Neuroscientist Gina Rippon, a professor at Ashton University, said this week that she believes gender differences are caused by society stereotypes. She said that gender differences have no scientific grounding
* Giving children gender-specific toys 'changes the way our brains are wired'
* She thinks women are better at multitasking as society requires them to be
A neuroscientist has claimed the expression 'Men are from Mars and women are from Venus' has no scientific grounding, and that instead our brains are changed by the roles society forces us to play.
According to Gina Rippon, a professor at Ashton University in Birmingham, stereotypes - such as women's supposed inability to read maps, or the idea men are bad at multitasking - have no links to science.
Instead of being wired in different ways, Professor Rippon said that men and women are only dissimilar because the world we live in encourages gender role-playing.
Speaking earlier this week, she said the differences between men and women are caused by the 'drip, drip, drip' of gender stereotypes.
Giving children different toys according to their sex, such a Ken for a boy and a Barbie for a girl, creates gender differences within the brain, the professor from Ashton University argued
'There is pretty compelling evidence that any differences are tiny and are the result of environment not biology.'
The Telegraph reported that Prof Rippon said that she disagreed with gender stereotypes instilled in children from a young age.
The fact that boys and girls are given different toys based on their sex is what creates gender differences within the brain, she said.
By playing with a Barbie rather than a train, for example, a girl's brain is programmed to become more feminine.
Professor Rippon also said that more emphasis should be placed on the fact that the brain is in fact a muscle - and can therefore be exercised according to what it is required to do.
So for example spending a long time mutitasking, would cause the relevant section of a woman's brain would to develop.
A woman's brain would therefore become wired to multitask because of the role that she is expected to play, she said.
Professor Rippon's comments clash with American studies completed in December last year which highlighted differences in the way the brains of men and women are wired.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of 1,000 men, women, boys and girls.
Through the analysis, experts found that the male brain is wired from front to back whereas the female brain is crisscrossed from left to right.
In a piece in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the researchers said that the differences in wiring could explain why men tend to be better at performing one task such as cycling whereas woman are more equipped for mutlitasking.
On International Women's Day today, Prof Rippon will be speaking at the Women of the World festival, held at the Southbank Centre in London.
Prof Rippon's comments clash with American studies completed in December last year which highlighted differences in the way the brains' of men and women are wired. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of 1,000 men, women, girls and boys. Through the analysis, they found that the male brain is wired from front to back whereas the female brain is crisscrossed from left to right
not last time i dissected one. as much as i'd like to believe that we are the same, male and female (and we ARE more similar than dissimilar) environmental factors and social "norms" DO play a huge role but so do hormones...which bath the whole body system and testosterone shapes development differently than estrogen does.