Carly Hood reviews Gina Rippon's book, The Gendered Brain, highlighting why we must move on from searching for sex differences in the brain, and how science has been inappropriately used to support the gender roles agenda.
In her book The Gendered Brain – The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain, cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon vividly dissects the prevalent desire to use biology to fully explain, or even support, gendered societal norms.
As an international expert on neuroimaging techniques, Rippon has a clear-sighted vantage point from which to appraise the study of sex/gender differences in the brain. What she found was not only a lack of conclusive evidence for sex-differences, but a field that is complicit in the hunt for one. From this came the polemic that is The Gendered Brain. It begins by tracing the evolution of essentialism – the prevailing idea that the brain is built on one of two distinct biological templates male or female – and deftly uproots it. Essentialism is born of the belief that women’s brains are inferior, deficient or fragile. This inferiority corresponds to a diminished cognitive capacity which, in turn, is used to justify women’s subordinate place in society. Sound science should begin with a question, but all too often in the field of sex-differences, it begins with an assumption that emerged long before we were able to examine it in any empirical way.
Rippon gifts readers with the skill set to critically examine science and gently challenge how it is viewed as an arbiter of truth
The first section provides a sweeping overview of how science has been used to support essentialism. The hunt for a sex-difference is demonstrated in how various methodologies, from measuring skull capacity using birdseed to phrenology, were repeatedly discarded as they did not reveal the desired differences between male and female brains. As movements that demanded increased access to education, property and political power for women gained momentum, so did the drive to find a biological template that irrefutably proved that gender roles are fixed and innate. As more modern methodologies such as neuroimaging still did not find reliable anatomical differences between the two, the rhetoric shifted to a “complementary” approach. This asserts that although females have deficits in skills such as spatial cognition, they have “compensating” skills in the form of empathy and intuition. Conveniently, these skills are better suited to roles that limit their influence in public spheres of society, say, science or politics. Even as studies have not been able to find sex-based differences in specific skills, the argument has transfigured again to say that females, though competent, are simply less interested in scientific professions. This particular argument has been used to justify gender gaps in STEM subjects.
Importantly, Rippon uses her knowledge of neuroimaging to hone in on how the advent of such techniques, viewed as “a window into the brain”, have propelled the narrative of a sex-based brain difference in the mainstream consciousness. With features from endocrinology and psychology, the latest scientific results are taken as revelatory in neuroscientific research. The results are reported and cited in professional journals that are then picked up in popular press as “established scientific findings”, complete with brightly coloured figures of brains to curate the credibility. What is less readily reported, however, is the bias of researchers that influence experimental designs, inadequate controls, weak statistical power, spurious correlations, misinterpretation and publication bias that sex-difference research is riddled with. At best, such research can be re-interpreted in the light of new findings, at worst, labelled intellectual rubbish. Rippon refers to it as “neurotrash” and highlights its ubiquity in a way that others have been reluctant to.
When children are raised in a society that observes sex-based differences, their developing brains form different expectations
After her cross-disciplinary description of how brain-based sex biases have come to dominate the public consciousness, Rippon arrives at the main thesis of her work: a gendered world will produce a gendered brain. Gina Rippon is not a sex-difference denier. What she aims to communicate is that sex is only one of the many variables that determine the brain - and our social environments have a major stake. The final section of her book is a powerful delivery of how the brain, with its life-long plasticity, is influenced by the rules of social engagement. Rippon seamlessly weaves together studies from fields such as developmental psychology and neuroscience to illustrate how this process begins at birth. Children, referred to as “social sponges”, constantly monitor their social environment. When children are raised in a society that observes sex-based differences, their developing brains form different expectations, leading to different social experiences. Brains encode every social interaction with emotions to either reinforce or avoid a given interaction with the world, and it is this that largely drives males and females down different trajectories. By deftly shifting the focus from limitations imposed by innate biology to those of cultural ideas, Rippon posits an outside-in theory that gives a starting point for a discussion that is still very much needed.
The strength of The Gendered Brain lies in its framing of this discussion. In the first section, Rippon gifts readers with the skill set to critically examine science and gently challenge how it is viewed as an arbiter of truth. For those within the field, this appraisal serves as a reminder of the influence society has on scientific practice and the potential of science to hinder progress just as adeptly as it can propagate it. After dispelling the scientific legitimacy of a “female” brain, Rippon demonstrates how we can more appropriately conceptualise the brain as a dynamic interface between biology and social environment. By discarding the rigid, binary template, we allow for conversations that include people who are non-cis and non-binary, previously excluded in the sex-difference debate. This is one of many positive changes that may precipitate. As the idea that “the brain, as plastic and mouldable as [it is] known to be, reflects more so the [life] lived, not the sex” gains traction, we are free to consider a society where our brains are not diverted down a sex-based pathway.
This article was written by Carly Hood and edited by Ailie McWhinnie. Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch!
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