Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Everything I know about the human brain tipped over today, and I'm trying to tip back the balance. It's what I love about the blogosphere though.  My friend and fellow blogger, Bill Belew surprised me this morning with his interesting post titled,  4 Differences Between Male and Female College Freshmen - Besides the Obvious.

Always up for a challenge, Bill based his post on groundbreaking research a Noel-Levitz Study which tracked 97,000 incoming freshmen across 292 institutions ... and as Bill noted …  “found some differences worthy of comment between incoming male and female students.” So why my shock?

Bill listed the key survey differences in a way that challenged and surprised me …  

1.  Females (54%) enjoyed reading much more than males (38%) - making it about half of all incoming students.

2.  Females reported stronger study habits - 69% reported taking "very careful notes during class" and reviewed those notes prior to a test compared to just 47% of males.

3.  However, males reported greater confidence in math and science preparation. 53% of males said they have a "good grasp of scientific ideas," compared to 42 % of females.

4.  51% of females reported "a hard time understanding and solving complex math problems," compared to just 40% of males surveyed.

Are you as tipped off your chair as I am by these survey results?

First, females are listed here as working harder and longer, and yet I see no note of their tendency for stronger acumen for language.  Harder work only?

Second, females are framed again as neat and harder workers – and yet I see no indication of their brain’s proclivity for knowledge access or processing of hard facts ... as it is stated here?

Third, males expressed a good grasp of their science ideas – which infers intellectual proclivity. Do you see how one result is stated in hard work and the other in mental acumen?

Fourth, more women claimed to be dumber in math, according to this list, while men came out math smart in more cases.

Hey, wait a minute guys! Either the survey's funny logic, or flawed language used here appears to say that women work harder in language but men are smarter in math…. Yikes!

Do you see a logical problem? Where's the story of females who articulate language mastery at deeper levels because they are drawn to their high language intelligence ...  just as men “work harder” in math since they are drawn to their high logical math intelligence? Hey ... what's up here ... we're comparing women's effort and guy's brainpower.

My point is this. Let’s compare hard work for both men and women… so that we can also compare mental proclivities in fair ways between genders. Keeps the equity! Show us more how men are smart in math and you bet -- we also expect to see how more women tend to be smart in language acumen! Not only in fairness - but in research results about the human brain.... 

Nitpicking? Not if you consider that women are rarely or never listed in genius categories, where men only are esteemed as brainy. See the slipage in this survey?

Ok, I have raised the challenge guys – and I’ll admit it takes a finer use of language than I likely showed here even – to offer men and women the valued place they each deserve. But let’s prepare, process, and report survey findings in deeply equitable ways so we can rool out results that win!

For instance, when we compare apples and oranges – one gender will lose core values – and in this case the gals lost any mention of their innate intelligence, so we all dimmed any sense of their mental value. At least from the survey results...

How can we use language and math in more ways to draw from the best in men's and women's brain?  Can you see room at the top for a few female intelligence - as different from, and yet no lesser than, in this list?

While on the topic of this survey ... let's go one step further and roll out more valued roles for females in the workplace ... based on results that sing out their highest intelligence valued and included.  Nuff said....