Cordelia Fine has some interesting, and I find quite cheering, stuff to say about gender and ‘how we get it.’ (my quote marks.)
‘There may be slight variations in the brains of women and men, says Fine, a researcher at Melbourne University, but the wiring is soft, not hard. ”It is flexible, malleable and changeable,” she says.’
‘It is a case backed by Lise Eliot, an associate professor based at the Chicago Medical School. ”All the mounting evidence indicates these ideas about hard-wired differences between male and female brains are wrong,” she says.
”Yes, there are basic behavioural differences between the sexes, but we should note that these differences increase with age because our children’s intellectual biases are being exaggerated and intensified by our gendered culture. Children don’t inherit intellectual differences. They learn them. They are a result of what we expect a boy or a girl to be.”’
All relevant stuff for those of us who work with young people and are interested both in personal development work around relationships as well as the often asked for ‘girls only’ and ‘boys only’ groups.
‘In fact, there are no major neurological differences between the sexes, says Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender…’
Hmm…