Being feminist

Yoder et al (2007) add to a growing body of literature suggesting that identifying as a feminist is good for women. Yoder measured feminist identity using five subscales identified by Fischer et al (2000). Quoting from Yoder et al (p 3-4):

• passive acceptance (“I don’t see much point in questioning the general expectation that men should be masculine and women should be feminine”)
• revelation (“Gradually, I am beginning to see just how sexist society really is”)
• embeddedness–emanation (“I am very interested in women writers”)
• synthesis (“I feel like I have blended my female attributes with my unique personal qualities”)
• active commitment (“I am very committed to a cause that I believe contributes to a more fair and just world for all people”).

Liss et al (2001) published the shocking revelations that "not having conservative beliefs" and "having a positive evaluation of feminists" predicted identification as a feminist for women. Nancy Downing Hansen's 2002 review discusses 16 years of research into the measurement of feminist identity. Ramsey et al (2007) found that regardless of their own feminist identity, women thought that other women thought negatively of feminism and feminists.

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I didn't identify as a feminist when I was a woman, probably just to be contrary. How frustrating it is to discover that I was in the majority. Ramsey's article makes me wonder if I was specifically trying to avoid some stigma I held on feminism. One piece of research I expected to see but didn't was whether there was any difference in feminist identification by social class. Yoder's assertion that positive outcomes are related to feminist identity makes me wonder whether the people who end up identifying as feminists are starting off from a more advantaged position in the first place.

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A show of hands

How much of our brain's gender is visible in our hands? Sanders and Waters (2001) found that performance on sexually dimorphic tasks was predicted not by sex, but by finger ridge count (dermatoglyphics). Most people have more ridges on their right fingertips than their left. "Male-favouring" tasks were better performed by people with more right ridges. "Female-favouring" tasks were better performed with more on their left fingers. Kimura and Carson (1993) found that the left-asymmetry was more prevalent in women and homosexual men than in the general population. Mustanski et al (2002) (with everyone's favorite "sex expert" J. Michael Bailey contributing) found that left-handedness was more prevalent in homosexual women than heterosexual women, but not in homosexual men versus heterosexual men. Mustanski found no association between dermatoglyphic asymmetry and sexual orientation. Williams et al (2000) is one of many sources to report a sexual dimorphism in finger length ratios that may reflect sexual orientation as well (see also: Rahman and Wilson, 2003, Brown et al (2002)).

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Are you looking at your hands yet? In my previous life, I read palms a little. I even volunteered as a palm reader in a charity carnival in junior high. At that point, I was taking my cues largely from the patterns I learned from my mother and from books on palmistry. After college, I still read palms -- but at that point I was trading the readings for free drinks. I also learned to do the readings more as a "warm read" -- taking cues from people's reactions more than from anything I saw on their hands.

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Social network size

Different people have different needs from their social networks, and many researchers have attempted to find gender-based patterns in these needs. Joyce Benenson (1990) found that boys had larger social networks than girls in 4th and 5th grades. Yeung et al (2007) found that women, but not men, who adhered less to traditional relationship roles, were happier with fewer close friends.

Cross and Madson (1997) suggest that men's need for independence (versus women's interdependence) leads them to have less social interaction. Responding to this article, Baumeister and Sommer (1997) suggest that the drive for independence leads men to associate in a larger, but no less important, social sphere.

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Last time we looked at social networks ("Social networks and depression", 4/17/07), I remarked that I'd noticed the closest bonds between men during my childhood. This caused me to think about my friends in this context. I see nearly equal division between men and women in the "organizers" -- the people who make get-togethers happen. One thing I don't see addressed in any of the articles cited today is the isolation that can accompany child-rearing. I tried to find what percentages of men and women worked outside the home. I haven't found an answer, but the search itself is enlightening. The phrase "work outside the home" refers specifically to women in the first 10 hits on Google.

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what IS self-esteem?

Many theories to explain gender differences hinge upon the assumption that women have lower self-esteem than men. But what is self-esteem and how is it different, if at all, from other constructs like ego, self-concept, and self-image? Where does it come from? Sadly, while many studies attempt to detect the antecedents of self-esteem, both high and low, the construct seems to be difficult to define. The idea is accepted as self-evident, but seems to encompass many different kinds and degrees of knowledge. Wikipedia defines self-esteem as "a person's overall self-appraisal of their worth." Josephs et al (1992) equates self-esteem with the sense that one is a "good person" -- going on to claim that this belief arises from independence for men and interdependence for women. Jennifer Campbell (1990) suggests that high self-esteem is associated with greater certainty in a person's self-beliefs; she claims that people with low self-esteem tend to be more susceptible to negative social cues. Benabou and Tirole (2002), writing from an economic viewpoint, argue that the differentiation between self-confidence and self-deception is a false one.

Lately, the importance of self-esteem as a predictor of behavior has been called into question. Baumeister et al (2003) argue that high achievment causes high self-esteem, and not the reverse. Swann et al's 2007 review arguing for the validity of self-esteem as a predictor provides a decent review of the history of self-esteem theory, showing how the pendulum has moved between self-esteem being a "panacea" to "inconsequential." Scheff and Fearon (2004) suggest that self-esteem research is fundamentally flawed by a bias towards cognitive evaluation versus emotional states. Pelham et al (2005) posit that differentiating between implicit and explicit self-esteem addresses this issue, as well as arguing for a gender difference on this distinction.

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Nearly 300 words and I still fail to build a definition of self-esteem any better than what I grabbed off Wikipedia. Well, doesn't that just make me feel cruddy. It's tempting to call it an umbrella term, but I can't really separate out any of the pieces without reverting to the original term. Self-esteem is rarely consistently high in all arenas and is probably more of a state than a trait (that is, it varies day-to-day rather than being stable over time). I know that when I first started testosterone treatment, my self-esteem skyrocketed. I felt fantastic, invulnerable, and competent. Was that a strictly hormonal response, or a feeling of accomplishment over beginning the medical phase of my transition? There's no way for me to tell, but I have my suspicions over which factors had more influence than others.

NB: Campbell was a contributor on Baumeister et al, 2003. See also Baumeister's theories on sexuality and gossip.

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Whorls apart

minerva42 points out a story in the June 25th issue of New York Magazine by David France (2007) on possibly perceptible correlates to "gayness." France discussed physical/visible differences between gay and straight people with Richard Lippa, who is currently researching hair whorl direction as a possible correlate, according to the article. Lippa suspects that counter-clockwise whorls will be found more often in homosexual men.

Hair whorls have actually been studied since at least the 1970's. Smith and Gong (1973) suggest that counter-clockwise hair whorl is an indicator of abnormal brain development. Alexander et al (1993) cautiously reported a higher incidence of counter-clockwise whorls in schizophrenic patients. Amar Klar (2004) suggests that a similar genetic mechanism passes on hair whorl and handedness, and found a much higher incidence of counter-clockwise whorl in suspected gay populations (he counted whorls at gay beaches). Ziering and Krenitsky (2003) found that white males had the most distinct whorls, with African Americans and women more likely to have a "diffusion pattern."

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My initial, flip, interpretation of hair-whorl direction was that it was because gay men brushed their hair while looking in a mirror, and that straight men did it by feel. However, Amar insists that 96% of people have an innate, unalterable hair whorl. Attempts to demonstrate a relationship between handedness and sexual orientation have had very mixed results. Klar suggests that the genetic mechanism by which handedness and whorl are determined is similar, so I'd suspect that in the final analysis, whorl will turn out to be a weak indicator at best. The fact that this possible indicator is largely present only in white males is a whole other can of worms, but I feel it's worth mentioning that this feels like a continuation of the stereotype that all men are white, and that all homosexuals are male.

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Gender Classification

Teaching computers to distinguish between male and female faces is a ticklish problem. Chellappa et al's 1995 review discusses the facial recognition methods used until the mid 1990's, which had limited success. Moghaddam et al (2000) got better results on low resolution thumbnails with their Support Vector machines (SVM) than human test subjects tested on the same set of images. Kim et al (2006) confirms that SVMs are showing very promising results.

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One of the first arguments I got into over gender on the internet started over a "Spot the Drag Queen" quiz that was circulating. People were very proud (or embarrassed) of their ability (or inability) to separate drag queens from "real women" based on pictures of faces. I felt that the entire debate was meaningless, believing (as I still do) that if someone is presenting as female, attempting to look past presentation is not only rude, but isn't going to help you interact with them. That being said, I'd love to look at is the criteria these SVMs are using to make their classifications.

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Mid-life strokes

Miranda Hitti's (2007) article on WebMD discusses recent research that suggests that women 45-54 are more than twice as likely to have a stroke as men of similar age. UCLA researcher Amytis Towfighi's results in Neurology's June 20th edition (Towfighi et al, 2007) assessed stroke risk in over 17,000 Americans, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), and found that women's risk factors increased at a higher rate than men's from ages 35 to 64, as did the prevalence of stroke. Towfighi also reports that a history of heart disease and waist circumference were associated with stroke history. In contrast, Grocott et al (2005) found no correlation between stroke incidence and gender in a sample of 1635 cardiac bypass patients. Brown et al (1996) notes that more strokes may be being detected than in previous decades due to improvements in medical technology. Because both Towfighi and Grocott depend on the sample's self-reported stroke rate, there could be a confound of men not seeing a doctor for minor strokes.

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"We think he had a little stroke." I can't count the number of times I've heard that exact phrase. As discussed previously ("Playing Doctor", 8/31/2006), women go to the doctor more often than men, although this may simply be because they have more health problems. Still, it does not seem impossible to me that women would report more strokes than men if they were more likely to have stroke-like symptoms checked out. Sadly, because Towfighi's paper is available "ahead of print", I don't seem to be able to get the full text with my online access -- just the abstract. I'll be happy to discuss the controls for this sort of issue if someone can get it to me.

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Transsexual Brains

Several studies have attempted to determine what the structural differences are in transsexual brains. Gooren's 1990 review discussed differences in brain development on fetuses exposed to unusual hormonal environments. Zhou et al (1995) found that the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) was smaller in men than in women, and found that in the six male-to-female transsexuals they examined (regardless of hormone treatment history), this same area was of a female size. In a follow-up article five years later, Kruijver et al (2000) (including Zhou) found more similarities between cisgendered female and MTF-transsexual BTSc, using the same sample as in 1995, plus 16 new brains

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I've been avoiding this topic. I've been asked about when it will hit Difference Blog (and about other transsexual topics) and I tend to mumble and look the other way. I don't think it's important, I don't like the way it's handled., and I'm generally unimpressed with the science. But mostly, I avoid it because Difference Blog is not about transsexuals, but about the differences between otherwise matched men and women.

Besides: the way I look at it, if I'm not going to let a piece of flesh several inches long determine how I'm going to live my life, why would I let a piece of brain a couple of millimeters across do it?

ToM's Jealousy

Evolutionary psychology suggests that men and women value different characteristics in a mate. Wade and Fowler (2006) attempted to test this model to see how the features of the partner in infidelity affected the level of upset in men and women. Their results suggest that only women may rate the competitor in their mate's terms. While attractiveness has been found to be more important to men, and financial well-being as more important to women, women were more upset when the competitor was attractive. Men's level of upset was not affected by the financial success of a competitor. However, as discussed in October ("The Jealous Type", 10/25/06), this is is contrary to findings by Dijkstra and Buunk (2002), who did find that men became more jealous of more successful rivals. Nadler and Dotan (1992) suggest that men's jealousy is more focused on protecting their egos, while women's is focused on protecting the relationship.

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The relationship between attraction criteria and jealous reactions seems to be largely a theory of mind (ToM) question, as much as I'm loathe to admit it. I think ToM is a red herring, but I can't think of a better way to describe people reacting to their partner's predicted reactions. The idea in most of today's studies is that people will not react to what is important to them, but to what is important to their partner in a rival. While I don't think that knowing a partner's tastes is unusual, it seems likely that people would prioritize these factors inaccurately. Actually, I think that, for me, this ties in with yesterday's post on emotional memories (6/18/07), because it is so hard for me to imagine being good at accurately judging someone else's reactions. Does that idea feel natural or easy to you? How much do you stake on your ability to judge others?

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Emotional Memory

J. E. Ledoux (1993) defined emotional memory as "learning and storage of information about the emotional significance of events." Bloise and Johnson (2007) used items from Ronald Riggio's Social Skills Inventory (SSI) on a group of undergraduate men and women. While they did confirm that (according to this measure) women tended to be more emotionally sensitive than men, they found that emotional sensitivity was a greater predictor of memory content than gender -- suggesting there may be more to the "women have better emotional memories" stereotype than just sex. Sensitive men were more likely to remember emotional content than insensitive women.

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The emotional sensitivity measured by Bloise and Johnson isn't as much about being aware or prey to one's own emotions, but about the accuracy of reading emotions in others. Only two of the twelve questions relate to self-awareness of emotion. For people like me, who have trouble accurately assessing other people's emotional reactions, emotional memory doesn't seem to have much utility. Inaccurate memories are worse than none at all.

Today is my birthday. It would be super-awesome if you'd tell your friends about differenceblog. ;)

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Couch Potatoes

Are men or women more likely to be sedentary? According to the CDC (2005), Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) for 2004, 25.9% of women vs. 21.4% of men reported no physical activity outside their "regular job." Caspersen et al (2000) found that gaps in physical activity were greater between adolescent males and females than between adult males and females, but that males consistently reported activity more often. Martínez-González et al (1999) found that women in the European Union spent less leisure time sitting than males (at 22 vs. 23 hours per week, median, n = 15,239). Lulwa Shaloub (2007), in an article for Arab News, notes that women in Saudi Arabia tend to lead sedentary lives, but still outlive their male counterparts by an average of two years. Cardiologist Bill Choi in Barbara Abel's interview for Healthlink (2005) suggests that women are "more receptive" to adding aerobic exercise to their lifestyle, and do more housework, burning more calories.

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For a writing class a couple of years ago, I had to administer a survey to 10 people which asked about their physical activity. One of the women I surveyed was highly reluctant to participate, and later she told me that she hated these surveys because admitting how little she exercised was very embarrassing for her. It reminded me a lot of my response to Myers-Briggs personality questions, because I always feel like there's an obvious "right" answer, and it's not my honest one (I'm quirky about MBTI questions). My own leisure time is embarrassingly sedentary. I never played sports voluntarily as a kid, and even now, I have to be bribed and cajoled into physical activity, unless you count playing Wii.

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Maternal influence on sexual behavior

Kendrick et al (1998) state that (in sheep and goats) the effect a mother has on her male offspring's sexual behaviors is more extreme and more durable than the effect she has on her female offspring's behavior. McNeely et al (2002) found that human mothers had a greater influence over their daughter's age at first sex than their son's. Newcomer and Udry (1984) find no difference in attitudes communicated to children, and suggest a biological component. They hypothesize that daughters of women who reached sexual maturation early (age at menarche) would be more likely to reach sexual maturity early themselves. However, no speculation is made as to the sexual maturity of boys. Kalmuss et al (2003) also suggests that age of sexual maturity is linked to age at onset of sexual activity, in both boys and girls.

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So, how do they determine "sexual preferences" in animals without mounting behaviors (females)? In Kendrick's article, the choice model is explained in far more detail for the male cross-nurtured animals than for the females. More importantly, why do the sexuality discussions keep coming back to sheep? Jokes aside, human mating choices are ridiculously complicated.

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Mommy and Daddy

The Daily Mail (UK, 2007) reports on research (publication pending) by Lynda Boothroyd of the University of Durham (UK) that indicates that women are attracted to men who resemble their fathers, mediated by their relationship with their father. Girls who like their fathers are more likely to be attracted to men who resemble them. Boothroyd was also a contributor on Cornwell (2006), which suggested that rate of sexual development played a role in the assortative mating choices.

The idea that people are attracted to mates who are like their parents is hardly a new one, going back at least to Sigmund Freud. However, most modern research has focused on the ways that people are attracted to mates that behave like their parents, rather than physically resemble them. For example, Olivetti et al (2002) found that men whose mothers had worked or were educated were more likely to marry educated, working women themselves.

[edit, 11:18am: See also Perrett et al (2002), who found that children born to older parents were less impressed by youth in rating attractiveness in potential mates.]

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Obviously I have been using the wrong keywords, because despite all of the times I've heard people say that men marry their mothers or women marry their fathers (metaphorically speaking), finding any research that addresses this issue from a non-Freudian perspective is proving nearly impossible, and there's only so much castration theory I can read before breakfast. This is another case where I'm putting it out to you folks. If you're aware of any other sources discussing physical resemblance between parents and mates, I'd love to see them.

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Instant Human

P. J. Rogers' 2007 review calls caffeine the most popular drug in the world. In Canada, at least, it's been very much in the news recently. The Hamilton Spectator (2007) reports that Ahmed El-Sohemy has found a gene that seems to be linked to elevated mood effects from caffeine, at least in men. Different gene phenotypes made a 60% to 20% difference in reporting elevated mood in men, but in women, about 50% reported the mood lift, regardless of gene type. The Ottawa Citizen (2007) suggests that this mood elevation is linked to "caffeine-seeking behaviour", although El-Sohemy did not call this an "addiction." The Edmonton Sun (2007) said that El-Sohemy reported these results at the Advanced Foods and Materials Network Scientific Conference. According to the Ottawa Citizen article, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes caffeine dependence but the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) does not.

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You know the guy: the one who went through a couple of 2-liter bottles of soda a day, and hates coffee? In my experience, that's pretty much always been a guy. My first experience with it was my father. By college, it was me, although I was more than happy to drink coffee when available. Mountain Dew was just more convenient. However, I don't think that El-Sohemy's work is suggesting that women don't get addicted to caffeine. Because there's no way to accurately rate the degree of the mood lift, it seems more likely that women would demonstrate these caffeine seeking behaviours. Because El-Sohemy's results were presented at a conference, and don't appear to be on his webpage, I can't speculate much further without a lot more coffee.

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Following the money

Table from Barclay's 2007 report.
Click to enlarge

A report released today by Barclays (2007) indicates that the wealthiest women earned their money from a job or business, rather than through marriage or inheritance. The report calls the latter sources the "traditional" sources of wealth for women, although no data from earlier surveys is offered to show a trend.

The Times of India (2007) quotes the report as saying that Asian women beat the global average for "income from a business" at 26%, but the global figure they quote (20%) does not appear to be in the Barclays report. It is worth noting that this figure is not "percentage of wealth" but rather "percentage of women reporting a significant contributor from a source" (see inset chart).

Barclays report indicates that less than 1 in 5 women report inheritance as a major factor, compared to 1 in 6 men. About 1 in 4 women indicate that some of their money came from marriage; only 1 in 10 men say the same. Unfortunately, the report is very unclear as to which of their claims refer to which survey. One survey included only 600 of Barclays wealthiest customers, both male and female. Other figures appear to refer to a survey of 100,000 North American women by Bremmer and Kesselring (2006), which focuses more on the effect of increased income on divorce rates (it raises them).

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I had high hopes about this report when I saw it in the morning paper, and it's certainly full of "fun facts" but I have come to define the alliterative "fun fact" as "controversial claim sans citation." The production values are high, and it's full of pretty charts, but they're not as informative as I'd like. Still, for those interested in the economic status of women outside the U.S., it may be a worthwhile read. Since the surveys appear to rely almost entirely on self-report, I'd be very surprised if there weren't an effect of the social acceptability of each response in various cultures.

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Meta-analysis of personality differences

Alan Feingold (1994) analyzed 30 years of literature data, and 50 years of test norming data, to determine what personality differences existed between men and women. Feingold also replicated the meta-analysis method used by Judith Hall for her book Nonverbal Sex Differences (Hall, 1984), to see if there were any trends over time. Feingold compared more recent studies against Hall's analysis and The Psychology of Sex Differences (Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974), finding that the self-esteem gap was widening, but that the anxiety gap was narrowing. Feingold found that men were more assertive and had higher self-esteem than women, but that women were more extraverted, anxious, and nurturing. Feingold found no differences in impulsiveness or shyness between men and women. Cohn (1991) analyzed trends (from 65 studies over 17 years) in personality development in males and females, and found that while girls have a more developed ego in childhood and adolescence, this difference disappears by adulthood.

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I use Google Scholar to jumpstart The Difference Blog most days, (although sometimes a news item will draw my attention) and so it's no surprise to me that most of the top hits for "gender differences" have already been referenced in previous posts. I was incredibly surprised to find this morning that I had missed Feingold. The trend data is the part I find particularly fascinating. Feingold found self-esteem in women actually got worse in 1984-1992 as compared to Maccoby and Jacklin (1958-1974) and Hall (1975-1983). Whether this is a measuring/sampling problem, or a anti-feminism backlash is a problem that I don't have the data to solve.

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Traditional Attitudes and Sexual assault

McMullin et al (2007) draw what they frame as a startling conclusion from their 3 year study of undergraduate women with or without a history of sexual victimization. They found that victims displayed less positive feminine personality traits and more negative masculine personality traits than non-victims. McMullin et al state: "This is contrary to Muelenhard and Linton's (1987) suggestion that sexual victimization may lead to more traditional attitudes."

However, this does not appear to be the conclusion in Muelenhard and Linton's assessment of risk factors for date rape at all: "men who had engaged in [sexual assault] were more traditional than other men, whereas women who had experienced [sexual assault] were less traditional than other women." Anderson and Lyons (2005) found that although men were more likely to "blame the victim" than women in cases of sexual assault, this difference was mediated by acceptance of traditional gender roles. Howells et al (1984) also found that attitudes towards women was a good predictor of attitudes towards rape in both men and women.

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I'm probably way off base here, but it doesn't surprise me that McMullin drew the same conclusion as Muelenhard and Linton. It seems unlikely to me that people who would be willing to discuss their sexual assault at three follow-up interviews would continue to blame themselves for the assault. While I wouldn't be surprised to see some reports of feelings of self-blaming or guilt from assault victims, I would expect to see far fewer reports of sexual assault among people who tended to blame themselves. It seems (to my completely unqualified eye) like this is a reporting question more than a causal one.

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Queer @ Work

Gay men and women have many challenges in the workplace. Some are similar; some are different. Chung and Harmon (1994) suggest that gay men are more likely to be interested in traditionally feminine careers than straight men, although they found that masculinity/femininity was not a predictor (as determined by BSRI). Adams et al (2005) did not find that Latino gay and lesbian youth felt restrictions on their career choices based on either their gender or sexual orientation.

Nam Cam Trau and Härtel (2004) suggest that the extra energy needed by gay men to explore and consolidate their gay identity takes away time that straight men have available to put towards career exploration. In addition, they suggest that the lack of a female partner at business social events makes personal bonding with those in a position to help these men advance difficult. Nam Cam Tau and Härtel feel that these are challenges that probably face lesbians as well. However, this study included both out and closeted gay men. Peplau and Fingerhut (2004) work from the assumption of openness in their study of lesbian workplace issues. They find that stereotypes about lesbians depict them as more competent and committed workers than their straight counterparts.

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In the 1995 movie Jeffrey, Nathan Lane's character "Father Dan" says: "I'm a Catholic priest. Historically, that falls somewhere between chorus boy and florist." The idea of traditionally gay careers is well established (at least for men). However, given the general artifact of lesbian invisibility, I was very surprised by Peplau and Fingerhut's results based on a survey of heterosexual undergraduates. In the study, the students were given written examples of a "straight woman" and a "lesbian", but in real life, that distinction is rarely so straightforward.

Another issue I had with the studies used today was the sample sizes. Adams interviewed eight people; Nam Cam Trau and Härtel interviewed five. Finding a reasonable sample of willing participants for gay and lesbian studies is a constant issue.

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What's your major

Morgan et al (2001) found both men and women ranked "interesting work" as a high priority when determining their career choices, as determined by college major. However, the two groups seemed to find different things interesting: men were more likely to be enrolled in math or physical science programs, whereas women were more likely to choose education or arts/humanities. No difference was found in the fields of health care, social sciences, or business. Morgan et al also found that women listed interpersonal goals as more important, and status goals as less important, than their male counterparts.

Fernandez et al (2006) suggest that sexism is related to college program choice. They found in undergraduates at the University of Vigo (Spain) that both men and women in technical programs expressed more sexist attitudes than those in other programs. Nadya Fouad's 2006 review on vocational psychology calls gender and sexual orientation "contextual influences" on career choice, but notes that little research has been done on sexual orientation. More discussion of sexual orientation's influence on career development will follow tomorrow.

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My college career was just as mixed up as the rest of my life has been. When the application asked for my "first choice" major, I answered "mathematics." My second-choice major was listed as "theatre." Unsurprisingly, I got my first choice, although I ended up changing majors from math to theatre a mere three months into my college career. Two years into that program, I switched my concentration from "performance" to "technical" (although my course load was so mixed up by this point that I ended up graduating with a "generalist" degree -- a "Bachelor of Science in Theatre Generalism", actually). A decade later, I find myself two years into a psychology program, but increasingly drawn to (and intimidated by) biology.

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Sexuality and mental rotation

Judy Skatssoon (6/4/2007), writing for news.com.au, says that the University of Warwick has "dealt heterosexual women a final indignity." Skatssoon is referring to research by Michael Tlauka that found differences in mental rotation ability, with straight men scoring the highest while straight women scored the lowest. However, although the news articles attribute this work to Tlauka, the paper published in April's Archives of Sexual Behavior was published by Maylor et al (2007).

Tlauka et al (2005) tested men and women with paper and computer maps in a virtual store, and found that men required less time and made fewer mistakes than their female counterparts. Martin et al's 2007 review of the effect of testosterone and estrogen finds that gender differences in spatial ability are "large and robust."

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Mental rotation tasks (MRT) are probably one of my favorite topics because they really do seem to consistently break down by gender. The fact that Maylor et al found that ability appeared to vary by sexuality (determined by self-identification, on an internet survey) continues to tie sexuality and gender together in a way that I politically deny and inwardly fear may be true. Research that classifies by sexuality often seems to suggest that lesbians are more "manly" and gay men more "womanly" than their straight counterparts. I don't know what to make of it, but it feels to me as if they are asking the wrong questions.

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Math vs. Verbal

Hyde and Linn (1988) suggest in their meta-analysis of 165 studies that gender differences in verbal ability may "no longer exist." In their paper on math and science differences in the following year, Linn and Hyde (1989) do find substantial differences, which they attribute to differences in access and encouragement. Herbert Marsh (1990) agrees that gender differences in performance were diminishing as of the 1990's.

Skaalvik and Skaalvik (2004) point out that performance and self-concept do not exactly correlate for girls and boys in the same way; in their Norwegian sample, girls got better grades at all levels, but boys reported better confidence in math and science, whereas girls reported more interest in language-related courses. Difference in confidence on a particular type of task could well promote differences in adult career choices.

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You may remember that Janet Hyde is the author of the "gender similarities hypothesis." While I think that Hyde and Linn's attempts to demonstrate that gender differences are negligible is misguided, I do agree with one point made in their 1989 paper: "gender differences in height, physical strength, career access, and earning power are much larger and more stable than gender differences on cognitive and psychosocial tasks." Yes, period, the end. The difference in confidence (in all areas of life) seems to me to be the most stable psychological gender difference, and the most deserving of attention and repair. Talent is great, but has nothing on effort in terms of results.

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