Women's Brains By Stephen Jay Gould Summary

Miller, Alice H. Eagly, and Marcia C. Linn, it measured gender-science stereotype, “” (2). which is defined as associations that connects science with men more than women. This is believed to come from a lack of representation of women in the relative field. The study notes that putting women in science related fields in media, or having more women in the field, lessons that stereotype. They conducted the experiment by measuring 66 nations, which consisted of 350,000 participants’ explicit and implicit gender-science stereotypes. They found a relationship “between women's representation in science and national gender-science stereotype” (Eagly, Linn, Miller 8). The results of the study concluded that “implicit and explicit measures indicated strong association of science with man” (Eagly, Linn, Miller

Through Women’s Eyes by Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil addresses American History from 1865 until present day. The third edition of this textbook includes visual and primary sources over several centuries. I used this textbook in a history course, “Women in the United States, 1890 – Present;” I found the textbook to be engaging, helpful, and useful throughout the course. The way in which in the information was presented allowed me to learn, assess, and analyze the difficulties women faced.

Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist and evolutionary scientist, in his essay “Women’s Brains” (1980), argues that previous claims about the intellectual superiority of men over women are based on misinterpreted experimental results and therefore hold no scientific significance.

As per research ‘gender’ provides a perspective from which one could examine the biases that exist in the larger society. Some believe that to arrive at a more eloquent understanding of the problems of women in science , one should begin by asking what is the nature of science space that leads to under-representation and marginalisation of women rather than questioning the situation of a woman’s life that makes it difficult for her to pursue science.

In the present century, women are thought to be smarter than men. They are seen as better students and harder workers. According to David Brooks, author of “Mind over Muscle,” this idea of women is made because of the gap in passing classes and reading between females and males (576).

Yet, the English found Englishmen as the most intelligent. This contradiction shows how personal bias can influence scientific results. Many additional studies were done on cranium size to prove immigrants inferior to whites. In an earlier study down by Hooton on head circumference, professionals had the largest circumference and laborers had the lowest. However, the results were presented in an extremely biased matter. Hooton failed to report factory workers, transportation employees, and extractive trades having a larger head circumference than average. (Gould 110). This inaccurate representation of the results is unacceptable.

Since the beginning of evolution, females have been subjected and objectified based on their gender. History taught us that when during the 19th century, Charles Darwin, an English naturalist and geologist stated in his papers “The Origin of Man” (1859) and “Descent of Man” (1871) that men were superior to women. Unfortunately, such subjections to women still persist today; in politics, education, labor and surprisingly in science.

In her book “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Woman, and the Rest of us,” Kate Bornstein goes over a lot of the major issues regarding gender awareness and identity politics. She talks about the ideas of labeling ones self, understanding gender differences, how people view laws, behaviors, and the medical and scientific privilege that make transitioning challenging for a lot of people. Bornstein touches on many of the issues today that affect trans people. She includes poetry, pictures, quotes, essays, and a play to raise questions and discuss the idea of gender. This is a great book to introduce and discuss the issues that affect the lives of trans people as they navigate and explore the lines that define gender.

As an anthropologist, it was Broca’s job to study the human species. He collected information for years trying to answer the questions on everyone's mind in the 1800’s, what gender is smarter, therefore superior? Broca studied brain sizes to answer that question do to the fact that humans were declared the smartest species because we have bigger brains than animals. Broca declared that women “had smaller brains than men and, therefore, could not equal them in intelligence,” however, I would like to argue that. According to Women's Brains By Stephen Jay Gould, Broca’’s data was inconsistent. He used 292 male brains but only 140 female brains. He did not take in consideration weight, heath, height nor age into his observations, all facts that

Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance on such folk beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless errors.

Throughout this publication, Stephen Jay Gould tries to convince the reader of his argument that the claims that Broca made were simply outrageous. Even though Gould comments, “I have the greatest respect for Broca’s meticulous procedure. His numbers are sound.”, he refutes Broca’s, and his disciples, work. Gould uses a large amount of statistical data to counter Broca’s argument. He states that “In an analysis of the data for women, I found that, at an average male height and age, a woman’s brain would weight 1,212 grams. Correction for height and ages reduces Broca’s measured difference of 181 grams by more than a third, to 113 grams.” While Gould uses this to support his own data collection, he also exhibits data collected by Broca himself.

In her paper on the biological differences in cognition between men and women, Doreen Kimura suggests that the social differences between genders arose out of biological necessity (Kimura 46). Even so, it is difficult to argue that social factors do play a large part in gender in society today. A closer look at both biological and social perspectives will reveal more about the processes that determine gender roles.

It was the understanding of Paul Broca, that through the measurement of brain size one could determine the level of intellect an individual may possess, subsequently confirming his theories that men are more intelligent than women (Cryer, 2016). Furthermore, many scientists and medical professionals of the nineteenth century, believed in biological determinism and the male variability theory, and subscribed to the concepts of both Darwin and Broca (Shields, 1975).

The first effect of stereotyping is a phenomenon known as “stereotype threat” that occurs in a situation where a person is in fear of unintentionally confirming a negative stereotype. Several studies have been conducted to discover the effects of stereotype threats. For example, I discovered that Toni Schmader, an assistant professor of the UA psychology department, and Michael Johns, a UA graduate (ethos), conducted studies that showed, “college women score lower on tests of mathematical ability, and Hispanic students might score lower on tests of intelligence, not because they have less ability, but because reminders of negative stereotypes temporarily decrease their ‘working memory capacity’ (UA News Services, “Exploring the Negative Consequences of Stereotyping”, UANews.Arizona.edu).” This demonstrates that the students did not do worse on the test due to their lack of skills, but rather due to negative stereotypes. In a similar study by professors Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, African American and White college students took the same intelligence test under two conditions. In the stereotype threat condition the students were told the test would evaluate their intelligence, and in the

Studies have also been carried out into whether or not there are differences between male and female brain size and whether this affects how we relate to each other in terms of gender. Simon Baron-Cohen believes that male brains are wired towards systematic understanding and females are wired towards empathy. In addition he says that this is not necessarily always the case but the majority are wired in this way: “Both sexes have their strengths and weaknesses. Neither sex is superior overall.” (Baron-Cohen, S. 2003).