23 Dec The truth….. are boys and girls brains different?

Are boys and girls’ brains physically different? Or do we as a society make them that way? Do we have the answer to nature or nurture, when it comes to how our kids behave and who they become?

I have both a son and a daughter who live up to gender stereotypes in a lot of ways. My girl is better at communication. She can tell me all about her day in detail, whereas I get a simple shrug and, “yeah it was good” from my son. My daughter demonstrates, “mothering” qualities where she feeds, nurses and gives her dolls and soft toys hugs and kisses. Whereas my son will more often make pretend guns, create fighting space planes and do lots of battle type play. Her favourite things are pink and unicorns, he loves superheroes.

BUT my daughter is also a huge fan of Spiderman, is usually the instigator of wrestling matches and is a much better climber and faster runner than her older brother. My son has always played with dolls, loves dressing up (princess stuff too!) and is so kind, affectionate and caring to everyone he meets.

So does it come down to their individual personality, the way they’re brought up, the roles society constructs and reinforces for them, or are boys and girls brains physically different?

Let’s look at the science…

Firstly, is there a male and female brain? The more brains scientists have studied, the weaker the evidence for boys and girls brains being wired differently.

Any difference is more to do with the size of someone’s brain (with male adults being 11% bigger than a woman’s). However, it should be noted that bigger does not necessarily mean better… but you can see how it’s been interpreted this way, leading to false messaging that female brains are somehow inferior to male brains.

“When overall size is properly controlled, no individual brain region varies by more than about 1% between men and women, and even these tiny differences are not found consistently across geographically or ethnically diverse populations,” says Professor of Neuroscience, Lise Eliot, who has completed 30 years of research on human brain differences.

In the animal world there are cases of brains with sexual dimorphism (a term used to describe distinct differences between male and female brains). For example, the males of certain birds have a 6x larger song-control nucleus (responsible for male-only courtship singing). But “nothing in human brains comes remotely close to this” says Professor Eliot. There isn’t a, ‘male brain’ and a, ‘female brain.’

A study that analysed the MRI’s of more than 1,400 human brains revealed extensive overlap between the distributions of females and males all grey matter, white matter and the connections between the two. Instead of there being a, ‘male brain’ and a, ‘female brain,’ the study says, “human brains are comprised of unique mosaics of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males.”

“What’s more, recent research has utterly rejected the idea that the tiny difference in connectivity between left and right hemispheres actually explains any behavioural difference between men and women,” Professor Eliot claims.

Therefore boys and girls brains may be different, but so are the brain comparisons between a boy and another boy, or a girl and another girl’s brain. Professor Eliot says, ‘Your child’s brain is no more gendered than their liver, kidneys or heart.’

We’ve all been fed the belief that the makeup of a boys brain means they’re more impulsive and decisive, whereas a girl’s brain means she’s more chatty and caring, but is this mainly down to how they’ve been treated since being born?

So, why have we been led to believe girls and boys brains are different?

It turns out that gender stereotypes and sexism have played a huge part in false messaging about whether girls and boys brains are different. A lot of previous studies looking at brain differences of men and women are regularly misinterpreted, include weak statistics, or have a huge design flaw in how the study has been carried out.

As well as not looking at wider variables when studying the difference of behaviours between boys and girls, researchers regularly use terms like, “fundamental” and “profound,” even when closer inspection of the data shows only tiny or statistically insignificant results.

Neurobiologist Gina Rippon defines neurosexism as, “the practice of claiming that there are fixed differences between female and male brains, which can explain women’s inferiority or unsuitability for certain roles.” Whereas in today’s world these myths about what, “only a man can do” or what roles, “only a woman can do” have been totally disproven.

You have to remember that before now, the researchers conducting gender brain difference studies are part of a generation where they’ve been told their whole lives that men and women have different capabilities. This has potentially resulted in a sexual bias when it comes to the way that results are read and reported, even if they had no intention to do so.

“By spotting sex-dependent activity in certain brain regions – such as those associated with empathising, learning languages or spatial processing – neurosexist studies have allowed an established “go-to list” of sex differences to flourish. This includes things such as men being more logical and women being better at languages or nurturing,” says Gina Rippon, when this is not always the case.

So why is there often a difference between how boys and girls act?

So if it’s not the brain wiring that’s different, why does there seem to be differences between girls and boys? It’s the external factors that will shape how someone’s brain responds. Cognitive Neuroscientist Gina Rippon says, “A gendered world will produce a gendered brain.”

Your child is soaking up information around them like a sponge and the saturated pink and blue culture around us that starts even before they’re born at gender reveals, has a big impact on how they see themselves and the choices they make.

For example, if you expect boys to be childish and immature, they will be. If you expect girls to grown up and be mature, they will be.

By the age of three, the gendered messaging of our society is already being internalised by children and by the age of six it can be fairly fixed and harder to change. This then leads to the difference in expectations, self-confidence and risk-taking that drives boys and girls down different paths when it comes to their careers, roles in life and achievements.

That’s why it’s crucial to remove gender stereotypes as much as possible, so that children are able to develop to their fullest potential. We need to dispute that boy and girl brains are different and that they are pre-disposed to be a certain way.

Too often female brains and actions have been put across as a strange variant of the “real” thing e.g. a ‘female surgeon, a ‘female footballer.’ This is everyday language and descriptions that affect how boys and girls see themselves and each other.

If you agree then you’ll love what we’re all about at Simply Gender Free. We hate gender stereotypes and believe your kids personality is far more important than what they “should” be like or into, just because they’re a girl or a boy.

We also want to make it easier for you to raise your kids without gender-based limits because let’s face it, society pushes this blue and pink gender divide relentlessly and we feel we’re stronger together. So feel free to join our mailing list, or follow us on social media if you’re not already. We’re a group of like-minded parents trying to give our kids all the opportunities they deserve.

Kat O'Shea

Hi, I’m Kat, mum to Leo and Emily. I set up Simply Gender Free because the sea of pink and blue in shops was driving me mad. I love pink, love blue, but our kids should be encouraged to enjoy so much more! Gender stereotypes are rife in kids products and they create limitations to what kids want to enjoy and be in life. So I wanted to make it easier for parents like you to find kids products that suit their personalities, not their gender.