, at least in part, an innate psychological characteristic. Homosexuality is innate in some individuals. For the rest of us, men are innately attracted to women and women are innately attracted to men. On average, there is a vast difference between men and women as to which gender they find sexually appealing. You cannot socialize children to be gay, so there is no reason to deny gays the right to marry, and it's abusive to try to socialize young homosexuals to be heterosexual. This is a position most feminists take very strongly, and it's clearly an innate psychological difference between men and women. The exception is lesbian feminism. This is the position that sexual orientation is socialized, and that lesbianism is a choice and therefore a legitimate political act. However, this form of feminism is extremely contentious within the movement, as it opens the door for homophobia. Oh, and then you have difference feminism, complete with their own quack psychologists such as Carol Gilligan who claim that, yes, there are innate differences between men and women, but that women's "way of knowing" is superior to men's. I wonder why this wasn't one of those sexist psychologists, with talk of brain differences between men and women, to be debunked in this book. Strange, that. It seems fallacious gender research gets a free pass as long as it's sexist in the right direction. Indeed, this book seems to be on board with difference feminism in the chapter, "Backwards and in High Heels" i. This isn't science. It's reasoning based on what's politically expedient and expecting reality to conform to that. If there are innate differences, then she should just say so and stop equivocating. Then we can get on to the more interesting discussion of how much difference is innate, and how significant those differences are. It may very well turn out that women are superior to men, but they can't simultaneously be better and the same. The sad thing is, this book is very interesting and insightful in so many other ways, in outlining some ways human behavior is socialized. It could very easily have been a valuable part of that discussion. Why can't that be enough? The intellectually honest position would have been to admit that there is much we still don't understand about human psychology, and the evidence so far seems to indicate that there is at least some difference between the psychology of men and women, but that it is the belief of the author that these differences are not hugely significant, and that socialization also plays a major role. If that's all she did, I'd have trusted this book so much more. As it stands, I find myself dubious even of claims that sound reasonable. Advice for the author: check your ideology at the door and let the evidence speak for itself, rather than trying to exaggerate or stretch it to fit into your worldview. Oh, and knock off all the outrage. How you feel about what scientists discover has no bearing on the merit of their research. It only discredits your presentation of it by making readers suspicious of confirmation bias and emotional reasoning. It feels less like science and more like propaganda. At best, it is merely distracting. If you like this book, please read The Blank Slate. It will show you a completely different side of this issue. View 2 comments. Oct 06, Lobstergirl rated it really liked it. Cordelia Fine, a psychologist, decided to write this book after discovering her son's kindergarten teacher "reading a book that claimed his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language. Fine engages in occasional snark, which was a little tiresome, followed by a lot of discussion of studies in which subjects are either told or not told statements about gender and then asked to perform certain tasks, to see if a Cordelia Fine, a psychologist, decided to write this book after discovering her son's kindergarten teacher "reading a book that claimed his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language. Fine engages in occasional snark, which was a little tiresome, followed by a lot of discussion of studies in which subjects are either told or not told statements about gender and then asked to perform certain tasks, to see if a focus on gender impairs their abilities. For example, one group of girls is told that boys do better than girls on math tests, and that scientists believe this difference is innate. Another group is told that boys and girls perform the same on math tests. Both groups then take a math test. The girls in the second group perform better. Once through this psychological study-filled section and a glimpse back into our anti-feminist past and our female-executives-who-still-do- most-of-the-housework present which, in fairness, will be necessary reading for some , Fine moves on to the field of neuroscience. She debunks the notion of the brain's "hardwired[ness]," a concept borrowed from computer science, which "translate[s] poorly to the domain of neural circuits that change and learn throughout life," constantly adapting to a person's environment and experiences. In addition to the really bad popular literature on gender difference see John Gray , and Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain , which she analyzes, there's a lot of really bad science. Poorly conducted studies with flawed methodologies, too-small studies, confusion of correlation with causation. Some scientists have been known to extrapolate conclusions that their own studies did not determine. Shockingly, the media often compound the problem with poor reporting and cluelessness about junk science. Then, there's the kind of important issue that studies which fail to find gender differences tend not to get published, while the minority that do, do. I personally was quite alarmed at the quantity and quality of conclusions being drawn from brain scans, where it seems like the technology has outpaced researchers' ability to understand it in any truly meaningful way. Chapters address real vs. Once they know what gender they belong to, their ideas about it and their choices become more fixed. At 17 months, boys and girls in one study were equally interested in playing with dolls, tea sets, brushes, combs, and blocks; four months later girls had increased their doll play while boys had decreased it. Belonging to a group - such as a gender group - is a powerful motivator to stay within that group and adhere to its norms. Gender norms are reinforced all around the child: none of Dr. Seuss's 42 books has a female lead in its central story; a study of 41 Caldecott winners and runners-up from to "found that female characters were most commonly described as beautiful, frightened, worthy, sweet, weak , and scared , while male characters were big, horrible, fierce, great, terrible, furious, brave , and proud. A boy who chose to wear barrettes to school was reminded by other children that barrettes are for girls. A study of preschoolers found that boys who wouldn't play with dolls at school would play with them at home, where the peer group wasn't present to enforce the "rules. Fine quotes a researcher, Emily Kane: " Her writing is clear and unjargoned, though amply sourced and footnoted, and her arguments are admirably sane. Won in Giveaway; review to come. Soon I shall be reading this "vehement dismantling of the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes. View all 10 comments. Sep 08, notgettingenough rated it liked it Shelves: sociology , australian , science-sort-of. It was the early seventies and she was a huge hit with the boys - big tits and sexy legs - and the teachers - big tits, sexy legs They admired the way it went all the way up to her breasts. I mean the top of her head. All the way up there. One of the reasons she left was because they were all so very kind to her. It is one of those things, isn't it? Nobody wants to go to staff meetings, every man there must have rather envied the idea that femininity could excuse her, and yet my mother had to insist on her innate right to go to the darn things. To be fair, my mother's the exception, one of those who really did like doing stuff like that, a trait I have most certainly neither inherited nor acquired. So she left and went to Methodist Ladies College, the posh girls equivalent. At some point two of the kind male teachers from PAC happened to be visiting MLC, so she took them to the staff room for a cuppa. Afterwards she washed her cup and said to them 'If you are wondering why I don't wash yours, I happen to believe that men are just as good as women at washing up. If there were some reason why men suddenly thought that washing teacups was a desirable occupation, there would be an academic redefinition of the brain to fit this. In fact for now it is the other way around. The desirable occupations in life, the ones that are seen as the plums, must be taken up by men rather than women because they have the right brain composition. Depending on how good your sense of humour is, it is either discomforting or hilarious to discover that neuroscience is not above redefining what is 'necessary' depending on how their business of deciphering the brain develops. This explains the choice of word in the subtitle - neurosexism - but it is the sort of thing that irritated me as I read this - I don't like the current style of pop science where impartiality is a positive defect. It's like there is something going on which we might call 'extreme pop science'. You have to outdo the last writer in outrageousness. But while I was aghast at some of the ways she put things, I imagine the reader at large would not have noticed, let alone taken umbrage. Fine probably thinks it was acceptable to do so because all that mattered was getting her very important point across. I couldn't disagree more. Her material spoke for itself, the relentless mass of it which she brings to bear. She didn't need to be spurious on top of it. She should have left that for her publicly disgraced subjects. As it is, by waving the flag of her partiality - which she somehow attempts to do whilst claiming that this is the issue with the other side - right in our faces, she left me wondering if she is as trustworthy as she wants to be. Having the longest bibliography in the world doesn't cut the mustard if the reader is left gasping at the shamelessness with which she prejudicially discusses her data. View all 14 comments. Nov 27, Saafir Evada rated it it was amazing Shelves: neuroscience , feminism , psychology. I like nothing better than to discover that I was completely and utterly mistaken about something. The deeper the rotten belief sits, the more satisfying the pop when it is wrenched out. This book changed my mind in ways few books ever do. I had a cavalier belief that psychological differences between men and women were "innate" and "biological. I highly recommend this book. Nearly 20 years ago I studied sociology at a feminist, Marxist university. Oh boy pun intended! Far from it. In fact — and this is a rare achievement for a book — it started me re-assessing my life from way back and seeing … well, seeing how often I had lived within gender assumptions and even played to them just because it made life not simply easier, but pleasanter. The examples show in pitiless detail that their biological determinism was merely supergluing on cultural blinkers. As her argument runs, later decades are likely to look back and have the same response to our use of neuroscience to plaster authority onto scientifically unsupported notions of gender. There are many, many examples of our gendered culture in this strongly argued but easily read book. Read the book — male or female, the impact of culture on your self-perception, and therefore, your life and choices will rock your assumptions of autonomy. May 03, Alissa Thorne rated it it was ok Shelves: about-gender , genre-nonfiction. Warning: ranty. I did learn some interesting things. One study showed a clear Warning: ranty. One study showed a clear gender prejudice in hiring for engineering roles. Identical resumes were sent to companies with only a change in the name being obviously female versus obviously male, and the male resumes had a higher response rate. A theme throughout the book was the relationship of self-identification and social grouping--basically the influence that feeling that "people like me" has on our self-image, and in turn our actions, behavior, aptitude. A simple example is the study in which female college students were asked if they were interested in pursuing engineering studies, but in differing environments. One environment featured a classic geek decor, while the other featured a more preppy decor. This seems much broader than a gender issue to me, but it's a gender book, so ok. When it came to the potential non-social influences though I think the narration made this particularly cringe-worthy--the sneer when describing a competing theory, or the pompus and self-important voice used when quoting an opponent were particularly off-putting. In a study showing evidence in favor of biological explanations for gender differences in behavior, the author would rightly lambaste the study for using self-reports valid evidence. Then pages later, in a study intended to offer an alternate explanation would be a phrase like, "Mothers of infants report Obviously the modern scientist is wrong because their hypothesis bears some surface similarities to someone from a different time who held beliefs we know to be untrue! While I did learn that there was little or no valid evidence for some of the biological gender differences that I had previously heard touted, it was hardly a review of what differences are known to exist. This was most obvious when the author mentioned in passing that one known gender difference--smaller brains of females versus males--results in extensive structural differences in the brain. And that this most likely served to make the genders more similar, as the different structures achieved different things in the same way. Such a key piece of data and the huge assertion must be backed by chapters of exposition of the evidence and detailed critique of the studies backing it--in short, the same treatment given to any other hypothesis in the book, right? In a book about how gender based brain differences may impact gender behaviors, surely the fact that there is allegedly structural brain differences will be examined in detail. And the hypothesis that these differences may work to achieve gender similarities will be backed by multiple studies, each carefully critiqued, right? No, this statement was simply made, and then passed right on by. I'm glad I forced myself through this book--you can still learn a lot from a biased account. But man, it was tough to get through. Apr 22, Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship rated it really liked it Shelves: bestbooks-read-in , science , favorites , nonfiction , 4-stars-and-a-half , psychology. Cordelia Fine has seen them too, but instead of simply accepting their assertions because they sound scientific, she delved into the research, tracking down the studies that purportedly establish these claims, as well as the substantial body of research showing quite the opposite. The result is this book. It is not pop science — there is nothing dumbed-down about it, and Dr. It is aimed at the intelligent reader who may or may not have a science background; I do not, but found the book fascinating, clear, and well-organized, with strong, logical analysis of the research and even a few moments of humor. There is a strange tendency to view differences in current achievements between men and women as proof of inherently different abilities. This was true even in the 19th century, when women lacked the educational tools and the freedom to even begin to compete. Regardless of that small detail and the fact that gender roles in society continue to change, there are always those who claim that whatever women are achieving at the moment is the absolute biologically-determined limit. This book deals with three main areas of gender research, to see what has actually been proven. Women report more empathetic ability than men do, but in in real-life situations, no gender differences in mind-reading have been found. Women will respond to an ethical dilemma in more caring ways than men after an exercise forcing participants to think about gender, but both genders will respond in the same way after non-gender-related exercises. In other words, emphasizing gender makes us more stereotypical; it reminds us how we are supposed to behave and what our strengths and weaknesses should be. And if a simple reminder right before a test can alter performance, how much more growing up in a world with constant reminders of gender? We should approach this research with a healthy dose of skepticism, for several reasons. This field is still experimental, tends to use very small sample sizes, and the actual studies often show much less than or something completely different from what pop science authors claim. In one particularly egregious example, an author drew gender differences from a study with only female participants. Many parents, finding that their daughters love princess costumes and their sons toy trucks without need for parental encouragement, conclude that these differences must be hardwired. One can see, then, how all of these areas work together to create continuing perceptions of different abilities. But before this happens, speculation becomes elevated to the status of fact, especially in the hands of some popular writers. Once in the public domain these supposed facts about male and female brains become part of the culture, often lingering on well past their best-by dates. Here, they reinforce and legitimate the gender stereotypes that interact with our minds, helping to create the very gender inequalities that the neuroscientific claims seek to explain. Definitely a must-read for anyone interested in gender and with the possible added benefit of reducing your own stereotypical behavior! This is not what I'd call a "popular science" book -- it's aimed at an intellectual audience with some understanding of science and a willingness to deal with academic language. That makes it less accessible than a lot of the talk show-fodder books it's debunking, like all those ridiculous "Why Men Are Insensitive Horndogs Who Suck at Housework Surprise! It's Biology! Fine takes on pretty much the entire field of neuroscience, or rather, This is not what I'd call a "popular science" book -- it's aimed at an intellectual audience with some understanding of science and a willingness to deal with academic language. Fine takes on pretty much the entire field of neuroscience, or rather, that segment of the field that's publishing books claiming that men and women are hardwired to act like sitcom characters. I found this a very balanced entry in the nature vs. Contrary to the characterizations of some of her critics, Fine is neither strident nor ignorant of the science. She's a feminist, to be sure, and she gets a bit snarky with some of the more ridiculous modern claims of gender essentialists and is a bit too fond of making a point by leading with a particularly egregious howler from a hundred years ago , but she isn't trying to wish away innate sex differences, nor claiming that everything is a social construct. However, anyone who reads this and remains unconvinced that there's a whole lot of socialization going on in both your right-brain and your left- brain will probably not be convinced by any other mountain of evidence. Gender roles in society are supposedly natural and pre-ordained and we should learn to like them and love them. It's so easy to believe in the myth and Cordelia Fine does an excellent job of outlining why this is a myth and why the scientific methodologies and experiments behind studies that supposedly prove that men and women are inherently different are so often flawed. She's done her research thoroughly and come up with good counters to the conclusions of popular experiments, and what's more she writes with confidence and persuasiveness both scientifically and sociologically putting forth plenty of alternative reasons as to why Women might be seen as more caring, or why that female baby supposedly reared in a gender neutral fashion is still reaching for pink barbie dolls to play with. Skeptically you could argue that Fine has an agenda, but then her argument that male scientists and popular writers on gender also have an agenda and I think it's pretty fair to get all sides of this story. Tjere were a few moments where I felt that Fine was less inclined to talk deeply about the conclusions of studies that seemed to support her viewpoints althouh this may in part be to keep the writing fluid and readable, since neuroscience can be a damn boring topic. Thankfully her wit, sarcasm and brisk pace stop the book from ever getting dry. Ultimately, too, she's not concluding that there's absolutely nothing in these scientific studies, merely that the work being done doesn't warrant such massive conclusions being drawn. I'm certainly convinced of that. My last Australian book of ; this was a brilliant, non fiction review, analysis and occasionally refutal of the science between gender differences. It was really interesting to me because I do not often follow science pertaining to gender differences, I think most of it is a steaming pile of hose apples and I get annoyed by people doing obviously bad science. In that way this book was perfect for me as it addresses a lot of bad science and I loved the erudite, witty way in which the author cr My last Australian book of ; this was a brilliant, non fiction review, analysis and occasionally refutal of the science between gender differences. In that way this book was perfect for me as it addresses a lot of bad science and I loved the erudite, witty way in which the author critiques them. There is a lot of explanation and buildup on the ways in which, historically, science has manipulated social thought into believing that the genders are different. Fine then links the historically patriarchal sexism of our culture to the more modern discipline of neuroscience and shows how this science is also being used to reinforce the 'just so story' of why females are different from males. It was very interesting very easy to read stuff and while it is a subject that is difficult to address lightheartedly and with humour the author does so most excellently. Now, for those of my friends who are more inclined to read popular science or even no science but are interested in this book: Do not be intimidated, it is beautifully written and accessible to any reader. The ways in which the scientific experiments are described are all very simple, adequate but basic. Fine is more interested in describing why something in a study went the way it did, rather than going over the science behind the research. In many ways that is a good thing, as quite a bit of the so called 'research' is so bad it is horrific. Now I will admit, this book is basically making points I have always believed, so it was very much preaching to the converted. However, I was impressed by the detail and depth of the research done in order to demonstrate why much of the science 'proving' that little girls are 'hardwired' to like pink dresses and Barbie dolls is nonsense. I was also delighted to find a person who actually works in that field, who shares my dislike for the term 'hardwired' which I have always though to be utterly unsuited to descriptions of organisms, however suited it might be to a smartphone. Anyway, great book which gives a fascinating, accessible look at the poor science of modern gender segregation, it is far more easy to read and much more fun than I had any expectations of. I do recommend, most especially to those of us who wishfully wish for a society of equals in which 'war of the sexes' is a distant memory. To end this review, I am going to quote the last paragraph from the book - because I enjoyed it so much. If you too like the quote; read the book. If you disagree with it; read the book. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

This nature vs. This book argues against the claim that women and men have different brains and that this difference causes women to be significantly better or worse at some things and men significantly better or worse at others. As far as I knew, few legitimate scientists today make this claim, which is clearly sexist and would justify discrimination, so I was pretty surprised and somewhat skeptical to discover this immense sexist contingent among brain scientists This nature vs. As far as I knew, few legitimate scientists today make this claim, which is clearly sexist and would justify discrimination, so I was pretty surprised and somewhat skeptical to discover this immense sexist contingent among brain scientists and psychologists, some of whom are women. I've heard of some of them. Steven and Susan Pinker were clearly misrepresented. Others, such John Gray, aren't even scientists. This book spends most of its pages presenting psychological studies showing that people are suggestible, that messages from the culture can influence one's confidence and feeling of belonging, even their very identity and personality, and that this can impact their abilities to perform or their interest in a subject. All this does is show that society can influence people, not that brain differences can't. Many of the studies in this book seem legitimate and factual. Some of it was pretty persuasive and really made me think. But the presentation of these studies often seemed to exaggerate them. For example, after discussing subtle ways social cues and whether one feels they belong can influence people to prefer and perform differently, all very reasonable, the book concludes: "A few words to the effect that a Y chromosome will serve in your favor, or a sprucing up of the interior design, is all that it takes to bring about surprisingly substantial changes in career interest. Having seen what effect on career interests a simple, brief manipulation in the lab can have, one can't help but wonder at the cumulative influence of that giant, inescapable social psychology lab known as life. That's a huge exaggeration of the findings. It's also pure speculation based on ideology, not facts based on evidence. Actually, it seems pretty sexist to claim that women are so flimsy and suggestible. It sounds suspiciously like the "delicate flower" argument of traditionalists. Be careful what you say to girls, lest you crush their fragile little spirits! I know it would take a hell of a lot more than "a few words" to talk me out of my dreams. Here's another gem: "This anecdote suggests a workplace environment that tolerates a deep disrespect for women. Now there's some seriously rigorous research. Sometimes she's clearly reaching. Like when she talks about a study that found gender differences in babies who are only one day old. She claims this study was flawed because there could have been some socialization that happened in that one day since their birth. An argument this book uses over and over again is: scientists were wrong before. I can almost hear "neener neener" behind the words. So what? Scientists are wrong all the time. That's how science works. Being wrong isn't cause for dismissal in science. That's what ideology does. Being wrong in the past does not imply claims in the present are false. This is called the continuum fallacy, and it's usually employed by pseudoscience cranks like creationists and global warming deniers. Consider the facts that are not in dispute. We know that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. Men and women are physically different. They have different reproductive systems and different physical proportions. We know that sexual selection is a part of the evolutionary process, and we know that males and females have had vastly different selective pressures, which have manifested as different mating behaviors in all other dimorphic species. So this theory that all of gender psychology is socialized is extremely tenuous. It does not square with what we know about evolution. All that is required to falsify it is evidence of only one difference. It only takes evidence of one innate psychological difference between men and women to prove that there is at least SOME difference. Once that is established, then it's only a question of which differences are genetic and how significant they are. Since that is all that is required, and since this theory is based more on presuppositions from feminist ideology than evidence-based, the easiest way to disprove it is to offer one piece of evidence that coincides with mainstream feminist ideology, so they cannot possibly dispute it. I will do that now: Most psychologists now agree that sexual preference is, at least in part, an innate psychological characteristic. Homosexuality is innate in some individuals. For the rest of us, men are innately attracted to women and women are innately attracted to men. On average, there is a vast difference between men and women as to which gender they find sexually appealing. You cannot socialize children to be gay, so there is no reason to deny gays the right to marry, and it's abusive to try to socialize young homosexuals to be heterosexual. This is a position most feminists take very strongly, and it's clearly an innate psychological difference between men and women. The exception is lesbian feminism. This is the position that sexual orientation is socialized, and that lesbianism is a choice and therefore a legitimate political act. However, this form of feminism is extremely contentious within the movement, as it opens the door for homophobia. Oh, and then you have difference feminism, complete with their own quack psychologists such as Carol Gilligan who claim that, yes, there are innate differences between men and women, but that women's "way of knowing" is superior to men's. I wonder why this wasn't one of those sexist psychologists, with talk of brain differences between men and women, to be debunked in this book. Strange, that. It seems fallacious gender research gets a free pass as long as it's sexist in the right direction. Indeed, this book seems to be on board with difference feminism in the chapter, "Backwards and in High Heels" i. This isn't science. It's reasoning based on what's politically expedient and expecting reality to conform to that. If there are innate differences, then she should just say so and stop equivocating. Then we can get on to the more interesting discussion of how much difference is innate, and how significant those differences are. It may very well turn out that women are superior to men, but they can't simultaneously be better and the same. The sad thing is, this book is very interesting and insightful in so many other ways, in outlining some ways human behavior is socialized. It could very easily have been a valuable part of that discussion. Why can't that be enough? The intellectually honest position would have been to admit that there is much we still don't understand about human psychology, and the evidence so far seems to indicate that there is at least some difference between the psychology of men and women, but that it is the belief of the author that these differences are not hugely significant, and that socialization also plays a major role. If that's all she did, I'd have trusted this book so much more. As it stands, I find myself dubious even of claims that sound reasonable. Advice for the author: check your ideology at the door and let the evidence speak for itself, rather than trying to exaggerate or stretch it to fit into your worldview. Oh, and knock off all the outrage. How you feel about what scientists discover has no bearing on the merit of their research. It only discredits your presentation of it by making readers suspicious of confirmation bias and emotional reasoning. It feels less like science and more like propaganda. At best, it is merely distracting. If you like this book, please read The Blank Slate. It will show you a completely different side of this issue. View 2 comments. Oct 06, Lobstergirl rated it really liked it. Cordelia Fine, a psychologist, decided to write this book after discovering her son's kindergarten teacher "reading a book that claimed his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language. Fine engages in occasional snark, which was a little tiresome, followed by a lot of discussion of studies in which subjects are either told or not told statements about gender and then asked to perform certain tasks, to see if a Cordelia Fine, a psychologist, decided to write this book after discovering her son's kindergarten teacher "reading a book that claimed his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language. Fine engages in occasional snark, which was a little tiresome, followed by a lot of discussion of studies in which subjects are either told or not told statements about gender and then asked to perform certain tasks, to see if a focus on gender impairs their abilities. For example, one group of girls is told that boys do better than girls on math tests, and that scientists believe this difference is innate. Another group is told that boys and girls perform the same on math tests. Both groups then take a math test. The girls in the second group perform better. Once through this psychological study-filled section and a glimpse back into our anti-feminist past and our female-executives-who-still-do-most- of-the-housework present which, in fairness, will be necessary reading for some , Fine moves on to the field of neuroscience. She debunks the notion of the brain's "hardwired[ness]," a concept borrowed from computer science, which "translate[s] poorly to the domain of neural circuits that change and learn throughout life," constantly adapting to a person's environment and experiences. In addition to the really bad popular literature on gender difference see John Gray , and Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain , which she analyzes, there's a lot of really bad science. Poorly conducted studies with flawed methodologies, too-small studies, confusion of correlation with causation. Some scientists have been known to extrapolate conclusions that their own studies did not determine. Shockingly, the media often compound the problem with poor reporting and cluelessness about junk science. Then, there's the kind of important issue that studies which fail to find gender differences tend not to get published, while the minority that do, do. I personally was quite alarmed at the quantity and quality of conclusions being drawn from brain scans, where it seems like the technology has outpaced researchers' ability to understand it in any truly meaningful way. Chapters address real vs. Once they know what gender they belong to, their ideas about it and their choices become more fixed. At 17 months, boys and girls in one study were equally interested in playing with dolls, tea sets, brushes, combs, and blocks; four months later girls had increased their doll play while boys had decreased it. Belonging to a group - such as a gender group - is a powerful motivator to stay within that group and adhere to its norms. Gender norms are reinforced all around the child: none of Dr. Seuss's 42 books has a female lead in its central story; a study of 41 Caldecott winners and runners-up from to "found that female characters were most commonly described as beautiful, frightened, worthy, sweet, weak , and scared , while male characters were big, horrible, fierce, great, terrible, furious, brave , and proud. A boy who chose to wear barrettes to school was reminded by other children that barrettes are for girls. A study of preschoolers found that boys who wouldn't play with dolls at school would play with them at home, where the peer group wasn't present to enforce the "rules. Fine quotes a researcher, Emily Kane: " Her writing is clear and unjargoned, though amply sourced and footnoted, and her arguments are admirably sane. Won in Giveaway; review to come. Soon I shall be reading this "vehement dismantling of the latest pseudo- scientific claims about the differences between the sexes. View all 10 comments. Sep 08, notgettingenough rated it liked it Shelves: sociology , australian , science-sort-of. It was the early seventies and she was a huge hit with the boys - big tits and sexy legs - and the teachers - big tits, sexy legs They admired the way it went all the way up to her breasts. I mean the top of her head. All the way up there. One of the reasons she left was because they were all so very kind to her. It is one of those things, isn't it? Nobody wants to go to staff meetings, every man there must have rather envied the idea that femininity could excuse her, and yet my mother had to insist on her innate right to go to the darn things. To be fair, my mother's the exception, one of those who really did like doing stuff like that, a trait I have most certainly neither inherited nor acquired. So she left and went to Methodist Ladies College, the posh girls equivalent. At some point two of the kind male teachers from PAC happened to be visiting MLC, so she took them to the staff room for a cuppa. Afterwards she washed her cup and said to them 'If you are wondering why I don't wash yours, I happen to believe that men are just as good as women at washing up. If there were some reason why men suddenly thought that washing teacups was a desirable occupation, there would be an academic redefinition of the brain to fit this. In fact for now it is the other way around. The desirable occupations in life, the ones that are seen as the plums, must be taken up by men rather than women because they have the right brain composition. Depending on how good your sense of humour is, it is either discomforting or hilarious to discover that neuroscience is not above redefining what is 'necessary' depending on how their business of deciphering the brain develops. This explains the choice of word in the subtitle - neurosexism - but it is the sort of thing that irritated me as I read this - I don't like the current style of pop science where impartiality is a positive defect. It's like there is something going on which we might call 'extreme pop science'. You have to outdo the last writer in outrageousness. But while I was aghast at some of the ways she put things, I imagine the reader at large would not have noticed, let alone taken umbrage. Fine probably thinks it was acceptable to do so because all that mattered was getting her very important point across. I couldn't disagree more. Her material spoke for itself, the relentless mass of it which she brings to bear. She didn't need to be spurious on top of it. She should have left that for her publicly disgraced subjects. As it is, by waving the flag of her partiality - which she somehow attempts to do whilst claiming that this is the issue with the other side - right in our faces, she left me wondering if she is as trustworthy as she wants to be. Having the longest bibliography in the world doesn't cut the mustard if the reader is left gasping at the shamelessness with which she prejudicially discusses her data. View all 14 comments. Nov 27, Saafir Evada rated it it was amazing Shelves: neuroscience , feminism , psychology. I like nothing better than to discover that I was completely and utterly mistaken about something. The deeper the rotten belief sits, the more satisfying the pop when it is wrenched out. This book changed my mind in ways few books ever do. I had a cavalier belief that psychological differences between men and women were "innate" and "biological. I highly recommend this book. Nearly 20 years ago I studied sociology at a feminist, Marxist university. Oh boy pun intended! Far from it. In fact — and this is a rare achievement for a book — it started me re-assessing my life from way back and seeing … well, seeing how often I had lived within gender assumptions and even played to them just because it made life not simply easier, but pleasanter. The examples show in pitiless detail that their biological determinism was merely supergluing on cultural blinkers. As her argument runs, later decades are likely to look back and have the same response to our use of neuroscience to plaster authority onto scientifically unsupported notions of gender. There are many, many examples of our gendered culture in this strongly argued but easily read book. Read the book — male or female, the impact of culture on your self-perception, and therefore, your life and choices will rock your assumptions of autonomy. May 03, Alissa Thorne rated it it was ok Shelves: about-gender , genre-nonfiction. Warning: ranty. I did learn some interesting things. One study showed a clear Warning: ranty. One study showed a clear gender prejudice in hiring for engineering roles. Identical resumes were sent to companies with only a change in the name being obviously female versus obviously male, and the male resumes had a higher response rate. A theme throughout the book was the relationship of self-identification and social grouping--basically the influence that feeling that "people like me" has on our self-image, and in turn our actions, behavior, aptitude. A simple example is the study in which female college students were asked if they were interested in pursuing engineering studies, but in differing environments. One environment featured a classic geek decor, while the other featured a more preppy decor. This seems much broader than a gender issue to me, but it's a gender book, so ok. When it came to the potential non-social influences though I think the narration made this particularly cringe-worthy--the sneer when describing a competing theory, or the pompus and self-important voice used when quoting an opponent were particularly off-putting. In a study showing evidence in favor of biological explanations for gender differences in behavior, the author would rightly lambaste the study for using self-reports valid evidence. Then pages later, in a study intended to offer an alternate explanation would be a phrase like, "Mothers of infants report Obviously the modern scientist is wrong because their hypothesis bears some surface similarities to someone from a different time who held beliefs we know to be untrue! While I did learn that there was little or no valid evidence for some of the biological gender differences that I had previously heard touted, it was hardly a review of what differences are known to exist. This was most obvious when the author mentioned in passing that one known gender difference--smaller brains of females versus males--results in extensive structural differences in the brain. And that this most likely served to make the genders more similar, as the different structures achieved different things in the same way. Such a key piece of data and the huge assertion must be backed by chapters of exposition of the evidence and detailed critique of the studies backing it--in short, the same treatment given to any other hypothesis in the book, right? In a book about how gender based brain differences may impact gender behaviors, surely the fact that there is allegedly structural brain differences will be examined in detail. And the hypothesis that these differences may work to achieve gender similarities will be backed by multiple studies, each carefully critiqued, right? No, this statement was simply made, and then passed right on by. I'm glad I forced myself through this book--you can still learn a lot from a biased account. But man, it was tough to get through. Apr 22, Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship rated it really liked it Shelves: bestbooks-read-in , science , favorites , nonfiction , 4-stars-and-a- half , psychology. Cordelia Fine has seen them too, but instead of simply accepting their assertions because they sound scientific, she delved into the research, tracking down the studies that purportedly establish these claims, as well as the substantial body of research showing quite the opposite. The result is this book. It is not pop science — there is nothing dumbed-down about it, and Dr. It is aimed at the intelligent reader who may or may not have a science background; I do not, but found the book fascinating, clear, and well-organized, with strong, logical analysis of the research and even a few moments of humor. There is a strange tendency to view differences in current achievements between men and women as proof of inherently different abilities. This was true even in the 19th century, when women lacked the educational tools and the freedom to even begin to compete. Regardless of that small detail and the fact that gender roles in society continue to change, there are always those who claim that whatever women are achieving at the moment is the absolute biologically-determined limit. This book deals with three main areas of gender research, to see what has actually been proven. Women report more empathetic ability than men do, but in in real-life situations, no gender differences in mind-reading have been found. Women will respond to an ethical dilemma in more caring ways than men after an exercise forcing participants to think about gender, but both genders will respond in the same way after non-gender-related exercises. In other words, emphasizing gender makes us more stereotypical; it reminds us how we are supposed to behave and what our strengths and weaknesses should be. And if a simple reminder right before a test can alter performance, how much more growing up in a world with constant reminders of gender? We should approach this research with a healthy dose of skepticism, for several reasons. This field is still experimental, tends to use very small sample sizes, and the actual studies often show much less than or something completely different from what pop science authors claim. In one particularly egregious example, an author drew gender differences from a study with only female participants. Many parents, finding that their daughters love princess costumes and their sons toy trucks without need for parental encouragement, conclude that these differences must be hardwired. One can see, then, how all of these areas work together to create continuing perceptions of different abilities. But before this happens, speculation becomes elevated to the status of fact, especially in the hands of some popular writers. Once in the public domain these supposed facts about male and female brains become part of the culture, often lingering on well past their best-by dates. Here, they reinforce and legitimate the gender stereotypes that interact with our minds, helping to create the very gender inequalities that the neuroscientific claims seek to explain. Definitely a must-read for anyone interested in gender and with the possible added benefit of reducing your own stereotypical behavior! This is not what I'd call a "popular science" book -- it's aimed at an intellectual audience with some understanding of science and a willingness to deal with academic language. That makes it less accessible than a lot of the talk show-fodder books it's debunking, like all those ridiculous "Why Men Are Insensitive Horndogs Who Suck at Housework Surprise! It's Biology! Fine takes on pretty much the entire field of neuroscience, or rather, This is not what I'd call a "popular science" book -- it's aimed at an intellectual audience with some understanding of science and a willingness to deal with academic language. Fine takes on pretty much the entire field of neuroscience, or rather, that segment of the field that's publishing books claiming that men and women are hardwired to act like sitcom characters. I found this a very balanced entry in the nature vs. Contrary to the characterizations of some of her critics, Fine is neither strident nor ignorant of the science. She's a feminist, to be sure, and she gets a bit snarky with some of the more ridiculous modern claims of gender essentialists and is a bit too fond of making a point by leading with a particularly egregious howler from a hundred years ago , but she isn't trying to wish away innate sex differences, nor claiming that everything is a social construct. However, anyone who reads this and remains unconvinced that there's a whole lot of socialization going on in both your right-brain and your left-brain will probably not be convinced by any other mountain of evidence. Gender roles in society are supposedly natural and pre-ordained and we should learn to like them and love them. It's so easy to believe in the myth and Cordelia Fine does an excellent job of outlining why this is a myth and why the scientific methodologies and experiments behind studies that supposedly prove that men and women are inherently different are so often flawed. She's done her research thoroughly and come up with good counters to the conclusions of popular experiments, and what's more she writes with confidence and persuasiveness both scientifically and sociologically putting forth plenty of alternative reasons as to why Women might be seen as more caring, or why that female baby supposedly reared in a gender neutral fashion is still reaching for pink barbie dolls to play with. Skeptically you could argue that Fine has an agenda, but then her argument that male scientists and popular writers on gender also have an agenda and I think it's pretty fair to get all sides of this story. Tjere were a few moments where I felt that Fine was less inclined to talk deeply about the conclusions of studies that seemed to support her viewpoints althouh this may in part be to keep the writing fluid and readable, since neuroscience can be a damn boring topic. Thankfully her wit, sarcasm and brisk pace stop the book from ever getting dry. Ultimately, too, she's not concluding that there's absolutely nothing in these scientific studies, merely that the work being done doesn't warrant such massive conclusions being drawn. I'm certainly convinced of that. My last Australian book of ; this was a brilliant, non fiction review, analysis and occasionally refutal of the science between gender differences. It was really interesting to me because I do not often follow science pertaining to gender differences, I think most of it is a steaming pile of hose apples and I get annoyed by people doing obviously bad science. In that way this book was perfect for me as it addresses a lot of bad science and I loved the erudite, witty way in which the author cr My last Australian book of ; this was a brilliant, non fiction review, analysis and occasionally refutal of the science between gender differences. In that way this book was perfect for me as it addresses a lot of bad science and I loved the erudite, witty way in which the author critiques them. There is a lot of explanation and buildup on the ways in which, historically, science has manipulated social thought into believing that the genders are different. Fine then links the historically patriarchal sexism of our culture to the more modern discipline of neuroscience and shows how this science is also being used to reinforce the 'just so story' of why females are different from males. It was very interesting very easy to read stuff and while it is a subject that is difficult to address lightheartedly and with humour the author does so most excellently. Now, for those of my friends who are more inclined to read popular science or even no science but are interested in this book: Do not be intimidated, it is beautifully written and accessible to any reader. The ways in which the scientific experiments are described are all very simple, adequate but basic. Fine is more interested in describing why something in a study went the way it did, rather than going over the science behind the research. In many ways that is a good thing, as quite a bit of the so called 'research' is so bad it is horrific. Now I will admit, this book is basically making points I have always believed, so it was very much preaching to the converted. However, I was impressed by the detail and depth of the research done in order to demonstrate why much of the science 'proving' that little girls are 'hardwired' to like pink dresses and Barbie dolls is nonsense. I was also delighted to find a person who actually works in that field, who shares my dislike for the term 'hardwired' which I have always though to be utterly unsuited to descriptions of organisms, however suited it might be to a smartphone. Anyway, great book which gives a fascinating, accessible look at the poor science of modern gender segregation, it is far more easy to read and much more fun than I had any expectations of. I do recommend, most especially to those of us who wishfully wish for a society of equals in which 'war of the sexes' is a distant memory. To end this review, I am going to quote the last paragraph from the book - because I enjoyed it so much. If you too like the quote; read the book. If you disagree with it; read the book. Are you getting the point that I feel you might want to read this book? Together, they wire gender. But the wiring is soft, not hard. It is flexible, malleable and changeable. And, if we only believe this,it will continue to unravel. Delusions of Gender is a thorough debunking by Cordelia Fine of scientific studies and scientific posturing regarding what we know about the biological and particularly, neurological differences between sexes. Somehow, Fine manages to distill this into a page book, and it mostly works. She does a good job of wading through recentish from my perspective, given that this book is verging on a decade old research and writing, picking apart arguments and debunking theories. She links these ideas to much older ideas about sex and gender. And she provides some guidance to the layperson in terms of how we can approach learning about sex and gender, from a scientific perspective, in the future. She reviews the standard gaps in workforce distribution, in pay, in equity of housework and other caring labour. This seems particularly topical given absurd rumblings from the US government about defining gender in law. Again, I was already well aware of a lot of what Fine said in thsi chapter, but she lays it out clearly. This whole part is valuable because she talks specifics, right down to the study and the scientists conducting them. This section is just a great reminder in general that science is a human process, and like any human process, is prone to error and a good tonic against thinking of science as this black box that we put experimental data into and get facts about the world out of. I like the inclusion of this part in the book, because it encourages readers to consider how we actually apply scientific discoveries to our lives. That being said, this part of the book is probably the most scattered of the three and the least interesting from a scientific perspective. Delusions of Gender endears itself to me because, at the end of the day, Fine is basically saying we need to stay skeptical of claims that appear to be scientific on the surface but, if you scratch that surface, reveal supposition. Beyond its subjects of sex and gender, this book encourages critical thinking about doing science, and that is something that is sorely needed in society today. Lastly, although I have long been interested in gender and thinking more deeply about it, this book definitely got me thinking about gender along different tracks. While I already knew much of what Fine explains or alludes to, I learned more things and even had my own unconscious biases checked at some points. Aug 11, Marta rated it really liked it Shelves: feminism , owned. A spirited debunking of the perennial claims that women are different and usually, it so happens that this difference is in truth inferiority from men because SCIENCE. It is both amusing and infuriating to read how sexist scientists and journalists try angle after angle, and when one is debunked say, no, brain size does not actually matter , they find another, even more dubious claim. This is not a book without faults. Firstly, the author veers to the verbose side, and secondly, the book pays A spirited debunking of the perennial claims that women are different and usually, it so happens that this difference is in truth inferiority from men because SCIENCE. Firstly, the author veers to the verbose side, and secondly, the book pays almost no attentions to people outside the gender binary - a serious flaw and one that Cordelia Fine would do well to repair in any further editions. Still, I found it interesting, well-researched the author has a knack for presenting scientific research in an accessible way, even if the empiricist in me would prefer more hard data - but bibliographical information provided is exceptional! I especially recommend it to parents interested in gender-neutral parenting, women in male-dominated professions, and everyone interested in the fascinating ways our biases inform scientific research both with regards to interpretation as well as planning experiments themselves. Feb 13, Barbara The Bibliophage rated it really liked it Shelves: feminism-and-women-s-studies , audio , science-and-medicine , , booked , own-digital. Cordelia Fine is a scientist, feminist, and a mom. Her book debunks studies that purport to be solid science, but ultimately just support gender stereotypes. And how this, along with neuroplasticity, mean that brains cannot possibly be hard-wired by gender. Many more details in my review at TheBibliophage. God damn! This book actually changed the way I see the world!! I shall do it justice with a worthy review! Just way till I get my hands on a computer! View all 7 comments. Nov 06, Kogiopsis rated it really liked it Shelves: favoritereads , nonfiction , why-i-love-my-kindle , reviewed. Many of the general ideas presented in this book were familiar to me: claims of true neurological basis for differences between the sexes are bunk; areas in which people seem to be 'deficient' are often socially created rather than biological; current conceptions of binary gender essentialism must be abandoned. However, for all that the conclusions Cordelia Fine drew were hardly surprising to me, reading this book had a significant impact. It felt almost like an out of body experience, to read a Many of the general ideas presented in this book were familiar to me: claims of true neurological basis for differences between the sexes are bunk; areas in which people seem to be 'deficient' are often socially created rather than biological; current conceptions of binary gender essentialism must be abandoned. It felt almost like an out of body experience, to read about these studies and then look at similar cases in my own life and, all of a sudden, to be able to see the strings. This is probably what Neo felt like when he learned to see the Matrix. It's disorienting. I read this book on a road trip with my parents, and I'm sure they wish I hadn't because I would not shut up about it. Partly, that's because I couldn't really process it without talking about it and applying it; partly, that's because my mom is a teacher and my dad is an engineer and I feel like the things I was learning from Cordelia Fine are intimately applicable to their work and dealing with other people. That's probably true of most people, though; but since one has direct impact on how confident students feel speaking in her courses and the other interacts with younger engineers, this seemed very relevant. I think I've probably brought the book up once a week since, too. The one concept that sticks with me the most is that of stereotype threat. Simply put, stereotype threat describes an effect when someone, being aware that a group they are part of is believed to have a certain capability, changes the way they approach that task. For instance, women who are reminded of the stereotype that women are bad at math perform worse on math tests. I had to set the book aside when I read that, because it explained so much about things I've struggled with: when you're under stereotype threat, your brain switches from trying to achieve success to trying to avoid failure , making you less innovative and confident, and slowing you down in completing the task. It's a feeling of being stifled, being trapped, that I've experienced a lot more than I'd like to, and finally having an explanation for it is clearing up a lot in my life. Given the nature of the book, I assume her research was thoroughly done, but there's still a distinct rhetorical strategy to the final work and I couldn't stop wondering if that had shaped the results presented. Jul 08, Robin rated it liked it. Cordelia Fine attempts to refute the popular idea that men and women have an innate neurological difference which results in different brains. I recommend reading them in that order because Fine's book refutes many of the points made in Baron-Cohen's. Fine makes a good case that many of the differences we see in gender could readily be traced back to cultural or sociological phenomena, and that it is too early to declare tha Cordelia Fine attempts to refute the popular idea that men and women have an innate neurological difference which results in different brains. Fine makes a good case that many of the differences we see in gender could readily be traced back to cultural or sociological phenomena, and that it is too early to declare that brain differences in men and women are innate. She does an excellent job of pointing out the flaws in many of the studies cited by the other side. This book is a much-needed dose of caution in the rush to say men and women just are innately different. She does a great job of reminding us that the reinforcement for gender roles is all around us in ways we can't even see. One weakness in the book is that she doesn't adequately address the cross-cultural studies. If gender-based tendencies in brains are not inherent, then how come some appear in cultures world-wide? What are the chances that such diverse cultures would have developed similar gender roles if they do not have some biological basis? Delusions of Gender is split into three sections, all of which argue the same thing: there are no discernible neurological differences between males and females. But society, our minds, and badly designed scientific experiments have made us believe that there are. As it turns out, Cordelia Fine has an accessible writing style and is able to take complex concepts and explain them in relatively simple terms, so I never found myself lost or confused. Priming, by the way, is the way our minds are affected by subtle changes in our surroundings. These changes in surroundings, which would seem insignificant to you and me, can affect our brains so drastically that they seep into our performance on tasks and our perceptions of reality. For example, if a girl who is just about to write an exam is told that girls normally perform worse than boys on this type of exam, then her brain will be primed to do worse, regardless of her actual skill level. Similarly, if she is told that girls normally perform better than boys on this type of exam, then she will do better, regardless of her skill level. We have been primed by society to perform according to our genders, and this process starts early. The more we are taught these differences, the more we perform according to them. The more we perform according to them, the more we believe in biological differences between genders. The more we believe in biological differences between genders… you get the picture. In the next section of the book, Fine carefully rebuts the many scientific experiments and studies that claim to prove the inherent differences between male and female brains. Scientists and the public have used these experiments for decades to support their sexist claims about girls and women, but Fine is here to tell us that those experiments had small sample sizes, flimsy experiment designs, and other glaring holes that should make us all question their scientific authority. Each claim she makes in this section is backed up by solid research, and all her sources are outlined in the endnotes and bibliography, which together span about 80 pages. She also provides counter-studies along the way to disprove these experiments, all of which help drive her initial point home. At the end of this section, she points to a mass study, or meta-analysis, that puts together data from thousands of participants from various studies investigating the same question, and showed that, when using a large sample size as opposed to the small ones normally used in these experiments , most of the trends that scientists have claimed to find on gender differences turn out to be statistically insignificant, and therefore unsupported by science. Our brains are malleable and heavily influenced by external factors, which, more often than not, are working against us, and these factors need to be honestly discussed by scientists who enter into this field of work. All in all, I have benefited greatly from this book. Oct 04, Jaylia3 rated it it was amazing. What she exposes and describes in detail are poorly designed experiments, blind leaps of faith and convoluted circular reasoning. In scientists! According to what Fine uncovered we have mutable brains, continuously influenced and changed by our cultural environment. Besides being thought provoking—it may make you rethink a lot of your beliefs—this book is both funny and well written. How gratifying to find authors who know their stuff, have the necessary tools to analyse and critique, and who take the time to pick holes in the commercial follies of these pseudo-scientific wanna-be-never-could-so-better twist-everything-to-please-myself-and-make-a-fast- f buck-simultaneously authors. View 1 comment. I found it to be a fascinating read which I learned a lot from and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the differences between our two genders. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. Throughout the book, Cordelia Fine investigates how different males and females really are. Are we all so hard-wired into our gender that there is no wiggle room in terms of qualities we should possess? Is it absolutely pointless for a woman to even consider a top level management job as it requires stereotypically more aggressive characteristics that for a woman is considered unattractive? I did enjoy the way that the author discredits work carried out by Baron-Cohen, and theories from the author of A Female Brain, Louann Brizendine that seem to want to put males and females in their own little boxes. For example, the assumption that a woman can use more areas of the brain than a man i. This is a brilliant and fascinating book, injected with a little bit of wit and sarcasm which I always appreciate in a non-fiction book and which I think is needed when dealing with this subject which can sometimes be a little bit touchy. Delusions of Gender is an enjoyably acerbic and eloquent takedown of evolutionary psychologists and their neuroscientist collaborators—those practitioners of Bad Science, whose work is often repeated uncritically in tabloid newspapers or used to shape educational curricula. Cordelia Fine examines a number of supposedly scientific studies, together with the books and newspaper articles which have popularised them for a general audience Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and their odious ilk Delusions of Gender is an enjoyably acerbic and eloquent takedown of evolutionary psychologists and their neuroscientist collaborators—those practitioners of Bad Science, whose work is often repeated uncritically in tabloid newspapers or used to shape educational curricula. Cordelia Fine examines a number of supposedly scientific studies, together with the books and newspaper articles which have popularised them for a general audience Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and their odious ilk , which seek to explain gender difference and inequality through neurological differences. Researchers conflate the brain and the mind in order for their findings to conform with gender stereotypes. Men and women have biological differences, Fine states, which may reflect on different brains, but there is no proof that these differences map onto tasks, preferences, modes of thinking, etc. Indeed, there may be more similarities between a man and a woman who both have a comparatively large brain relative to their body mass than between a woman with a comparatively large brain and a woman with a comparatively small brain. Gender difference doesn't create gender inequality—it may well be vice versa. As someone who works in the humanities and not the sciences, I did learn a lot from this book, particularly in terms of how to interpret or not neuroscientific data. Fine has done a good job of synthesising a lot of secondary material in a very readable way. However, I did think there were some surprising omissions here—there is no consideration, or even mention, of societies in which there are more than two genders, and there's no mention of transgender or genderqueer people. While I'm sure that most of the scientific data that Fine deals with assume binary gender, and was gathered from predominantly white Westerners, I do think that had she done a bit more digging, she would have unearthed a wealth of work which would have undermined the assumption of the Western-centric gender binary while supporting the very point she's trying to make. Do they really exist? Or a cultural Myth? Readers also enjoyed. About Cordelia Fine. Cordelia Fine. Melbourne, Autsralia. Her previous book, 'A Mind of Its Own' was hugely acclaimed and she was called 'a science writer to watch' by Metro. In the second part of the book, "Neurosexism", Fine criticizes the current available arguments and studies supporting sex differences in the mind, focusing on methodological weaknesses and implicit assumptions. Within neuroscientific investigations, these include small samples that give rise to unreliable, spurious results, and poorly justified 'reverse inferences' claims of stereotype-consistent psychological differences between the sexes on the basis of brain differences. Fine also demonstrates how already weak neuroscientific conclusions are then grossly overblown by popular writers. Fine also discusses non-neuroimaging evidence cited as support for innate differences between the sexes. For example, she explains weaknesses in the work done by a student of Simon Baron-Cohen that has been widely cited by the Gurian Institute , by Leonard Sax , by Peter Lawrence , and by Baron-Cohen himself : one-and-a-half-day-old babies were tested for preference in sequence rather than being given a choice; were tested in different viewing positions, some horizontal on their backs and some held in a parent's lap, which could affect their perception; inadequate efforts were made to ensure the sex of the subject was unknown to the tester at the time of the test; the authors assume, without justification, that newborn looking preferences are a reliable 'flag' for later social skills that are the product of a long and complex developmental process. In the third part of the book, "Recycling Gender", Fine discusses the highly gendered society in which children develop, and the contribution of that to the group identity processes that motivate children to 'self-socialize'. This challenges the common belief of parents that they tried gender-neutral parenting, but it didn't work. An overall thesis of the work is the negative impact for sex equality of neurosexism popular or academic neuroscientific claims that reinforce or justify gender stereotypes in ways that are not scientifically justified. Simon Baron-Cohen reviewed the book in The Psychologist. In it, he accused Fine of "fusing science with politics," writing, "Where I — and I suspect many other contemporary scientists — would part ways with Fine is in her strident, extreme denial of the role that biology might play in giving rise to any sex differences in the mind and brain. Halpern , co-author of the article "The Science of Sex Differences in Mathematics and Science" [15] that Fine criticizes in Delusions of Gender, reviewed the book and concluded that it was "strongest in exposing research conclusions that are closer to fiction than science Stanford neurobiologist Ben Barres stated in a review for the Public Library of Science Biology that Delusions of Gender "should be required reading for every neurobiology student, if not every human being. Lewis Wolpert , a developmental biologist who is the author of Why can't a woman be more like a man? They acknowledged that "Prompting laypeople to adopt a more critical view of overly simplistic views of complex data sets is a goal any scientist can support, and for that we applaud Fine's efforts. They expressed disappointment that Fine's book " Maney, as part of a Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Theme Issue "Multifaceted origins of sex differences in the brain', compiled and edited by McCarthy in Evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk , reviewing the book with Rebecca Jordan-Young 's Brain Storm , in the Quarterly Review of Biology wrote: "It is important to emphasize that neither author advocates throwing the gender-neutral baby out with its pink or blue bathwater The books are good ammunition for arguments with people who think science has incontrovertibly shown biological bases for gender differences such as mathematical ability. Both Fine and Jordan-Young want better science, not less of it. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Preview and rental of the article available on readcube. Cordelia Fine. Archived from the original on September 5, Retrieved August 24, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. London Evening Standard. Evening Standard. TSL Education.

Delusions of Gender - Wikipedia

Fine also discusses non-neuroimaging evidence cited as support for innate differences between the sexes. For example, she explains weaknesses in the work done by a student of Simon Baron-Cohen that has been widely cited by the Gurian Institute , by Leonard Sax , by Peter Lawrence , and by Baron-Cohen himself : one-and-a-half-day-old babies were tested for preference in sequence rather than being given a choice; were tested in different viewing positions, some horizontal on their backs and some held in a parent's lap, which could affect their perception; inadequate efforts were made to ensure the sex of the subject was unknown to the tester at the time of the test; the authors assume, without justification, that newborn looking preferences are a reliable 'flag' for later social skills that are the product of a long and complex developmental process. In the third part of the book, "Recycling Gender", Fine discusses the highly gendered society in which children develop, and the contribution of that to the group identity processes that motivate children to 'self-socialize'. This challenges the common belief of parents that they tried gender-neutral parenting, but it didn't work. An overall thesis of the work is the negative impact for sex equality of neurosexism popular or academic neuroscientific claims that reinforce or justify gender stereotypes in ways that are not scientifically justified. Simon Baron-Cohen reviewed the book in The Psychologist. In it, he accused Fine of "fusing science with politics," writing, "Where I — and I suspect many other contemporary scientists — would part ways with Fine is in her strident, extreme denial of the role that biology might play in giving rise to any sex differences in the mind and brain. Halpern , co-author of the article "The Science of Sex Differences in Mathematics and Science" [15] that Fine criticizes in Delusions of Gender, reviewed the book and concluded that it was "strongest in exposing research conclusions that are closer to fiction than science Stanford neurobiologist Ben Barres stated in a review for the Public Library of Science Biology that Delusions of Gender "should be required reading for every neurobiology student, if not every human being. Lewis Wolpert , a developmental biologist who is the author of Why can't a woman be more like a man? They acknowledged that "Prompting laypeople to adopt a more critical view of overly simplistic views of complex data sets is a goal any scientist can support, and for that we applaud Fine's efforts. They expressed disappointment that Fine's book " Maney, as part of a Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Theme Issue "Multifaceted origins of sex differences in the brain', compiled and edited by McCarthy in Evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk , reviewing the book with Rebecca Jordan-Young 's Brain Storm , in the Quarterly Review of Biology wrote: "It is important to emphasize that neither author advocates throwing the gender-neutral baby out with its pink or blue bathwater The books are good ammunition for arguments with people who think science has incontrovertibly shown biological bases for gender differences such as mathematical ability. Both Fine and Jordan-Young want better science, not less of it. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Preview and rental of the article available on readcube. Cordelia Fine. Paule Masculinities in English children's literature from a gender perspective. Alba Alonso Feijoo Thelwall J. Citation Type. Has PDF. Publication Type. More Filters. Dinosaur discourses: taking stock of gendered learning myths. Open Access. Those differences have spawned many books driving a wedge between male and female innate abilities and stoking the argument that men and women are just better at different things. We are encouraged by some scientists and pseudo-scientists to assume that the physiological differences explain the psychological differences. As a result, many, in what Fine refers to as neuro-sexism, are enthusiastic to conclude that differences that we see in scans explain what we experience every day in careers, parenting and relationships. No other conclusion makes any sense. But Fine takes us through a journey beginning with the foetal fork, where half of all foetuses are flooded with testosterone at week 12 of pregnancy to become boys. She explores the physiological and psychological differences, concluding that what we see in scans and autopsies does not necessarily demand that resulting behaviours and abilities should be different. Her closing arguments show that social conditioning, right from the earliest days in the womb, is a far more powerful explanation for ultimate differences in preference and ability between the sexes. Perhaps one of the most memorable parts is towards the end. She describes a husband and wife — both scientists - who try very hard to avoid any sexist stereotyping in bringing up their kids. This and other descriptions show the sheer difficulty in avoiding such societal norms as girls in pink and boys in blue. They show just how deep our assumptions are and just how long it will take to flush sexism through the societal system to achieve equality.

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