MANLINESS, PART 10

We need to avoid clichés, but there does seem to be truth in the claim that women are stronger in empathy, and men are stronger in systemizing. There are good scientific reasons for this. Simon Baron-Cohen explains systemizing like this,

Systemizing is the drive to understand a system and to build one. [A system is] anything which is governed by rules specifying input-operation-output relationships. This definition takes in systems beyond machines, such as maths, physics, chemistry, astronomy, logic, music, military strategy, the climate, sailing, horticulture, and computer programming. It also includes systems like libraries, economics, companies, taxonomies, board games or sports.

If this definition is accurate, and if men are more naturally inclined to systemizing it explains why it is men who tend to take the lead in these areas. It is not that women cannot do these things, or on occasion do them better than men (one thinks of Dee Caffari in sailing) but that it will tend to be men who do them.

As an example of the different way in which male and female brains function Baron-Cohen describes the quite shocking water level test. In this test someone is shown a bottle, tipped at an angle, and asked to predict the water level. Apparently women more often draw the water level aligned with the tilt of the bottle, whereas the true water level, no matter what the tilt of the bottle, will always be horizontal.

Then there is the truly shocking fact that only three of the 170 living Nobel Prize-winners are women. And the equally shocking fact that the ratio of men to women working in maths, physics and engineering is the same now as it was in the 1970s at 9 to 1. Now it could be argued that this is simply the result of glass ceilings and social conditioning, but the further we get into the era of womens liberation the less legitimacy this argument contains.

Instead, there seems to be a biological reason for it, to do with the development of the brain. The right hemisphere of the brain controls systemizing and the left hemisphere controls empathizing, so if your right hemisphere develops more than the left, you are more likely to display characteristics that are more typical of men. What is it that controls this unequal development? Testosterone.

The more testosterone you have the faster the right hemisphere of the brain develops, and the slower the left hemisphere develops. So it is little surprise to discover that lower levels of foetal testosterone lead to better empathizing (language, communication skills, eye contact, social skills), while higher testosterone levels lead to better systemizing skills.

The behavioural differences that result in different levels of testosterone are evident from a very early age. From just six months old girls show more electrical activity in the left hemisphere of the brain than in the right when listening to speech sounds. Which indicates that females are better empathizers than men even when they don’t understand what is being said.

As Simon Baron-Cohen’s research indicates, autism is an extreme male brain. Males tend to be further along the ‘autistic spectrum’ than females because they are biologically programmed to be better at systemizing and weaker at empathizing. This is why geeks tend to be men.

The problem is, that in our gender-neutral society, the skills that are most highly valued are those of the empathizer. This is one of the reasons why so many men appear to be so lost.