Some people use research and observation to point out that men are better at numbers while women excel more in language and communication. Do you agree?
Others say it’s not that simple to quantify intelligence. What do you say?
Here’s the skinny of what we know about brainpower differences in men and women. 
Men traditionally dominated fields of math, science and engineering… and that imbalance is changing.
Women make up the lion’s share of US higher education students since 1982 and yet women do less well than men on standardized tests used for college entrance or graduate school requirements. The best universities are attracting more men to narrow their enrollment gaps. Have you seen it happen?
Gender differences show up early in life. School age children show differences in that young women perform better on most verbal assessments … while boys are measurably better at solving problems on standardized tests.
Hormones play a larger role in cognitive operations than once thought. Research shows that when people change their genders … their cognitive patterns also change.
Women often outperform men on tasks that use language processing and draw on more symmetric activation across brain hemispheres. Men often outperform women in tasks that call upon activation of the visual cortex areas. Research shows … through brain imaging .. that even when men and women perform the same tasks equally well … they draw on different parts of the brain to do so.
Should these brain based factors not seem complex enough to get your brain around … there are many other interesting factors that influence cognitive differences within and across genders. And that’s before we toss in tone problems ... or before we include discrimination that comes when one gender feels threatened by brain differences in the other. If you consider the brain at work … you’ll likely also agree … there are solutions.
Start with a few quick brain facts to rate your workplace for instance … and you’ll see amazing new windows of opportunity … based on new facts about human brains.
Where could your organization begin to value and develop the differences in both men and women’s offerings?
Ellen, were and are the standardized tests developed predominantly by men?
Posted by: Conrad | May 7, 2008 11:26 AM | Permalink to Comment