Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040019 Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science Peter A. Lawrence At the current pace, European women are not expected to reach parity with men in academic science positions until 2050. -Gerlind Wallon [1] - Sfine day, there will be equal ome have a dream that, one numbers of men and women in all jobs, including those in scientific research. But I think this dream is Utopian; it assumes that if all doors were opened and all discrimination ended, the different sexes would be professionally indistinguishable. The dream is sustained by a cult of political correctness that ignores the facts of lifeand thrives only because the human mind likes to bury experience as it builds beliefs. Here I will argue, as others have many times before, that men and women are born different. Yet even we scientists deny this, allowing us to identify the best candidates for jobs and promotions by subjecting men and women to the same tests. But since these tests favour predominantly male characteristics, such as self-confidence and aggression, we choose more men and we discourage women. Science would be better served if we gave more opportunity and power to the gentle, the reflective, and the creative individuals of both sexes. And if we did, more women would be selected, more would choose to stay in science, and more would get to the top. It is not easy to write or talk about this subject. If you say, for example, that women are on average more understanding of others, this can be interpreted as misogyny in disguise. If you state that boys on average are much more likely than girls to become computer nerds, people may react as if you plan to ban all women from the trading rooms of merchant banks. The Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen published research on the male brain in a Essays articulate a specific perspective on a topic of broad interest to scientists. specialist journal in 1997, but did not dare to talk about his ideas in public for several years [2]. One reason for this absurd taboo is that we cannot think objectively because our minds are full of wayward beliefs and delusions ghosts (Box 1). And one of these ghosts is the dogma that all groups of people, such as men and women, are on average the same, and any genetic distinctions must not be countenanced. Such ghosts bias our perceptions and censor our thoughts. Boys and Girls Are Born Different and Remain So The chance that a woman will mug you tonight on the way home is somewhere around nil. That is a quirk specific to my gender. Michael Moore [4] Baron-Cohen makes one point crystal clear: you cannot deduce the psychological characteristics of any person by knowing their sex. Arguing from the scientific literature that men and women typically have different types of brains, he nevertheless points out that some women have the male brain, and some men have the female brain [2]. Stereotyping is unscientificindividuals are just that: individuals [2]. Yet BaronCohen presents evidence that males on average are biologically predisposed to systemise, to analyse, and to be more forgetful of others, while females on average are innately designed to empathise, to communicate, and to care for others. Males tend to think narrowly and obsess, while females think broadly, taking into account balancing arguments. Classifying individuals in general terms, he concludes that among men, about 60% have a male brain, 20% have a balanced brain, and 20% have a female brain. Women show the inverse figures, with some 60% having a female brain. Many facts (see [2] for references) argue that these differences have their roots in biology and genetics. Here are some examples. First, it is hardly necessary to point out that distinguishing between the contributions of nature and nurture to animal or human behaviour has proved Box 1. Ghosts Mrs. Alving: I almost think we are all ghosts all of us, Pastor Manders. It isnt just what we have inherited from the father and mother that walks in us. It is all kinds of dead ideas and all sorts of old and obsolete beliefs. They are not alive in us; but they remain with us none the less, and we can never rid ourselves of them. I only have to take a newspaper and read it, and I see ghosts between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the country. They lie as thick as grains of sand. And were all so horribly afraid of the light [3]. difficult. However, newborn infants (less than 24 hours old) have been shown a real human face and a mobile of the same size and similar colour. On average, boys looked longer at the mobile and girls looked longer at the face [5]. Second, such differences at birth must have developed earlier. One factor is the level of testosterone in the developing brain around three months of gestation, which is higher in males (due to the hormone being produced by the foetus itself). Many studies show that testosterone affects development and behaviour, not only in humans, but also in other mammals. Testosterone sponsors development of the male phenotype, and can influence behaviour even of animals of the same sex. For example, giving older men testosterone specifically improves their ability with those spatial tests on which males normally score higher than females [6]. Copyright: 2006 Peter A. Lawrence.This is an openaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Third, autism spectrum conditions are genetically based, and have been described in detail [2,7]. People with these problems communicate poorly; they are unable to put themselves in anothers place, and have difficulties with empathising. They may treat others as objects. They often become obsessed and show repetitive behaviour. The less severely affected can become experts on recondite subjects, such as train timetables or ocean temperatures. Most relevant for our arguments is that autism spectrum conditions are largely sex-limited, being between four and nine times more frequent in males. From many studies, including psychology and neuroanatomy, BaronCohen argues convincingly that autism spectrum conditions are an extreme form of maleness [2,8]. It will not have escaped the notice of many scientists that some of their colleagues and maybe themselves have more than a hint of these autistic features. There is good evidence that this type of single-mindedness is particularly common in males [2]. Indeed, we might acknowledge that a limited amount of autistic behaviour can be useful to researchers and to societyfor example, a lifetimes concentration on a family of beetles with more than 100,000 species may seem weird, but we need several such people in the world for each family. And most of these specialists will be men. (The Web pages of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington suggest that their systematists consist of about 30 wome (...truncated)