In “Underrepresentation or Misrepresentation”, Kimura raised an opinion that the cognitive difference for men and women is caused by the prenatal levels of sex hormone. This is the most popular idea about the cognitive difference in sex and has many researches about that. However, underlying this opinion, we can find two assumptions. The first one is that there exist differences in cognitive abilities. The second is that there exist sex differences in hormones. As long as we find enough material to show that these two assumptions are true, we could make the assumption that cognitive difference is due to difference in hormone. However, with the data provided in “Science, Sex, And Good Sense: Why Women Are Underrepresented in Some Areas of Science and Math”, the two assumptions are not totally true.

There exists no cognitive difference. With the data that women are obtaining 50% of the MD degrees from medical schools and 44% of PhDs in biology and life science, we can know that women are succeeding in some sciences, which means that most of women have the cognitive abilities needed in science. Also, in general, girls get higher grades in school and are more likely to graduate from high school. In test scores, girls show great advantages in writing, which is a necessary skill in science. With those facts in mind, we may ask that if women are better than men, why most of the statistics show that women get less grades in tests. So it is proper to doubt the interpretation about existing statistics about the cognitive difference. Many people use the tail ratio (P125) to interpret those data, which shows that the ratio of males to females at extremely high-ability levels strongly favors males. However, because of fewer women in science, there must have more males than females in science who are not at high-ability levels. So if we consider about the number but not the ratio, these tests actually favor females. Also, other seemly persuasive data such as SAT-M and IQ Score Band all have their own defects, which I have showed in my previous blogs. So in fact, the existing data could not show the cognitive difference in sex but show that women have the same cognitive abilities as men.

It is true that different types of hormones predominate in different sex, though all categories of hormones are produced in males and females. So it is proper to say that there exists sex difference in hormones. However, the study of the cab drives in London (P127, Line25) shows that things inside the brain could be changed through the life with the practice. So does hormone. The fact is that hormones do not produce fixed effects and can be influenced by the environments. So because of the effects produced by hormones could be changed, we could not say that the cognitive difference is directly due to hormones. What’s more important, the cognitive differences do not exist. So the assumption made in title could never be true.

We could extend the conclusion to that all the sentences look like “Cognitive difference is caused by …” can never be true because the assumption underlying the sentences has been showed false.

So how could we explain the great sex difference in science field? If there has no cognitive difference, what is the reason for fewer women in science? Halpern raised a persuasive opinion about the jobs in science field which could answer these questions. She thought that work in science field needs a lot of time and has many pressures, so the conditions of academic life are particularly difficult for women, especially for those who have caregiving responsibilities. Here, we should distinguish her opinion with the opinion we learned before about the interest difference in science. Interest difference means that women are more willing to spend time in family rather than in science. But her opinion is quite different. She means that women have the caregiving responsibilities and have to give up the work in science. However, who said that women must have the responsibilities, which forces them to give up work in science? It is gender schema. Gender schema forces women to be nurturing and stipulates that women have the responsibilities to take care of family while men do not. If men could take responsible for part of works in family, women definitely do not need to give up their work.

Reference:

Underrepresentation or Misrepresentation   by Doreen Kimura

Science, Sex, and Good Sense: Why Women Are Underrepresented in Some Areas of Science and Math                                                                      by Diana F. Halpern