Difference Blog by Dan4th

When you're a GUY

2010-08-23T23:13:00.004-04:00

I have to say I was surprised by this Dish Network Commercial:

I was more surprised by this Twitter exchange:
dan4th: Oh Dish Network, good job pissing me off: "are you tired of paying for ... shopping channels, when you're a guy." #wtf
dishnetwork: @dan4th Official DISH Feed here,caught your Tweet. Is there something we can be of assistance with? *JB
dan4th: @dishnetwork the ad suggesting that there's something wrong with guys watching shopping channels is fairly offensive, not funny.
dishnetwork: @dan4th We have forwarded your concerns to our programming department. Thanks for the feedback. *JB

Slightly concerned that this makes me one of those people sitting around waiting for things to be offended by, but also, nice job reinforcing gender stereotypes.

--

My partner points out that I got a response from Dishnetwork through twitter in less time than he got a response from Comcast while he was on hold with their customer service. I pointed out that he should tweet at them.

--

update 12:42pm:

dishnetwork @dan4th DISH twitter team here. Shopping channels are provided at no cost. They may lower your bill as they can make DISH money. *M
dan4th: @dishnetwork The issue is that the ad implies that there's something wrong with guys being interested in shopping. it's sexist.
dan4th @dishnetwork additionally, that explanation basically means that the premise of your ad is a lie ("paying for shopping channels").
dan4th @dishnetwork which makes it both sexist and insulting. It's a terrible ad with a cheap punchline, and you should pull it.

So, I realize that by posting on DifferenceBlog, the context of the blog makes my position clear, but in case it's not clear, let me spell it out as unambiguously as I can:

I am a big fan of offensive humor. I have no problem with poking at stereotypes when it's funny, or to make a point. This ad does neither. It simply has Charlie Ergen, the founder of DISH network, implying that no guy would be interested in shopping channels, that it's intuitively obvious that guys wouldn't want shopping channels.

That's a load of crap, and not something I particularly want old white guys telling me over the commercial break. I find it particularly threatening to have an old, rich, white man telling me that it's not OK for men to like shopping during my leisure time, that I'm somehow less of a man if I watch QVC. Reinforcing those stereotypes isn't necessary to the point they're trying to make, and I find it doubly insulting when I complain about it, and then they tell me that the premise of the commercial is untrue, because the shopping channels are free anyway, and a moneymaker for DISH network.

I was mildly offended by the ad when I made the initial tweet. Now I'm legitimately angry.

News: University of Alabama Huntsville Shooting

2010-02-13T08:44:00.004-05:00

I was shocked and saddened to hear about the shooting at a faculty meeting (Huntsville Times, 2/12/10) at the University of Alabama. According to the New York Times (2/12/10), Dr. Amy Bishop learned at the meeting that her appeal to an earlier denial of tenure was being rejected. The NYT also reports that Bishop had complained that it was "unfair" that she was having problems getting tenure. Bishop will be charged with capital murder, which qualifies for the death penalty.

I found myself surprised that the shooter was a woman; however, I'm unable to find any statistics on the sex of the perpetrator in workplace homicides. Men are more likely to be victims of workplace homicides (Hendricks et al, 2007), but that's "normal". As discussed in "Murder Most Unusual" (4/13/09), men are more likely to be both the victim and the perpetrator of murders. The three confirmed dead have one masculine, one feminine, and one sort of neutral name.

I also noted my lack of surprise that she reportedly had trouble getting tenure; Todd et al (2008) reported that women were more likely than men to perceive "unfair practices" in the evaluation of their work. I also cynically noticed that the NYT reports her major invention as having been developed "with her husband". I'm trying to remember the last time I saw an article reporting that someone had developed something "with his wife." I'm coming up blank.

Driving

2010-01-27T19:29:00.002-05:00

So, at work this week, I arrived at a meeting early. I'm often the only person in the meeting without kids, but this particular meeting, I seemed to be the only one without high-school-aged kids. The discussion of choice was teaching them to drive, and one woman said "I hate driving with my daughter. It was never like this with my son. I think boys are just more natural drivers." And another woman immediately agreed, based on her experiences with her own kids.

This was a couple of days ago, and I still haven't figured out what the hell I could have said. I felt like saying that I was a terrible driver, and I'm still not a comfortable one, but I feel like that's agreeing with them, because I was a girl at the time (not that this group necessarily knows that). I felt like saying that if boys are better drivers, why are their insurance rates higher? I felt like saying that drawing a conclusion about genders based on your two children is completely ridiculous.

What I did was sit there silently and be uncomfortable, and I noticed that the (one) other man in the room didn't say anything either. When women express sexist stereotypes, how can we help?

Sexual numbers, revisited

2010-01-14T09:01:00.004-05:00

This morning, on the way to work, I was thinking about the "differences in average sexual partners" problem again, in reference to Gale's 2007 mathematical proof that the average for men and women must be the same. I thought of a couple explanations for differences in self-report that may not have anything to do with social pressures.

First, there is the chance that men are reporting the same woman more than once. It does not seem implausible to me that a man could count the same woman as three separate "conquests", while that woman would define their relationship as "on-again-off-again dating." Anecdatally, I believe it's not at all improbable to forget someone you've had sex with. Boy, was that an awkward conversation.

Another question I wondered about was the definition of "sex." I have rarely encountered heterosexual men who spend a lot of time thinking about what the word "sex" means. I'm wondering whether anyone has looked for gender differences in what "counts". I would actually expect a dose-specific effect, where the more experience you've had, the more things count as sex, but wouldn't be surprised to find out that dose-specific effects vary by gender; i.e. that men with a lot of experience count fewer contacts as sex while women with a lot count more. It would be foolish to discount social pressures for this option, but I'm not sure they are necessary to explain it.

Finally, there's record-keeping, which I would have guessed would favor women in terms of reporting higher numbers of partners. I have not encountered many men who admit to keeping a list of their conquests. Nearly all the women I've spoken to about it admit that they have at least one such list, often annotated with additional detail like location, types of contact, etc.

Mostly, I suspect I have trouble accepting the self-report explanation due to my personal selection bias. I don't spend a lot of time around guys who I feel are likely to inflate their numbers, or around women who I think would lower theirs. It's probably a bit of self-delusion, as is the idea that just because I forget having sex with people, it's probably not that uncommon. Honestly, I find any theory that leaves me as an outlier fairly suspect. I'm just not that special.

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Retirement

2009-06-26T12:43:00.003-04:00

According to the U.S. Social Security Administration, the average age of retirement for men and women was the same in 1998: 64 years old. Gendell and Seigel (1992) predicted that age at retirement would continue to fall for men and women into the 2000's, but as a Star-Tribune (MN, 2007) article suggests, current census figures don't seem to follow the predicted pattern. More people over 65 are remaining in the workforce.

Speaking of retirement: I think I'd better officially retire Difference Blog before I start to really slack on it. I haven't been satisfied with the quality of my posts for a while, and I'm not finding more time to do it in. This Tuesday, I just flat-out missed a day right after taking two weeks away from the blog. I haven't made Difference Blog the type of blog I'd want to read, and it's increasingly not the type I want to write. I'm not saying that this is the last DB post, but I clearly can't keep up with 5 posts per week anymore. Thanks for all your comments and feedback over the past (nearly) three years.

[Filler] Penis Power

2009-06-25T08:59:00.002-04:00

I'm in a class this morning and didn't have time to post. However, talking to a coworker while I got my coffee, we got onto the subject of HBO. HBO doesn't scrimp on the presentation of breasts, ass, or cursing, but I'm not recalling much in the way of male exposure. My coworker described the condition as "Advanced Penis Deprivation"; and we spent some time discussing what I've long considered a double standard about the taboo surrounding naked bodies.

Is it really a double standard? Does it bother you?

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Biases affect Performance

2009-06-24T09:16:00.006-04:00

Nosek et al (2009) provide additional support for the effect of stereotype threat on academic performance. Using gender bias data from Project Implicit and scores from the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), Nosek's study found that countries where stronger gender biases existed also showed greater disparities in TIMSS performance between girls and boys. (see other posts tagged "stereotype threat")

I'd be interested to see if there's a regional difference in biases within the U.S. or Canada. Do people in Montana hold difference gender biases than people in California, or Texas, or Massachusetts? Do gender disparities in math and science performance mirror these differences, if they exist? I feel like using regional differences within a country might control for some portion of the huge array of cultural confounds that I suspect plague international studies. The cultures are regionally diverse, but there is a common language and legal system, and I feel like that would help.

I feel like the big "key", if there is a one, to stereotype threat is the self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe what I mean is that stereotype threat assumes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm concerned that it rules out a valid interpretation of available data. Let's say, for some unknown reason, that there is an innate gender difference ability in math and science in Chile, but not in Cyprus. Wouldn't it make sense for the people in those countries to have beliefs that reflected that reality? I don't think that's the case, but I'm not sure it's appropriately ruled out by the stereotype threat studies -- because they assume that the biases create the performance, rather than performance creating the biases.

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Gender differences in PTSD

2009-06-22T08:52:00.007-04:00

Lilly et al (2009) assert that among civilians in general, women tend to have more PTSD than men (see Tolin & Foa, 2006), but that military populations tend not to have this gender difference (see Brewin et al, 2000). To examine this pattern, Lilly et al compared posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms between female police officers and women in the civilian population. The police officer group had greater rates of exposure to violence, which is usually a strong risk factor for PTSD, but lower rates of PTSD symptoms. The authors suggest that the low emotionality (masculine) gender role encouraged for women in the police and military may have a protective effect in terms of PTSD.

Previous posts on Difference Blog have not found as clear a civilian/military divide for gender differences in PTSD. Studies of civilians post-9/11 were inconsistent in finding more PTSD among women (2006-09-11). Two posts examining military sexual trauma found higher rates of PTSD among women in the military, but this did not always control for higher rates of sexual assault against women (2006-11-10 & 2008-11-11). Before the age where career enters into it, girls 7-18 were more likely to develop PTSD following a car crash than boys of the same age (2007-01-08).

In this case, I am more convinced by Lilly et al's literature review than by my own: I can't see any obvious problems with the meta-analyses they cite (which is why I linked them, above), although I didn't check the individual studies. What this really drives home to me is how the scattershot approach I take to Difference Blog topics can paint a really odd picture of the state-of-knowledge in a particular field. Given the studies I've posted about, I would not have picked up on a pattern based on military service.

That being said, I'm not sure of the chicken-and-egg situation between emotionality and career. It seems to me that someone who tended to have strong peritraumatic distress would not tend to pursue a career in law enforcement or the military -- regardless of their gender. The hypothesized effect of the male-dominated field on the female officers does not seem obvious to me.

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Construction of Masculinity

2009-06-08T13:16:00.003-04:00

Kang, 2009 discusses how masculine identity has shaped politics, and in turn been shaped by politics, in American self-government. Kang contrasts philophers Thomas Hobbes' and Robert Filmer's views of manliness, and shows how neither of these competing views of manliness made responsible self-government seem realistic in 17th-century England.

I've been meaning to discuss Kang's article for a while. The author did email me directly to point it out, but I think it's especially relevant because it tackles a question that is key to the questions raised in this blog. It's all too easy for me to see "femininity" as a constructed thing, but Kang points out the ways that our legal history, at least in the U.S., has constructed masculinity as well. Examples include codes of "gentleman's codes" and sports fandoms. The code of law seems bent towards preventing men from acting as men are presumed to be, with little consideration of women as relevant at all.

I saw an ad for a beer today which read "Be the person your grandparents think you are" -- encouraging potential drinkers to be worthy of heartfelt admiration. It brought home to me how much all identities, not just trans-identities, are constructed and maintained by daily action.

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[Filler] Wikipedia on Gender Roles

2009-06-05T11:52:00.003-04:00

Today, for the first time ever, I took a look at the Gender Roles page on Wikipedia. I'm not sure I've ever seen so many "article message boxes" in a single place before:

"This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. "
"This article may be confusing or unclear to readers"
"This article or section has multiple issues"
"Its neutrality is disputed"
"Its factual accuracy is disputed."
"This article may contain original research or unverified claims."
"This section's factual accuracy is disputed."

I don't even know where to start.

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[Filler] Testing Gender (& Vacation Notice)

2009-06-04T10:59:00.005-04:00

Looking at your fingernails with your hand facing
"palm-up" is supposedly a sign of masculinity.
Taking macro-lens photos of your fingernails
may be a sign of insanity. Photo by Dan4th, 2006.

There are several "tests" that I've encountered as to how masculine or feminine a person is. These usually consist of asking a person to perform a routine task, and then telling them whether they do it the "guy" way or the "girl" way. Examples of these are: looking at your fingernails, looking at your shoes, carrying a bag of groceries, and picking something up off the floor.

Even before transition, I was obsessed with these sorts of tests, and performed the tasks the "wrong" way as soon as I found out which way was wrong. Some of them make sense in social context: looking at your fingernails palm up tells you if they're dirty, while palm down lets you check your nail polish. Others make physical sense: it makes sense for men and women to carry awkward loads differently because of differences in center-of-gravity and upper body strength. Despite the "face validity" of these tests, in my limited samples of them, I've found them not particular good predictors.

Sorry for the lack of research today: I'm on vacation starting tomorrow, and I have a lot of work to do before I'm ready to shut down for two weeks. I will probably post a couple of times during vacation, but not every weekday. Regular posting will begin again in the week of June 22nd.

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Science Careers

2009-06-03T09:20:00.006-04:00

A new report from the National Research Council (2009) suggests that women who apply for faculty positions in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields are "hired at rates equal to or higher than those for men." At the full professor level, women are receiving 8% less pay than their male colleagues, but at lower levels (assistant and associate professors), there seems to be no pay gap. The main gender gap reported was in the applicant pools, where women were underrepresented. According to a New York Times (2009) discussion of the report's findings, the biggest factor that encouraged women to apply for faculty positions was the presence of women on hiring committees.

I know several professional academics who believe we'll never get to gender parity in the STEM fields, because of the "interest gap". Women, they theorize, are not as often interested in these topics. Now, I don't believe there's sufficient evidence for that conclusion, yet, although I'm willing to believe it's a contributing factor. It's certainly been suggested before. (see 2008-07-18 & 2008-03-07). However, with questions of "what's important" and "what's interesting" to one gender or another, I worry that saying something enough times actually does make it true. I'm not sure where the idea of "innate interest" or "innate priorities" comes from, but it's certainly persistent. These seem (to me) to be the sort of things that are definitely learned.

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Hyde's latest

2009-06-02T10:07:00.004-04:00

The latest paper by Janet S. Hyde (Hyde and Mertz, 2009) continues to build support for her Gender Similarities Hypothesis (2005). This time Hyde and Mertz suggest that the "greater male variability hypothesis" is not supported by all cultures studied. Using test scores made available as part of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), Hyde and Russell also demonstrate that math performance gaps in the U.S. are narrowing.

I find that the "Greater Male Variability Hypothesis" is another of my triggers for irrational responses to science. It doesn't ring true to me, and I haven't found support for it that I've found convincing. However, I'm so very biased against it that I don't trust myself to have looked for it well. In 2006, on my personal blog, I posted the following quote, attributed to Bertrand Russell, although I haven't been able to confirm that it's really his:

"If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. Whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants."

I'm not sure if I entirely buy into this concept: there are plenty of B.S. opinions that it's perfectly okay to get angry about. However, I think this is a case where I'm probably "going beyond" the evidence -- or perhaps not as far?

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The origin of sexes

2009-06-01T09:32:00.002-04:00

Spigler et al (2008) think that a strawberry may have a clue to the evolution of male and female sexes. Moore (2008) discusses the article more clearly than I could. According to Spigler et al's findings, a variety of wild strawberry has two sex-determining loci in its genetic sequence, leading to four possible sexes of strawberry: male, female, hermaphroditic (self-pollinating), and neuter. In a yeast study, Hseuh et al (2008) suggest that tripolar and tetrapolar (3- and 4- sex combinations) have decreased fertility versus two-sex systems, and that this may go partially explain the evolution of male-and-female in so many living systems.

One of the most interesting questions I received on the Difference Blog Reader Poll back in March was the question "how did sex and gender arise?" I'll just go ahead and say it: this stuff is way above my level, and I'm afraid I'm missing something important. But, if I am understanding these papers, the main driving factor is two-fold: organisms need to recombine genes, and they need to make a lot of offspring (evolutionarily speaking). What I'm not clear on, here, is whether the hermaphroditic organisms are able to recombine their own genes, or if offspring are essentially clones. Is there a geneticist in the house?

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Women, Children, and Careers

2009-05-29T09:54:00.002-04:00

Many of the differences between men's and women's careers that we've examined have implicated parenting as a major factor in advancement. Most recently (2009-05-15), the example of lawyers was used to argue that taking time for parenting led to decreased career advancement in both men and women. Another field which has been extensively studied (by academics) is academia. In an Academe article, Mason and Goulden (2002) claim that women without children achieve tenure significantly more often than women with children; women with tenure are twice as likely to be single as men with tenure, according to their research. Women who have late babies are also more likely to only have one.

Yesterday (2009-05-28), I made a throwaway comment about the fact that SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor has no children. It kept tickling at the back of my brain, like there was something important there. So, I tried to think of a prominent successful woman who has children. Hillary Clinton has Chelsea. Martha Stewart has one (Alexis). Oprah Winfrey doesn't have any. I find I'm having trouble thinking of "successful women", which also depresses me.

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SCOTUS nominee Sotomayor

2009-05-28T09:11:00.008-04:00

In the New York Times' Economix blog (2009), Leonhardt and Rampell note studies that may cast light on the predicted differences in decision-making by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. They reference Peresie (2005), which demonstrated that "the presence of a female judge" significantly affected rulings in sexual discrimination and harassment cases in favor of the plaintiff.

Leonhardt and Rampell also point out Oswald and Powdthavee (2006), who found that parents with daughters tend to vote more "left-wing", while parents of sons tend to vote more "right-wing." Washington (2007) came to a similar finding about legislators with daughters and sons. Thompson, blogging for The Atlantic, 2009, rightly points out that Sotomayor has no children.

Perhaps more relevant is Collins and Moyer (2008); this paper suggests that the "intersectionality" of Sotomayor's identity may be the important factor. According to this study of criminal cases, judges who are both female and a member of a minority are likely to make more "liberal" (pro-defendant) decisions, where as minority or caucasian/female judges are not.

"Hey, I remember Ed Hoff[?*] grilling Sam Alito about whether he saw things as too much of a man. About whether him being white was going to affect his judgement too much." -- Rachel Maddow**, podcast 2009-05-27

In last week's discussion of reading (2009-05-22), I got a little sidetracked by the "default-male" problem: the male model is "default", and females are measured against it. In retrospect, this is a much better illustration of that problem than reading, because the people doing the comparison are overwhelmingly male. Sadly, I've done very little reading about Sotomayor's history of decision-making, but I have to say that the tone of the opposition certainly makes me want to support her.

* I listened to this sentence 5 or 10 times, and I'm not sure of the name. I don't recognize it. Any hints?
** I am developing such a crush on Rachel Maddow, omgswoon.

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Difference Blog Reader Poll

Testosterone vs. Facial Masculinity, revisited

2009-05-27T09:20:00.006-04:00

In February (2009-02-04, 2009-02-10, & 2009-02-16), we had ongoing discussion about the relationship between facial appearance and hormone levels. At that time, I failed to find consistent evidence of a link between higher testosterone and more masculine appearance in normatively gendered men and women.

Penton-Voak & Chen (2004) found that more masculine-looking men had higher circulating T levels.
Peters et al (2008) did not find such a connection
von Bokhoven et al (2006) notes that there is no link between testosterone levels and facial appearance in adolescence

A recent anonymous comment on the February 10th post offered two more possible citations for this debate:

Roney et al (2006) found that men's testosterone levels predicted women's ratings of their facial masculinity
Hönekopp et al (2007) found no correlation between facial masculinity and testosterone levels.

The debate is ongoing. Just this year, more papers have attempted to settle this question experimentally:

Pound et al (2009) (with Penton-Voak) found that men with more masculine faces had a stronger testosterone response to competition.
Campbell et al (2009) found a link between facial masculinity and sexually unrestricted behavior in women (which is hypothesized to be a marker of higher testosterone)

My main problem with the facial-masculinity = higher-testosterone argument was that testosterone is so reactive to environmental factors, so I find Pound's argument (that masculine-faced men have more reactive endocrine systems) fairly compelling. I can't argue that increased testosterone doesn't contribute to facial masculinity. With my n = 1 experiment of myself, I can see distinct changes in my face pre-and-post hormones. But my hormones are externally regulated in a way that almost never happens to normatively gendered people. So I feel really awkward trying to compare my experience to any non-trans person's.

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Nonverbal communication

2009-05-26T09:51:00.005-04:00

In a talk given Sunday (abstract), Steven Boker discussed a new method for creating a synthesized image and voice in video-conferencing "that is accepted as being video" by experimental participants. This method allowed Boker to conduct experiments where the apparent gender of video conversants was altered, according to a EurekAlert press release (2009 - results not yet published). People tend to move their heads more when talking to women, and less when talking to men. By reversing the apparent gender of a videoconferencing avatar, Boker was able to show that this is a response to head movements in the conversational partner, and not to that partner's apparent gender.

I find this exciting on two levels: first, I love the finding that conversational communication is based on individual dyads, not on perceived gender. I find that reassuring. Second, I'm sure that many of my trans-comrades-in-dorkdom will be excited by the idea of video-conferencing that presents an altered-gender presentation, since so many of us in the past decade or so have made our first hesitant steps in transition online. The first places I tried on a male persona were chat rooms and message boards, and then in MMORPGs.

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Difference Blog Reader Poll

Hangovers

2009-05-25T09:00:00.004-04:00

Previous posts have looked at gender differences in alcohol consumption, tolerance, and addiction (see label=alcohol). However, none of these articles has addressed the short-term consequences of drinking. Prat et al's (2009) review of hangovers gives gender differences a single sentence, noting only a single study (Slutske, 2005) which suggests that women may be subject to more severe hangovers than men. Clearly, this is an area that has not been extensively studied.

In an article that asks "Do We Learn From Our Mistakes", Mallett et al (2006) found that college men and women were equally likely to report having experienced a hangover in the past 12 months, or having vomited from drinking in that time period: about half of respondents endorsed these items. About one in five reported a regretted sexual experience, and nearly a third reporting a blackout. The study asked how many drinks had been consumed at the most recent instance of a negative consequence, and how many drinks the respondents estimated it would take to repeat that consequence. Men and women both predicted it would take significantly more alcohol to induce a hangover, vomiting, blackout, or regretted sexual experience than it had in the previous instance. The only gender difference reported was in the size of the discrepancy between past experience and future predictions: men estimates of hangover-inducing quantities of alcohol were even more unrealistic than women's, although both were off.

I think one issue that isn't properly addressed here (which would probably help me avoid hangovers) is the difference between what seems like a good idea sober and what seems smart after a drink or three. Considering all of the media-freak-out over women's increased rates of drinking (compared to historically) and reduced capacity for drink (compared to men), I'm actually surprised that this aspect hasn't received more attention. I haven't noticed any difference in my hangovers or my drinking habits that can be attributed to transition. My hangovers seem to be more related to what I was drinking than strictly how much.

I do have to say that I'm very surprised there was no gender difference reported in regrettable sexual experiences. I can't tell if I'm pleased by this, but I'm happy it was as low as 21%. I would have guessed higher.

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Reading revisited

2009-05-22T09:05:00.005-04:00

In March (2009-03-23), we looked at studies which seemed to indicate that men read far fewer books than women do. NPR (2007) reported on an AP/Ipsos survey that found that the typical American had read only 4 books in 2006. The same NPR article suggests that the Harry Potter series might have made an impact on the reading gap, according to a Scholastic survey: "Sixty-one percent [of boys] agreed with the statement 'I didn't read books for fun before reading Harry Potter,' compared with 41 percent of girls.".

The relationship between reading skill and reading for pleasure appears to be strong: Chiu and McBride-Chang (2006) found that girls outscored boys on reading comprehension tests across 43 countries. However, reading enjoyment mediated 42% of the gender difference, suggesting that girls may be better readers because they enjoy reading more.

Reading is awesome. This is not the post I meant to write today, and so I don't feel like I'm prepared to talk about this. I got completely sidetracked by the NPR article. Um. I read a lot as a kid, and I never really feel like I have enough time for reading as an adult. I tend to read more in summer, because it's something I can do outside. I was going to talk about the split between male and female authors, but the BBC article I was going to cite has gone missing somewhere...

I do feel like reading skill and reading enjoyment is sort of chicken and egg. Are girls better at it because they enjoy it more, or do they enjoy it more because it's not as hard?

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Difference Blog Reader Poll

Gender and Marijuana

2009-05-21T08:53:00.004-04:00

In February (2009-02-25), we looked at social studies about the use of marijuana, and found that men were more likely to use it as adolescents while women were more likely to use it after age 25. An animal study suggested that females received more effects from THC than males (MacGregor & Arnold, 2007).

However, there does not seem to be universal agreement on whether males or females are more affected by THC. Farhang et al (2009) examined the psychoneuroendocrinology of cannabinoids in mouse and guinea pig models, and found that males in these species showed significantly more appetite and body-temperature effect than females. The authors argue that differences in the efficacy of THC to regulate appetite should be taken into account when recommending marijuana for clinical use. However, a review by Craft (2005) argues that most rodent and human studies find stronger behavioral effects of cannabis in females.

Are you confused yet? I sure as hell am. When I come across studies like these, I have to wonder what's causing the conflicting results. Are they looking at the same "effects?" Are they controlling for the same factors? And, in this particular case, is the perspective they're approaching it from coloring the results? Are we seeing expectation bias? I bring this up because Farhang et al appear to be approaching THC as a potential medical treatment, while Craft appears to approach it as a social problem. So, when marijuana may be beneficial, men benefit, but when it's harmful, women are more vulnerable. I'm afraid I might be putting too much baggage on these studies, but something looks wrong to me here.

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Charity revisited

2009-05-20T09:25:00.004-04:00

According to the Boston Globe (2009), women may be the driving force in most women's charitable giving. A Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund study (p.r. 2009) found that 92% of men named their wives as the primary influence in their giving choices. This seems to be in conflict with charitable giving findings discussed last fall (2008-09-04), which showed that most couples resolved giving conflicts in favor of the husband's preferences (see Andreoni et al, 2000). However, it could be that most households fail to have conflicts over giving.

The Fidelity study did not find any gender differences in likelihood of researching a charity before giving (89% of men and women do this). High-income (income over $150K) women are less likely to give anonymously than donors in general, according to the survey. One recent anonymous donor has been making news, and is speculated to be a woman: at least 14 woman-led-colleges in the past year have received large, anonymous donations with the condition that the donor not be identified (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 2009).

I have to say that I was surprised and pleased that so many of the respondents research the charities that they give to. This could be a result of the group surveyed: Fidelity only surveyed people who have over $1,000 in a year. I've been making charity a bigger priority this year, because I expected that donations would go down with the economy in the crapper.

On the Mystery Donor: I love rumors. Since I work in Higher Ed, I'd been following the story for a while. I didn't realize it had hit mainstream media, too. A friend who watches Rachel Maddow (I don't, but feel like I should) says that the esteemed commentator considers Oprah the most likely suspect, although news reports say Oprah's denying it. It's fun to speculate about people being secretly good for a change.

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Beneficial Neuroses

2009-05-19T09:33:00.003-04:00

Roberts et al (2009) found that the personality trait neuroticism seemed to complement another trait, conscientiousness, to improve health outcomes for people over 50. In accordance with prior research, Roberts et al found that conscientiousness predicted better health while neuroticism predicted worse health. However, people with both traits had better health overall. Additionally, a conscientious spouse predicted better health for both sexes. However, one surprising gender difference emerged from Roberts study: women with conscientious/neurotic husbands seemed to be healthier, while men with conscientious/neurotic wives did not.

It's worth noting that women may tend to score higher on both conscientiousness and neuroticism than men, according to Schmitt et al (2008). However, my concerns about Schmitt's ISDP studies have been discussed in detail before. Despite these concerns, many studies seem to be consistent with gender differences on Big 5 traits (e.g. Costa et al, 2001; Budaev, 1999). Roberts et al did not report whether there was any gender difference in scores on the personality items.

Argh. I hate trait theory, and I always have a hard time justifying why to myself. I suspect it's because I need to believe that people can change: hello, I'm a case study for that. Despite the party line that my personality has not changed along with my physical characteristics, I think there have been definite changes -- based on my hormonal profile and the fact that I'm ~~not crazy~~ a lot happier. Trait theory seems to suggest that people's personalities essentially don't change, and I guess it's understandable why I wouldn't want that to be true.

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[Filler] Education.com on gender

2009-05-18T09:31:00.005-04:00

I seem to be unable to search Google News or Google Scholar this morning. I knew I had a Google-dependency problem, but I didn't realize how strong it was. So instead, I'll review another website:

A couple of months ago, I received an email from Laura Compian at the website Education.com, inviting me to look at that website's content on gender differences. It's been sitting in the to-do list for a while. The site uses Leonard Sax's research as the main source, and doesn't mention Hyde. In fact, I don't see any opposing viewpoints about whether there are benefits to single-sex education.

I don't know where the idea that opposing viewpoints are confusing came from, or that a lay audience wouldn't be interested in seeing this. The email from Compian described the articles as "parent-friendly", but reading them, all I see is "dumbed down".

NB: The author has a pretty strong bias against single-sex education, especially when teaching methods are tailored to one sex or the other. Differential teaching seems to make for a self-fulfilling prophecy about men and women having different thinking styles and skill sets.

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Motherhood and Career

2009-05-15T09:14:00.003-04:00

Wednesday on Twitter, Schnoober pointed out an article in the American Bar Association Journal (2009) which claims that time off for parenting, not gender, explains the pay gap between male and female lawyers. Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, a professor of Labor and Employment Law at Indiana University, claims that men who took time off from their law careers for parenting also suffered a "significant gap" in pay and promotions. Dau-Schmidt's findings are based on a study of University of Michigan alumni graduating from 1967-2000; more detail is available in a "do not cite" draft from two years ago (Dau-Schmidt et al, 2007).

I get the argument, really: "sexism isn't an issue because [variable] is a much bigger contributor to the discrepancy." I even have a hard time not buying into it. It's tempting for me to believe that, given similar circumstances, a man and a woman would be treated equally. Unfortunately, "a bigger contributor" isn't the same as the only contributor. Yes: time out of work is a huge confound in performance measures for career growth, and it tends to hit women disproportionately. Why does it hit women so much harder than men, even in this day and age? I'm reminded of an essay in the Atlantic* from March which said:

In my set, no husband tells his wife that it is her womanly duty to stay home and nurse the child. Instead, both parents together weigh the evidence and then make a rational, informed decision that she should do so. Then other, logical decisions follow" -- Hanna Rosin (2009)

As one commenter on the ABA Journal article pointed out, time out of the office is only part of the picture. Assumptions that working moms won't be up for the same types of projects as working dads are still prevalent. Dau-Schmidt even tells the ABA Journal that "gender was secondary, and much less important, than whether they had interrupted their careers to do child care". That's not equivalent to the headline used: "Many Women Lawyers w/ Kids Do as Well as Men".

*Hat-tip to Laurenhat for pointing out a Pandagon.net essay referencing Rosin.

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Sounding Gay

2009-05-14T09:47:00.004-04:00

While reading for yesterday's post on pitch dynamism, I tripped over the following passage in Gaudio (1994): "Sounding Gay: Pitch Properties in the Speech of Gay and Straight Men"

Many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people can recall the pre-coming out experience of rifling through dictionaries, encyclopedias, and book indexes, nervously seeking any reference at all that might have something to do with our incipient sexualities. We pored over clinical definitions of homosexuality and sodomy as if we'd found forbidden fruit. We watched television and movies and waited for those rare appearances of swishy fags and heartless dykes, never letting on how closely we were paying attention to the way these stereotyped characters looked, acted, dressed, and talked.

Gaudio explores what it means to "sound gay", taking to task many writers (such as Lakoff, 1990) who claim that gay men "imitate" women's speech. Gaudio's experiment found that listeners were "largely accurate" in identifying (out, self-identified) gay speakers, and that most listeners rated this speech as "gay" and "effeminate", as opposed to the controls who were identified as "straight" and "masculine".

I was thinking about the quoted passage this morning, in terms of "learning to be gay", which I not-so-secretly hope is a dying rite of passage. There are more characterizations of queer people that don't fit the stereotypes than there used to be. Do young gay men still develop the "accent"? I know I noticed it a lot in the 1990's, but I don't hear it as much anymore. I'm not a big fan of having a separate gay culture, generally. One thing I was thinking this morning was that while people are always assuming I had to learn to be a man, most straight people never think about my having to learn to be queer -- or at least, they don't seem to ask about it as often.

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Vocal dynamism

2009-05-13T09:27:00.004-04:00

Continuing on the topic from Monday (2008-05-11), listeners assign sex to voices very quickly (see 2007-02-08). The largest and most obvious difference between male and female voices is the frequency, based on a larger larynx in men. However, there are several other differences that also seem to impact perceived sex of a speaker. A review by Whiteside (1996) discusses 40 years of research into these cues, including speed (women tend to speak more slowly) and variability of pitch (men tend to be more monotonal). Henton (1995) contradicts the latter claim, demonstrating that although "females are physically capable of producing a total pitch range almost double that of males", no statistically significant difference in use of "vocal dynamism" has been experimentally demonstrated. Henton goes on to claim that women may be doing themselves more social harm than good by trying to coach their voices into lower and more monotonal patterns, by being damned as "phoney".

Honestly, I wouldn't have guessed the speed thing: my impression as a listener is that women tend to speak more quickly. When I was starting to transition, I got a lot of hints and coaching from people on how to make my voice sound more male. Speed wasn't mentioned, although the variability of pitch certainly was: I feel like my vocal pitch is/was variable even for a woman. Testosterone changed my voicebox, but not my habits. However, I feel like my range got a lot narrower when my voice changed (that would be supported by Henton's article), which led to a more monotonal way of speaking. That being said: this kind of self-report may be worse than useless. I did record a couple of voice clips pre-and-post transition, but not enough to get a sense of my pitch variations.

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Classifying violence

2009-05-12T09:47:00.004-04:00

In a review published this week, Langhinrichsen-Rohling (2009) identifies five issues in intimate partner violence (IPV) that complicate the discussion:

gender symmetry of perpetration
utility of typologies
understanding bi-directionally violent couples
violence motivations and self-defense
treatment effectiveness

Item #2 is especially of interest to this blog, because the typologies suggested for IPV are often an attempt to explain gender-difference findings that vary between studies. The author suggests that classifying IPV as a dyad, rather than separately by partner, may be a more appropriate way of characterizing (and hopefully, treating) the problem.

One typology seems reasonable replicable: a dichotomy between "intimate terrorism" and "situational couple violence", proposed by Johnson (1995). Intimate terrorism is described as "systematic, not related to temper outbursts, and typically perpetrated by men against women"; situational couple violence is contrasted as "occasional" and "able to be perpetrated by either men or women." Ignoring women's violence is dangerous, Langhinrichsen-Rohling argues, because women's use of violence often leads to retaliatory violence by men (citing Straus, 1999).

We've looked at women's abuse of men a couple of times in the past (2008-06-09, 2008-02-04) and I'm surprised by my own commentary on the posts. Actually, this happens a lot: I am often surprised to read my commentary, because it's not how I remember feeling about an issue, or I thought I'd be more ambivalent about it.

Langhinrichsen-Rohling called her paper "Controversies Involving Gender and Intimate Partner Violence in the United States". Here's my personal controversy: how the hell do we talk reasonably about male victims of IPV without completely derailing the conversation about the more common case? I feel like the context of institutionalized sexism is really important to both the violence, and why we can't seem to discuss about one without invalidating the other. However, when I find myself using terms like "invalidating" and "institutionalized sexism", somewhere someone kills a bunny. It's true.

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Definitely not?

2009-05-11T09:13:00.006-04:00

A popular conception that women use a question intonation more often than men is usually attributed to linguist Robin Lakoff. This has not been substantiated by research: Graddol and Swann's Gender Voices (1989) questions both the prevalence of this habit in women's speech as well as the interpretation of the question intonation as a sign of hesitancy.

However, the concept continues to crop up in popular culture. In an episode of Family Guy (2006), a female character is mocked for her rising inflection, although Mark Liberman (writing in Language Log, 2006) points out that the mocking fails to use a rising inflection. Another example is writer Jason Horowitz's characterization of "The Affect" in the New York Observer (2006). This rant described a female vocal style using this inflection, but Language Log again questioned the conclusions in pieces by both Zimmer (2006) and Liberman (2006).

I was reminded of this (admittedly cobwebby) story again because of a recent Family Guy bringing back the Jillian (voice by Drew Barrymore), who still ends her sentences with a question mark. Observer bias sucks. I am incredibly aware of the use of qualifying and tentative habits in my own speech because it was pointed out to me as a female habit to avoid when I was no more than 11 years old. It seems like Lakoff's (and Deborah Tannen's) communications work gets brought up to me all the time, but I suspect that's observer bias again. Unfortunately, the problem is that these things seem only to be noticed when they're brought up, and they're self-confirming, as with many gender stereotypes. They seem true when pointed out, and become more true the more people who know about them. It makes me exceptionally grateful for Language Log for putting a lot more depth into their posts than I've ever been able to get into DB.

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Empathy, gender, and politics

2009-05-08T10:00:00.005-04:00

It's been a week since President Barack Obama included "empathy" in the list of qualities he'd seek in a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Souter (see a partial transcript at The Huffington Post, 2009). In that week, debate about the President's meaning of "empathy" has been hotly debated. However, it's not the first time that Obama has spoken publicly about empathy, and certainly not the most emphatic. At an event honoring Dr. Martin Luther King in January of 2008, Obama ~~coined~~ used* the term "empathy deficit", calling it "the essential deficit that exists in this country." (BarackObama.com, 2008). Ruth Marcus, writing for the Washington Post (2009) points out a speech to Planned Parenthood in 2007, in which Obama again brought up the "empathy argument."

The quality of empathy is often ascribed as a feminine one. Previous posts have discussed empathy's role in forgiveness , but also the role of empathy in sports fandom (see 3/4/08, 3/29/07). Pronin et al. (2004) suggested that empathy was "weakly associated" with feminine stereotypes (see discussion 10/20/06). However, Eisenberg and Lennon (1983) found that sex differences in empathy depended mostly on the measurement tool: on self-report measures, women were far more empathetic, but on behavioral and decoding tests, no sex differences were apparent.

I've spent the last week thinking about the ridiculous flap over the use of the word empathy. Now, I've spent a lot of years denigrating empathy. I'm not generally a big fan of compassion, or emotion, for that matter. However, picking that one intangible out of the list of other intangibles that President Dreamypants mentioned, or acting like he's never talked about the importance of empathy before, well that just feels stupid. It also feels a little bit like there's some gender-stereotyping going on here, because of the idea that "empathy" necessarily means women's issues, or a woman Justice. Obama's clearly sold on empathy: why wouldn't he be able to find another man who was? That being said, I am sort of rooting for a woman Justice, but given the choice between, say, Anne Coulter and Al Franken, I'd take Franken.

* see comments: it's always tricking deciding who "coined" a phrase.

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Insurance rates

2009-05-07T07:36:00.006-04:00

Last month, I wrote about California's proposed ban on differential health insurance rates for men and women (4/2/09). The New York Times (2009) reports that Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans (an association representing insurance companies) offered to eliminate these rate differences in a session of the Senate Finance Committee. Ignani's statement (pdf)) does not address this issue; according to the NYT, she responded to Senator Kerry who introduced a bill amending the Public Health Service Act (1946) to ban differential billing for women(S.969, 5/5/09).

A month ago, when I first found out about these difference in insurance rates, one thing I didn't think about was where the money for insurance comes from in most cases. In the U.S., only 8.5% of men and 9.4% of women purchased their own health insurance in 2007 (Census). About 60% of Americans are covered by employer-purchased health insurance. I wonder if this means that companies in female-dominated industries are paying more for their health insurance than companies in male-dominated industries? I don't actually know if these differences in rates impact group plans or only individual ones. Apparently I'm sleepy: the NYT article seems to say that this is only for individual plans - the approximately 10% of people who buy their own insurance.

Also, I asked in April, and got no response, so I'll ask again: is it fair for insurers to charge more for clients who are more likely to need care, and more likely to use it? How do you define "fair"? Is fair when people pay for what they use, or when everyone pays the same?

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Male Contraception revisited

2009-05-06T09:12:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, the BBC (2009) reported that Chinese researchers have had a successful test of an injectable contraceptive for men. Gu et al (2009) injected 1,045 healthy men with 500 mg of testosterone undecanoate monthly, with contraceptive results comparable to hormonal methods currently available to women. The same group determined this dose in a previous study, testing placebo, 500mg/month, and 1,000mg/month in groups of 12 men (Zhang et al, 1999). The researchers predict that the method could be available within five years if further testing goes well. As discussed in March (3/26/09), over half of men surveyed would like more personal control over their fertility.

Those of you following the Diffblog Twitter feed will probably be disappointed at this shameless self-promotion. I'm revisiting this topic largely because I participated in the BBC's "World Have Your Say" radio discussion of this story (BBC message board; WHYS radio podcast). I received an email yesterday morning regarding the March blog post, and asking if I wanted to discuss whether men could be trusted with the responsibility of birth control.

What amazed me was the ridiculous blame-game on both sides of the debate. Both men and women accused the opposite sex of intentionally sabotaging birth control, or lying about it, in order to cause pregnancy. How often can this seriously happen? And why does the introduction of another potential method of birth control suddenly move all responsibility from one sex to the other?

For comparison, the so-called "standard" dose of testosterone (for hormone replacement or FTM transition) is 200mg per two weeks (of testosterone cypionate or testosterone enanthate). A pharmaceutical study recommended doses of 750mg per 10 weeks for undecanoate in hypogonadal men (MedNewsToday, 2009). The dosage used in this study seems to be a touch higher, though not nearly as high as doses used for performance-enhancement. I caution against having too much faith in the term "standard" here, since dosing is highly individualized: I take half that much (50mg weekly).

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Challenging work

2009-05-05T09:05:00.005-04:00

De Pater et al (2009) examined the relationship between challenging tasks and career growth potential in a group of 93 interns. Their study demonstrated a link between the intern's self-reported experience of challenging tasks and their supervisors' ratings of potential for career growth: those who reported a more challenging work experience were rated as more likely to succeed. The female interns reported having fewer challenging experiences than the male interns. In a separate experiment, 158 students were measured for gender differences in the choice to take on challenging tasks when personal performance was at a premium: women chose fewer challenges than men in this experiment as well.

According to Semykina and Lin (2007), "need for challenge" is a personality trait which occurs more often in men: it is described in opposition to "need for affiliation". However, Burke and Nelson's book Advancing women's careers (2002) claims that men and women tend to demonstrate an equal need for challenging work (see Cox and Harquail, 1991).

This is a tough one to compare to my own experience, for damn sure. My career as a woman was an entirely separate industry than my career since transition (entertainment vs. education). Then again, it's arguable that I left entertainment because I wasn't being challenged anymore. Unfortunately, my own motivations and behavior are something of a black box to me. I can make educated guesses as why B follows A, but I can't get anything approaching causality out of it.

However, I am deeply dubious about the measurement of a scale that goes from "challenge" to "affiliation", and I wonder if there's a translation issue with the meanings of "competition" and "challenge."

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Non-traditional

2009-05-04T09:01:00.005-04:00

A University of Michigan Press release (2009) and podcast describes differences between men's and women's symptoms at the onset of an ischemic stroke. The main findings reported are from Lisabeth et al's (2009) prospective study conducted at the University of Michigan Hospital over three years (2005 - 2007). About half of the stroke sufferers interviewed were women (48.6%), and women were more likely than men to present with "non-traditional" symptoms. The most common non-traditional symptom was altered mental state ("confusion, disorientation or a loss of consciousness"), occuring in 23.2% of women and 15.2% of men.

As we've already discussed, women's heart attack symptoms also present differently than men's (10/11/06, 1/15/09). For me, the differentiation of stroke symptoms begs the question: why are we still calling the male set of symptoms "traditional" (for heart attacks, stroke, and probably other ailments)? Why are we teaching doctors a set of symptoms that only correctly diagnoses half the population? Maybe I'm just expecting change too soon, but I feel like the argument has been successfully and repeatedly made at this point. Seeing continued stories that "our old benchmarks don't work for women" strikes me as a failure in redefining the benchmarks.

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Kenyan Sex Strike

2009-05-01T09:19:00.003-04:00

Kenyan women have organized a "sex strike" as a protest against the power struggles between that country's President and Prime Minister, according to the Associated Press (2009). The AP calls sex strikes "rare worldwide", but one Kenyan critic of the strike calls it "un-African" as well as "shameful and bizarre" (Voice of America, 2009). The BBC (2009) reports that the Kenyan Prime Minister's wife has supported the ban, but that the President's wife has not responded.

I don't know why we as a species seem to be in love with the idea of a sex strike, from Aristophanes' Lysistrata (411 BCE) to Absurdistan (2008). Despite the fact that I've only written about it once (6/23/08), "withholding sex" is the third most common search term leading to hits on differenceblog.com. But why? Why is it so titillating? Is it just schadenfreude? Is it the double standard forbidding women from talking about sex at all? The VoA article linked above sure makes it look that way. Does it actually ever work? It might: a BBC (2001) article suggests that the "no water, no sex" plot in "Absurdistan" is actually based on real events in Turkey.

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Website: RH Reality Check

2009-04-30T09:57:00.006-04:00

The website RH Reality Check has the tagline "Information and Analysis for Reproductive Health" and describes itself as a resource for "evidence-based information, provocative commentary, and interactive dialogue". However, the commentary on the site doesn't seem to be limited strictly to reproductive issues, but covers feminist, political, and other issues, such as today's post on a moral double-standard displayed in a New York Times movie review ("Girls Particularly Cautioned"). Men's roles are not entirely neglected: there seems to be substantial coverage of the role men can and should play in feminist politics. Two of the members of the five-person team responsible for the site are men.

Author Bias Alert: I still find myself having a knee-jerk reaction that I'm pretty sure isn't useful to "feminist"-labeled sites. I catch myself looking for inclusion of "men's issues," but I'd be hard-pressed to give you a list of what I'm looking for. I was only able to comfortably call myself a feminist after writing DB for two years. So, I keep finding myself looking for male inclusion in feminist writing, and preferably some that doesn't paint all heterosexual men as "the enemy." I feel like RH Reality Check is doing a reasonably good job with that, but I still catch myself thinking "why aren't they covering men's issues?" Of course, sexism is a men's issue, in that it hurts and hampers men in some ways while privileging them in others. At any rate, my research has turned up blog posts from this site several times recently, and I've been pretty impressed by it so far. I thought it deserved a spotlight, rather than just a link in a related article (because no one ever clicks on the links). If you're interested in feminist blogs in general, you should check out the site's blogroll, which is extensive (bottom-right of the About Us page).

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Fear conditioning

2009-04-29T09:29:00.004-04:00

Maren et al (1994) demonstrated a difference in conditioned fear response between male and female rats: male rats displayed longer freeze times, signaling a stronger fear response. Anagnostaras et al (1998) found that testosterone was not a contributor to this effect. Estrogen does affect the conditioned fear response, as ovariectomized female rats have a similar response to male rats (Gupta et al, 2001). However, there may be differences based on fear stimulus. The three studies above used electric shocks to condition fear. Gresack et al (2009) used an auditory stimulus and found that female rats spent more time frozen.

So, to sum up the studies above: male rats seem to develop bigger fear responses, and keep them longer, than female rats, except in the most recent study, which seems to be reversed. This confuses me, and makes me think I'm misreading the studies. I fully admit that these are dense and I may have misinterpreted them. But in humans, women are more prone to fear and anxiety disorders (10/31/06), so I have to wonder what else is at work here.

You know, I sometimes feel like I've exhausted the topic of sex and gender differences, and then I trip over something like this, and I'm awed by how much information there is out there. It's a little terrifying, in a good way.

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Need For Cognition

2009-04-28T09:03:00.006-04:00

The University of Illinois-Chicago paper, The Chicago Flame (2009), profiles an undergraduate research project which examines the personality trait "Need For Cognition" (NFC) in jurors. NFC is assessed by endorsement of items like "I enjoy puzzles." Applied psychology/biology student Maria Vargas examined whether this trait affected outcomes in participation within juries depending on gender distribution. Vargas suggested that the greater the proportion of men on a jury, the less important NFC is to the participation of individual jurors, because competitive drives appear to take over.

A NFC measure was first introduced in 1982. The measure's authors, Cacioppo and Petty (1982) reported no gender differences, and Darley and Smith (1995) concurred. However, Tanaka et al (1988) found that women scored slightly higher on the "cognitive persistence" subscale (1 of 3). An individual who tends to evaluate a situation "multidimensionally" vs. "unidimensionally" is described as "cognitively persistent".

It looks likely that there is not a significant gender difference in NFC. That's why I find it so puzzling that the Flame article focuses on the gender composition of the juries. What is missing from the article is whether women with high NFC behave differently in jury deliberations than men with high NFC. The article does note that women in general participate in juror deliberations with fewer comments, but not how or if this varies with NFC. It's a student paper article about student research, so I can't tell if this is a weakness in the reporting or in the experiment. The main reason I'm even writing about it is that I haven't mentioned NFC before, and I thought it was an interesting construct.

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Beauty Standard

2009-04-27T09:06:00.005-04:00

Beverly McPhail, writing for the Houston Chronicle (2009), uses the example of Susan Boyle to illustrate how beauty is not only an advantage, but perhaps a necessity, for women "in a world that defines female value and worth solely by appearance"*. McPhail cites a recent review by Kwan and Trautner (2009), which calls "beauty work" -- effort invested in physical appearance -- "nearly compulsory" for women. Kwan and Trautner's findings on gender roles in "weight" were discussed in March (3/20/2009).

McPhail suggests that we, as a culture, should "make over our appearance-obsessed culture". However, there may be a neurological explanation for the double standard: Cloutier et al (2008) found evidence for activation of reward areas of the brain when subjects viewed images of attractive opposite-sex targets: the effect may be different in men, because men (rating only women's faces) recruited orbitofrontal cortex in addition to other reward areas. (NB: it seems I misreported the Cloutier study in September, by suggesting that OFC recruitment applied to male targets, rather than male participants. See 9/3/08.)

I'm guilty: even warned about the surprising performance by Susan Boyle, when I watched the video, I was shocked. That woman's got quite a set of pipes. Still, I wonder how much of my reaction to the video was a reaction to the judge and audience reactions. I think without the judge responses, I would have had a mild moment of disconnect. I feel like the validation of the "surprise" response is part of the problem, as much as the surprise response itself.

* This sentence appears to be paraphrased from Kwan and Trautner, who used the word "regime" and attribute it to Tseëlon (1993).

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Sexual Fluidity goes both ways

2009-04-24T08:18:00.005-04:00

Mary Fischer, writing for Oprah.com (2009) and excerpted on CNN (2009), cites research by Lisa Diamond (see 1/17/08) and J. Michael Bailey (see 6/24/08 and 4/11/07) to discuss a "trend" for women's bisexuality. Blogger Rachel Kramer Bussell, on The Daily Beast (2009) suggests that fluidity may be gaining steam in male culture, even if it's "just an act."

Now, the unifying idea between both columns -- and neither of these are scientific sources -- is that greater social acceptance of non-heterosexuality is allowing people to express behaviors and feelings that they might otherwise repress. I will not go off on a J. Michael Bailey rant again (even if I break my jaw via tooth-grinding rage). My points from 2007-2008 still stand, and it looks like it will be too nice today for me to spend it angry. But I am a little baffled to see two pieces this week discussing the trendiness of bisexuality, and having them be aimed at both men's and women's sexuality. It makes me wonder how much "safer" a topic is rendered by having it be a "trend". I'm reminded of the statement: "it's just a phase." The minimizing word "just" seems telling there. It's a word I've been working to cut from my own vocabulary, having caught myself using it 3-4 times in a single sentence. But it seems to me that if these are otherwise-repressed urges, expecting them to go away if social conditions change is unrealistic.

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Vacation revisited

2009-04-23T09:13:00.004-04:00

Michelle Goodman, blogging for Nine to Thrive (2009), writes about guilt over vacation time. Goodman cites an Expedia survey (2009) (conducted by Harris Interactive) which found that women were more likely to feel guilty about taking time away from work than men. Men were also more likely to take a 2-week vacation. However, what Goodman doesn't note is that women receive fewer vacation days than men (about 2 fewer days per year on average). Goodman does mention that women are less likely to work over 40 hours per week (44% of men vs. 29% of women), but doesn't tie this in with a decrease in benefits (there may be no such correlation: it is not noted in the study).

As mentioned in a previous post (12/20/07), men and women seem to take the same number of vacation days per year, but men leave more vacation unused (because they have more). Women may also save vacation time to take care of sick family members, which would leave them with less to take in long blocks.

I have to admit that the only times I've taken more than 5 work days off have been medical leaves: I took a couple of weeks off for my mastectomy, and again for my hysterectomy. I usually take my "big" vacation around the winter (Xmas/New Year) holidays, which ends up with me using relatively few vacation days: it only took 5 vacation days to cover a 13-day absence in 2007.

I was just commenting to my partner last night that I have a harder time setting work/life boundaries than he does. I've been working late quite a bit over the past few months, and I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to get back down to 40 hours if I decide that's my goal. Any time I haven't been paid by the hour, I've had this problem. It's funny, though: as an hourly worker, I had an incentive to work more. On salary, worker longer hours makes my time worth less.

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Friendship

2009-04-22T09:13:00.005-04:00

An article in Monday's New York Times (2009) points out that social networks may provide many health benefits, specifically noting higher rates of breast cancer survival among nurses with 10 or more friends (Kroenke et al, 2006). While the NYT article does not suggest any gender difference, a study by Shye et al (1995) found that friendship had different protective effects for men and women. Both men and women's mortality rates were affected by social support, but the support effect was mediated in men by health status: "no such indirect effect was found for women". Men also seemed to receive benefits from a smaller group of friends in this 15 year study.

Two things jump out at me about the Shye study: three if you count the fact that it's a study on friendship by someone named "Shy". First of all, if there's no mediation by health status, that sounds to me like women with more friends are living longer while being just as sick as those who die lonely. Secondly, I think that there may be a relationship between men's already shorter lifespans and the size of the friend groups they need: they're not likely to outlive as many of their friendships.

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lawyer compensation

2009-04-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Lawyers are another well-studied group of professionals. Noonan et al (2005) found that female lawyers tended to earn less than male lawyers, but worked fewer hours, and had fewer years in private practice. In the UK, Wass and McNabb (2006) suggested that the longer hours worked by male lawyers give them a chance to do more "non-chargeable work" -- a type of experience highly valued in promotion prospects. Wass and McNabb cite Crompton and Sanderson's Gendered Jobs and Social Change (1990) in pointing out that earnings inequality is higher in professional careers than in employment in general.

This is another paragraph I cut out of the post on self-employment pay rates (4/8/09). I found it especially interesting that the earnings inequality increases with education, rather than decreases, especially considering the fact that women are overtaking men in college graduation rates. Maybe it's just that there is a wider range of earnings within professional careers, but it struck me as counterintuitive.

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self-employment [filler]

2009-04-20T09:54:00.002-04:00

Clain (2000) found that self-employed women tended to have less desirable "personal characteristics" than wage-and-salary women employees, while the reverse was true for self-employed men: "There is some suggestion that women may place a higher value on nonwage aspects of self-employment than men do."

I keep thinking that I'll take the day off from DB when there's a work holiday, but then I forget to announce that there will be no Monday post, and I feel a little awkward skipping it. I suppose if I were self-employed, I would have no days off. Maybe that attitude is part of what Clain is talking about. This tidbit was going to be part of the post on pricing structures for the self-employed (4/8/09), but I determined that it wasn't really on topic. I do wonder about gendered career segregation among the self-employed: are women more likely to do sales or service? Are men more likely to hang out a shingle as a professional (architect, lawyer, doctor)? I have no evidence either way, but I have my suspicions.

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Marriage same-sex differences

2009-04-17T09:03:00.005-04:00

The proportion of legally-recognized same-sex couples who are male or female appears to vary by country.

In the U.K., civil partnerships have been legal since 2005. The Social Trends Report discussed yesterday (4/16/09) includes these partnerships same-sex couples in their "married" couple data, while unregistered same-sex couples are included in "cohabiting" couple data. Men were slightly more likely (55% to 45%) to register a civil partnership in 2007.
In the United States, lesbians are more likely to marry than gay men, according to Gates et al (2008). For example, in Massachusetts (where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2004), 51% of all same-sex couple are female, but 64% of same-sex married couples are female.
In Canada, same-sex marriage has been legal since 2005. According to Statistics Canada (2006), 53.7% of Canadian same-sex marriages were between men. The StatCan release claims that this proportion is similar to same-sex marriage rates in Australia and Ireland, although female couples are more common in New Zealand.
In Spain, same-sex marriage was legalized in 2005. According to a June 2007 Ministry of Justice announcement (see Wikipedia), 71% of these marriages were between men.

I was discussing same-sex marriage statistics with a coworker this morning, and we both predicted significantly higher numbers of marriages for women. Well, we were right for our own state, but not so much for the rest of the world. I find myself wondering whether male privilege or cultural homophobia plays into who feels safe getting married, or who feels unprotected without marriage. I don't want to make assumptions about the levels of homophobia in various countries or regions -- but who am I kidding? I definitely do make those assumptions, and I feel like the higher rate of male-marriage in Spain is a reflection of it.

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Family Structure

2009-04-16T09:08:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, the British Office of National Statistics released the annual Social Trends report (#39, 2009, pdf). This year's report made headlines with the finding that, in the most recent cohort (aged 25-29), more women reported having children (30%) than marriage (24%) (Belfast Telegraph, 2009). The most recent similar numbers from the U.S. Census (2004)show a much higher rate of marriage in women of similar age: 50.2%, compared to 37.3% of men.

The two-married-parent-family is still the most common family type in the U.K., making up about 64% of households with dependent children; single mothers are the next most common at 22%, followed by unmarried cohabiting couples at 13%. Single fathers made up less than 2% of these families.

Amusingly enough, I received an email while writing this post from the Alternatives to Marriage Project (which I'd been thinking about, unsurprisingly). It seems today is "National Healthcare Decisions Day". I'm constantly surprised by the number of documents it takes to stand in for a single marriage certificate (and how some parts are not currently legally replaceable). Meh. My feelings on the entire institution are mixed enough that I don't feel safe talking about it.

Related: 7/2/07 "Changing Face of Marriage"

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Tax Day

2009-04-15T08:52:00.005-04:00

According to Marist Polls (2009), American men and women are about equally likely to wait until April 15th to file their taxes (19% to 21%, respectively). In the 2009 poll, conducted April 1st - 3rd, women had a higher degree of uncertainty about whether they would receive a refund: 10% of women vs. 4% of men were unsure. Men were also more likely to expect a refund (60% vs 52% of women). This perhaps explains the difference between men and women in their predicted uses of refund money: 19% of men vs 11% of women said they expected to buy something with refund money, instead of saving it or paying off bills (among those expecting a refund). In a Canadian sample, Torgler (2003) suggests women have better "tax morale" (desire to pay taxes), and are therefore less likely to cheat on their taxes.

The Marist poll found much greater differences by region than by any other factor, but I was surprised that I didn't see a division of "waiting to file taxes" by "expecting a refund." This always struck me as the primary determining factor in when you file for taxes: you should wait to pay, but collect a refund as soon as possible. There did seem to be an effect on filing date by income, but increases in income did not seem to affect expectation of a refund: maybe the tax complexity is the determining factor?

Last Year: a "man tax" proposal

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Weight and Career

2009-04-14T09:24:00.004-04:00

Last week, we ended up having a very active discussion about obesity (4/9/09), in which Ukelele said "it seems like men have a lot more leeway to get fat without social disapproval". A study recently published in Equal Opportunities seems to back up this statement. Roehling et al (2009) found gender differences in rates of obesity among CEOs. There were more obese men among CEOs than in the general population, but fewer obese women. Last year, in Nature, Andreyeva et al (2008) noted that Americans reported being a victim of more height and/or weight discrimination compared to 10 years ago. Men's rates of perceived discrimination on weight/height nearly doubled (from 4.1% to 8.1%), while women's much higher rates also increased (from 10% to 15.5%).

I think it's a mistake to combine weight and height discrimination, because I feel like the difference between men and women would be even more distinct if only weight was taken into account. Taller stature does seem to increase both men's and women's career prospects, but this effect seems to be stronger in men (5/10/07). However, since we're looking at discrimination from self-report, it's possible that the numbers would come out differently than they do in analyses of career achievement.

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Murder Most Unusual

2009-04-13T09:26:00.004-04:00

The murder of an eight-year-old girl in California has been making headlines over what local law enforcement is calling an "anomaly." According to ABC news (2009), police Sgt Tony Sheneman told "Good Morning America" that: "it's unusual for it to be a woman statistically and according to the FBI," but the prime suspect appears to be Sunday School teacher Melissa Huckaby. Early profiling had postulated that a male sex offender was responsible for the girl's disappearance. Criminal profiler Pat Brown, on the blog Women in Crime Ink (2009), addresses charges of sexism that have been leveled at the initial profiles presented on television, pointing out that accuracy is nearly impossible in 30 seconds with incomplete or inaccurate information.

While the FBI tables (2007) do show that the vast majority of murders are committed by men (by nearly an order of magnitude), they also show that more men are more likely to be murdered than women (see also: 11/2/06). The tables do not show what percentage of women's victims are children.

I do get a little disgusted by the titillation factor when a woman is accused of a violent crime (see 8/17/06). But it was the phrasing by Sgt Sheneman, quoted on news radio this weekend, that caught my attention. At the time, I wasn't aware that he was trying to justify earlier speculation. Is this gender profiling, and somehow unfair to men? On the other hand, how much does it narrow down your suspect pool to say "we think it's a man?"

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What makes you happy?

2009-04-10T08:29:00.004-04:00

Last month, we discussed the "ambition gap" in young workers (under 29), described as the difference between men's and women's desire for additional work responsibility (3/27/09). However, a recent paper by University of Bristol researchers suggests that there may be a difference between what people report wanting, and what they report as a contributor to their happiness. Khattab and Fenton (2009) interviewed 1,100 young workers in the UK (ages 20-34): women were far more likely than men to list "satisfaction with home" as a contributor to life satisfaction. In contrast, men were more likely to list "job as part of a career plan". "Living with partner" was equally important to men and women.

It may be worth noting that the study was conducted in Bristol, an area undergoing significant economic shifts at the time of the interviews. Another article based on the same interviews (Fenton & Dermott, 2006) determined that 40% of the women vs. 7% of the men were in part-time employment.

It's all about how you ask the question, isn't it? Personally, I would like to know more about how they asked for determinants of life satisfaction. I can't find details on this in either of the articles by Fenton above. If given a list with "satisfaction with home" on it, I'd interpret that to mean the quality of my living accomodations, especially when partner and health are additional options. I didn't see any mention of "friends" either, which strikes me as odd. The conclusion that work is less important to women strikes me as ill-founded in the 2009 paper, but I didn't see any discussion of work being less important to part-time workers.

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Obesity [draft]

2009-04-09T09:01:00.005-04:00

So, I'm running really behind schedule today, and I have to go to a meeting in a few minutes. So, today's post appears to be in reverse order, because the section below has basically no evidence to back it up. As always, the top section of DB is "fact", and the bottom section is my opinion. I wrote this off the top of my head on the subway, with the expectation that I'd find sources to back it up. It's mostly opinion, with some half-remembered tidbits from skimmed abstracts over the past few years. The only fact I can state with certainty is that I wasn't prepared today, and I'm running too late to correct it.

I do want to mention that the CDC (2009) does state that women have a slightly higher obesity rate than men (35.3% to 33.3%) but the difference does not seem nearly high enough to support the post I tried to write. Perhaps the most interesting part of today's post is the way my own prejudices are revealed.

In the United States, more women than men are classified as obese, despite a far higher rate of eating disorders among women. One explanation for this disparity is that the standard used to determine obesity may be unfair to women, setting a goal weight that is unachievable or even unhealthy. Others have suggested that the high rate of eating disorders actually worsens the "obesity epidemic" among women, as thousands of women use unhealthy diets for weight control, inevitably "bouncing" back to an above-healthy weight, and changing their metabolisms for the worse. As previously noted, there is evidence that men are more physically active than women at all stages of life. Increased physical activity, combined with fewer dramatic changes in eating patterns, may protect men from obesity to some extent, but the rate of obesity in both sexes continues to rise.

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Price point

2009-04-08T08:40:00.012-04:00

In previous posts, we've discussed how women typically do not negotiate for higher salaries as much (or as effectively?) as men (see 4/13/07, 7/31/07, & 5/1/08; counterpoint: see 7/8/08). This pattern seems to hold true for the self-employed as well: Cron et al (2009) found that women veterinarians tended to use "compassionate pricing" more often than men. However, there seemed to be an offset to this effect through increased customer loyalty. Graham et al (2007, with Cron) suggest that this is also true for other self-employed professionals, such as lawyers and architects, although this study also used a veterinary sample. Studies of pricing differences among other professionals do not seem to be readily available.

"Compassionate pricing" is a phrase used only by Cron, and those who cite his work, apparently, and I suspect I'd find more groups studied if I could figure out what other people had called it. I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode Fear of Flying where a psychiatrist charges on a "sliding scale" ("Keep sliding", Homer replies). Unfortunately, searching for "sliding scale" doesn't seem to turn up differences in pricing habits among mental health providers. What other services might be priced differently by male and female practioners?

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Recession's impact on women

2009-04-07T09:29:00.002-04:00

A story in today's Metro (2009) points out several weaknesses in the claims that the recession has a greater effect on men (see 3/16/09, 1/13/09). The story points out that women may be more likely to work in unreported jobs (such as nannies and housekeepers), or in part-time jobs. A Salt Lake City Tribune (2009) article also points out women's disproportionate involvement in multi-level marketing and home sales (see 9/4/06). Since women in these kinds of jobs are not counted as "in the workforce", the impact of the recession on their livelihood may be desperately underreported. In these cases, women who lost income from this type of work would be uneligible for unemployment benefits. This is not a new complaint: Pearce (1985) argued that unemployment insurance was created "with male family heads and full-time workers as its intended recipients".

I don't believe that anyone in my birth family is listed as a member of the "workforce", come to think of it. I think that arts and crafts is probably the best way to describe their home business, although "eclectic" is probably more accurate. I do think that the Metro story is setting up a bit of a straw man with the statement "80% of on-the-books jobs lost from Nov. 2007 to Nov. 2008 were held
by men." I've seen people quoting the gender distribution in particular fields, but I haven't seen that statistic used anywhere else.

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Biological Clocks

2009-04-06T09:26:00.004-04:00

Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog (NYT, 2009) points to yet another interesting study: Saha et al (2009) suggests that children fathered by older men may not be as smart as those with younger fathers. Belkin also points evidence for increased risk of autism among older fathers' children (Reichenberg et al, 2006; Cantor et al, 2007). These studies, Belkin argues, point to the need for a male "biological clock", with men making a greater priority of starting families at a younger age. In contrast, Chen et al (2008) argue that maternal confounders may be upsetting the congenital anomaly data, and suggest that it is the children of teenaged fathers who are at greatest risk.

You know, I spent a certain amount of time this weekend annoyed at Jenny McCarthy. I only recently found out that she's a major spokesperson for the autism-linked-to-vaccines crowd, and people not vaccinating their kids is sort of a hot-button for me, probably past the point of rationality. I'm forcing myself to read the evidence for this link, in small doses, but I'm not finding much to convince me at this point. However, I do wonder if there is a link between countries with high vaccination rates and later average age of starting a family.

However, mostly I wanted to post about this after the discussion a couple of weeks ago with Ukelele (3/20/09) about how mothers get blamed for everything; a parenting post with a paternal focus felt long overdue.

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Child gender preference

2009-04-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

Goldberg (2009) claims that gay couples and straight couples may differ in their preference for adopting a child of a specific gender. Among the adoptive parents interviewed, gay men were most likely to express a desire for a boy or a girl, while heterosexual men were least likely to express one. Heterosexual couples were less likely to express desire for a male child than homosexual couples. Participants were recruited from adoption agencies in "states with a high percentage of lesbians and gay men" and through the Human Rights Campaign FamilyNet e-mail list. Altogether, 93 heterosexual couples, 61 lesbian couples, and 48 gay male couples were included in the study.

In a previous post, we explored the fact that men were more likely to adopt a child than women, often adopting their wife's children from a previous relationship 8/28/08. At the time, I expressed disappointment that there was so little detail on fathers in adoption. Well, here's fathers. Lots of fathers, who don't have any other children. I think it's sweet, but I'm not sure how I would have addressed the statistical analysis. The idea of combining "preference for girls" and "preference for boys" into a "preference for a gender" variable strikes me as wrong somehow, but I can't put a finger on why.

The percentage of straight couples pursuing international adoption (36%) was higher than the percentage of gay couples (10%) or lesbian couples (20%). I'm ashamed to admit that this surprised me.

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Health Insurance

2009-04-02T09:07:00.004-04:00

NPR (2009) reports that individual health plans for women in California are up to 39% more expensive than health plans for men, based partially on women's tendency to visit doctors more often than men. Ten U.S. states ban differential health care pricing for men and women, and California is considering such a ban, according to the NPR article. Concerns about differences in health insurance are hardly new: Miles and Parker's review (1997) points out several factors, such as part-time work, lower wages, and relative longevity, that make it more likely that a woman will be uninsured or underinsured during her lifetime. Glied et al (2008) points out that rates of insurance coverage have declined for both men and women since 1980, the sources of insurance for women have changed in a way that men's haven't: women in 1980 were more likely to be covered as dependents.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2007), 13.9% of U.S. women and 16.7% of men were uninsured in 2006.

I spent the years between 1997 and 2002 with spotty-to-no health coverage. In retrospect, it felt like longer than that. Since 2002, I've had the same employer health care, and covered my partner under the plan for a while. The plan is based in Massachusetts, one of the states with a ban on sex-based rates, but what sex I'm listed as with my insurer seems to be in constant flux (depending on what service I've most recently had). It makes me (extra) glad I'm not on an individual plan in California: I imagine the billing headaches would be enormous.

Since 2003, I've seen some medical professional at least twice a year for various monitoring and checkups (4x if you count dentists). It's not unrelated that I started my medical transition in 2003, but not all of my annual visits are transition-related. Some of them are female-body-related, and I tend to think of those when I think about the higher cost of health care for women. On the other hand, I've recently been told that I'm not seeing a doctor enough. My primary care physician recently declined to renew a prescription because I hadn't seen him in a few years. Whoops. With two specialist visits a year, an annual physical really didn't cross my mind.

Since men and women's care costs insurers different amounts, is it fair to bill them differently?

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Gene-splicing

2009-04-01T09:02:00.005-04:00

Researchers report today that they have confirmed the theoretical possibility of combining male and female DNA. Durr et al's (2009) article stresses that creating such a male-female hybrid in humans would be highly unethical, but subtly hints that work with animal models may already be underway. The offspring would almost certainly be sterile, without access to normal means of reproduction. Even so, this work runs counter to the commonly accepted theoretical framework (see the seminal work by Southey, 1820) which had theorized too many differences in male and female makeup for such a combination to be possible.

I'm normally pro-science to a fault, but I have to say that I find this line of research a little troubling. Even if the application is restricted just to animals, it seems really sketchy to try to make a creature out of half male and half female genetic material. I'm sure we could learn a lot from it, assuming they did create a viable hybrid, but it wouldn't be applicable to normal people. Would the ethical debt be worth the satisfied curiosity?

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Motor learning and memory

2009-03-31T08:55:00.003-04:00

Dorfberger et al (2009) suggests an alternate explanation to the male advantage on certain motor tasks: this study of Israeli schoolchildren found that training sessions improved male performance more, and that the boys retained skills for longer, than similar interventions for girls. The study concludes that, especially during adolescence, "there may be a male advantage in motor learning rather than in motor performance per-se". An earlier PET investigation (Grafton et al, 1992) had uncovered no neurological sex differences during motor learning, but this is not surprising given their small sample size (n = 6). Dorfberger's result may only be applicable to young populations, however: Smith et al (2005) found no sex differences in acquiring or retaining motor memories in adults aged 18 to 95.

Motor skills, with the exception of a male advantage in aimed throwing (2/24/09), have not really been discussed in previous Difference Blogs. All of the motor tasks studied in the above experiments involve fine motor control: largely writing and finger manipulation. Despite Dorfberger's assertion, I've seen little evidence for a male advantage in fine motor skills. This is usually presented as a female advantage. A summary of the research on female fine motor advantage is available in Diane Halpern's Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities (2000, pp 89-90) However, this advantage refers to performance, rather than to skill acquisition or retention.

I don't think much about fine motor skills, especially their retention. The motor memories that I notice most are larger -- for example, riding a bicycle. Now, I suspect that most people learn to ride a bicycle well before the age shown to have a male advantage in Dorfberger (12), but retaining that memory has proven especially hard for me, as mentioned several times before. I'm trying to think of other motor memories I've developed, and I really think typing is the most invested, since I don't play an instrument.

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Death and Diet

2009-03-30T08:37:00.005-04:00

In the current Archives of Internal Medicine, Sinha et al (2009) report that a 10-year prospective study of meat intake showed increased risk of death among both men and women in the top quintile of meat-eaters (vs. the lowest quintile). Counter-intuitively, men in the highest red-meat quintile showed increased risk of "death from injuries and sudden death" as well as from cancer and cardiovascular diseases. There was no relationship between accidental death and meat consumption for women. This seems run counter to arguments made in Lawlor et al's (2001) retrospective study; Lawlor et al suggested that men and women may respond differently to dietary fat, although they acknowledged that dietary fat sources might differ by sex. According to Lawlor et al, total dietary fat consumption has not historically differed between the sexes.

For example, Lawlor suggests that war-time food rationing in the U.K. might have reserved more of the scarce red meat for men, with women eating more alternative protein sources, such as fish. In previous DB posts, we've seen that women view dairy as more key to nutrition (2/19/09), and that older men seem to have higher protein needs to maintain muscle mass (3/26/08). Women also seem to eat more vegetables than men, according to some studies (3/21/08).

I think what I found most interesting about Sinha's study was that there did not seem to be a difference between men and women on meat intake in general. This could be related to the fact that Sinha's study group was drawn from AARP members, with several differences from a typical U.S. population of this age group: "predominantly non-Hispanic white, more educated, consumed less fat and red meat and more fiber and fruits and vegetables, and had fewer current smokers".

I think I've accepted the fact that I love red meat. Periodically I try to cut down. I don't consider it the most environmentally or medically wise choice. It's damn tasty, though.

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Ambition gap narrowing

2009-03-27T08:53:00.007-04:00

A new study released by the Families and Work Institute (2009) reveals that 26% of women in dual-income households are now earning more than their husbands. In the New York Times' Motherlode blog (2009), Lisa Belkin focuses on a change in motherhood's impact on career ambition: in 1992, the presence of children reduced a woman's desire for more work responsibility by 18%; in 2008, the gap was 3%.

Changes were apparent in the fatherhood role as well. Over the three decades studied, 59% of men in 2008 experienced "some or a lot" of work-life conflict, compared to just 35% in 1977. Women's work-life conflict over the same period was stable: 41% in 1977 and 45% in 2008. The increase in men's work-conflict is probably due to increased parental investment: 31% of women in 2008 said their husbands took at least equal responsibility for parenting: "Interestingly, 49% of men reported taking as much or more responsibility for the children as their wives, indicating a perception gap."

So, one of the reasons I started writing DB in the first place is because I felt like I had three views of gender: living as a woman, living as a man, and as an outsider to the whole damn game. In no part of my life is this more apparent to me than in discussions of parenting, which feel like they come up a lot: this post makes three this week that end up coming down to "women can has babies." This feels like a tangent, but I really want to express a little self-disgust here: manhood and womanhood are more than fertility. Or are they? Does my sterility make me as much of an outsider as my tripartite perspective?

Returning to the Family and Work Institute's results, I have to say that I am disappointed that I don't see a way to compare their findings with single-income households. In fact, I'm not seeing a good way on the U.S. Census site to separate single-earner families from single-person households. Anyone else want to take a stab at what percentage of couples are getting by on one income?

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Male Contraception

2009-03-26T08:57:00.004-04:00

Nelly Oudshoorn's book, The male pill: a biography of a technology in the making (2003) points out that although the feasibility of a male birth control pill was demonstrated in the 1970's, there is still no such product available. Early opinion surveys focused on class and gender differences, such as Balswick (1975) who stated that "any attempted reeducation process must take into account the lower-class male's fear of emasculation." According to a survey of 1,930 men by Thompson (2008), over half of men desire "more personal control over their fertility", and 96% are willing to visit a doctor in order to get a new method of male contraception. According to Thompson, belief persists among contraceptive developers that men would not embrace a drug-based birth control method, but the results of the survey contradict this stereotype.

In the 1980's, I knew a man who claimed to get a male birth control pill from Canada, saying that it wasn't available in the U.S. The man was a compulsive liar in pretty much every area of his life, but being 12, I believed him. As an adult, I question his motives for sharing this "fact" with a 12-year-old (he didn't actually make a pass at me that I noticed), as well as shudder to think about the girls he probably did convince to have unprotected sex with him.

Here's the thing: I feel like the male-birth-control thing is tied up in a Catch-22 with the social responsibility for pregnancy. I feel like the current laws regarding child support are unfair to men, but also that changing them would be unfair to women. I get furious when I hear things headlines like "Sperm Donor Sued for Child Support", even though the sources are often reactionary crap (two examples: FOXnews, 2005; NY Post, 2007). There is no opt-out for men when it comes to child support, but I feel like this option can't be given until there is more equal responsibility for preventing pregnancy.

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Pain sensitivity

2009-03-25T08:25:00.004-04:00

Women typically show higher sensitivity to pain in experiments, and so naturally, hormones are suggested as one possible contributor. However, the studies we've examined do not seem to support a hormonal explanation. Last year I spoke to Arthur Arnold about his experiments with gonadiectomied mice (see comments 4/30/08) which showed that female (XX) mice appeared to be more sensitive to pain independently of hormonal state.

Two studies released this year also attempt to address this theory. Klatzkin et al (2009) is notable because it uses human participants instead of an animal model. Klatzkin's study found that menstrual cycle did not affect experimental pain sensitivity in women. This would seem to suggest that the hormonal avenue may be a dead end in pain studies. However, Li et al (2009) may have found a promising line of inquiry in another mouse study: two strains of knockout mice who were missing estrogen receptors α or β did not show sex differences in pain sensitivity, while the wild-type mice did. Li et al suggest two possible explanations: "an ongoing effect of estrogen acting through its receptors in females or the developmental changes that predominantly affect females." By developmental, the authors are referring to Fan et al's (2007) suggestion that estrogen receptor β may be key to the development of pain pathways in the brain.

Given the other evidence we've looked at, I suggest a third explanation: what if the estrogen receptors react to compounds other than estrogen? Neurobiology was a couple of years ago, but I seem to remember that some receptors served double-duty. There may be some really obvious medical or neurological reason why this wouldn't be the case here, but it seems to me that the gonadiectomied mice discussed last year would have the receptors, but not the hormones, and that the knockout mice have the hormones, but not the receptors. The gonadiectomied mice showed sex differences in pain sensitivity, and the knockout mice didn't.

More on pain:
Conference on Women's Pain: 10/10/06
Neuroscience of Sex differences in pain perception: 5/14/08
Physical vs. Emotional pain: 9/26/06

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Parental investment under uncertainty

2009-03-24T09:05:00.004-04:00

Paternity testing is a popular theme for daytime talk shows: popular media make it seem as if large portions of the population are uncertain about their heritage. One British paternity testing vendor suggests that "up to one in twenty-five dads are not the real father"(International Biosciences, 2009). The Wikipedia article on "Parental testing" points out that tests can be used to determine motherhood or fatherhood, although cases of maternity testing are rare, occurring for cases such as hospital errors, birth-parent identification for adopted children, and confirming the parentage of embryos used in in vitro fertilization.

Many factors appear to influence the prevalence of paternity testing: Gilding (2006) describes "political, cultural and economic" reasons why the DNA paternity testing occurs 5x as often per capita in the United States compared to Australia. Bishai et al (2006) point out that among the 300,000 DNA paternity tests conducted annually in the U.S., demographic variables are not good predictors of the tests' outcomes: no race or ethnic group has particularly different outcomes from the overall 72% likelihood that the test will confirm fatherhood. Anderson's (2006) analysis suggests that a man's decreased confidence in parental status has significant implications on his investment in his children.

I'm reminded of a terrible and offensive joke I read in college: "there's a new day-after pill for men; it changes your blood type." It's representative of the idea that men, but not women, can run away from pregnancy. I'd have to agree that this is true, for pregnancy, if not for childcare. The ability to deny parentage seems like a major sex difference that I haven't really addressed, and probably because I find it altogether too depressing. Fighting for women's reproductive rights is really important to me, but I'm constantly nervous about what seem like unfair obligations imposed on biological fathers.

Perhaps the Gilding article is the most relevant to my feelings on the subject: in a different cultural and political climate, where legal obligations to children were different, parental testing would be less common, and less desired. I'd like to see analysis of the parental investment of adoptive fathers, as a comparison to uncertain vs. certain fathers.

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Reading habits

2009-03-23T09:15:00.004-04:00

A survey (n = 2,000) conducted as part of the U.K.'s National Year of Reading (2008) suggests that men are less likely to finish books than women (Telegraph, UK 2009). The Guardian (UK, 2009) reports this as women knowing how to "read properly", while the Telegraph points out that men reported being more likely to lie about their reading habits to impress a member of the opposite sex (46% to 33%). These findings are not entirely surprising nor limited to the U.K.: in a Dutch study (n = 664), Verboord (2005) found that women's book reading was 16% higher than men's. In a smaller U.S. study (n = 115), Scales and Rhee (2001) found that 41% of women vs 16% of men reported reading novels.

It's worth pointing out that these three surveys appear to be asking very different questions: do you finish what you read, how often do you read, and what do you like to read? However, Verboord did report high levels of concordance between reported answers on how often people read, how many books they finish, and when they last finished a book. Perhaps relevant is Rehberg Sedo's (2003) (n = 252) study of book club participants, who were 85% female: however, this probably says more about the social reading environment than with actual volume of reading.

If nothing else, this would seem to be support for the oft-cited female comfort with language-based tasks versus spatial or mathematical tasks. On the other hand, it might also be support for a female tendency to report more socially desirable behaviors: I don't think anyone is likely to argue that women are under social pressure not to read. If anything, women's vocal involvement in social reading (such as book clubs) might cause underreporting of reading in men. There's really no way to know how close the self-report in these (all retrospective) studies is to reality. I was hoping to find a reading diary study, but since diary-keeping tends to improve performance of desired behaviors, that couldn't be applied to the general population anyway.

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Do mothers carry the weight of the world?

2009-03-20T08:55:00.006-04:00

In a 2000 review in Nature, Barry Levin suggested that the "obesity epidemic" in the developed world might be more complicated than "increased food intake or decreased energy expenditure". Levin's review suggested that genetic predisposition towards obesity might spiral upward through generations in what he terms "metabolic imprinting."

Last summer, several studies attempted to demonstrate this link. Aagaard-Tillery et al (2008) found that macaques who ate a high fat diet during pregnancy tended to have heavier children, even if they themselves did not become obese. Waterland et al (2008), using mice, suggested that a genetic tendency towards obesity grows worse over successive generations. However, Lawlor et al (2008) looked at human data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children and found that the difference between maternal and paternal contributions to children's obesity was not significantly different, calling into question the maternal "overnutrition" theory.

Sociologists Kwan and Trautner (2009) call into question the entire framing of the "obesity epidemic" by pointing out the trend toward medicalization and pointing out that the epidemic can be framed as a "moral panic" which preferentially targets women.

I think we can agree that women are under more social pressure about their weight than men (e.g. 4/10/08, 1/22/07), and as previously discussed, women may be more susceptible to social pressure than men (e.g. 3/10/09, 2/26/09). The idea of a "moral panic" and the focus on maternal obesity brought this into a pretty sharp perspective for me this morning: my emotional reaction was that these studies were blaming mothers for their children's obesity. "Not only are you a failure as a woman for being fat, but you are a failure as a mother because you made your child fat." I'm finding myself surprisingly pissed off about it. The fact that Lawlor's study seems to be the only one looking at paternal genetic contributions to obesity is shocking, but probably shouldn't be.

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I am Jack's prostate

2009-03-19T09:20:00.008-04:00

Two new studies reported by the BBC today indicate that the routine prostate cancer screenings recommended for men since 1987 may do more harm than good (BBC, 2009) Current testing procedures require speedy, and often invasive, follow-up tests for a higher percentage of men than actually need care:

"Critics will argue that this translates into a benefit for only one in 1,400 men, while around one in 30 men were harmed because they had to deal with the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer that would never otherwise have caused any problem."

Andriole et al (2009): U.S. results of Prostate Screening, NEJM
Schröder et al (2009): European results of Prostate Screening, NEJM

I don't think I've covered prostate cancer before, which struck me as desperately unfair when I considered that I've covered menstrual-based differences several times (examples). Now, I don't think the problem implicated here is unique to men; for example, I have serious doubts about the risk-benefit ratio for some of the HPV tests available to women, and aggressively advertised on TV and in magazines.

edit: Please see comments for discussion of HPV Vaccine risks.

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Olfaction to Action

2009-03-18T08:57:00.004-04:00

Tubaldi et al (2008) argue for a sex difference in olfaction in "an action context". The study attempts an olfactory interference task (like Stroop, but for smell) by mismatching a grasping target and an olfactory cue. The study found greater interference between smell and action for men than for women, which the authors argue is related to differently evolved roles:

In other words, female sense of smell would be perception-oriented, ie optimised to detect, discriminate, identify, recognise, and categorise odours. Conversely, male sense of smell would appear to be action-oriented, ie tailored to elicit specific and selective motor commands for interacting with `smelled-objects'.

I'm a little confused about this one. I'm not really sold on their graphs as demonstrating anything particularly significant. The idea that action-vs-perception are different modes of sensory processing is an interesting one, and probably worth testing. I feel like this would be related to the tendency of women to self-report emotional states incongruous with their neurological state (see 1/21/09), but that would suggest greater interference for women, not men. Since this is an interference task, their control is "congruent" smells versus "incongruent" smells, but I feel like the test procedure is so novel that additional controls should be in place. It looks like women's "grasp" time was shorter than the men's across all conditions.

Related posts:
The Nose Knows (women's reaction to male sweat) 2/17/09
Smelling your way to happiness (scent and attraction) 5/19/08
You smell (neurological dimorphism in olfaction) 2/7/07

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Aspirin

2009-03-17T09:04:00.003-04:00

In a statement published in today's issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine (2009), the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) updates the guidelines for preventative aspirin regimens. USPSTF member Dr. Michael LeFevre said in a US News & World Report (2009) article: "We have a recommendation for men and a recommendation for women. We did not have that before."

The USPSTF 2002 aspirin recommendations recommended that aspirin therapy be recommended for "men older than 40 years of age, postmenopausal women, and younger persons with risk factors for coronary heart disease." However, the new guidelines suggest a narrower band of appropriate ages, and that for women, the reduction in stroke risk is the major benefit, not the reduction in cardiac risk. The 2009 recommendations are as follows:

Encourage men age 45 to 79 years to use aspirin when the potential benefit of a reduction in myocardial infarctions outweighs the potential harm of an increase in gastrointestinal hemorrhage (A recommendation)
Encourage women age 55 to 79 years to use aspirin when the potential benefit of a reduction in ischemic strokes outweighs the potential harm of an increase in gastrointestinal hemorrhage. (A recommendation)
Evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of aspirin for cardiovascular disease prevention in men and women 80 years or older. (I statement)
Do not encourage aspirin use for cardiovascular disease prevention in women younger than 55 years and in men younger than 45 years. (D recommendation)

One of the earliest DB posts (9/8/06) was a complaint about the treatment of women with evidence that had been found solely in men. I really feel heartened by these revised recommendations, no pun intended. Actually, re-reading the commentary section of that post, I see that it's not really a complaint. Two and a half years ago, I was nervous about medicine based on demographic subgroups; now, I think it's a good start. What a difference DifferenceBlog has made.

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Race and Recession

2009-03-16T09:00:00.008-04:00

As we've already discussed (1/13/09), the current economic crisis has hit job sectors disproportionately staffed by men hardest. Men are losing jobs more than women, because the jobs being cut tend to be worked by men. Additional findings from Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies suggest that race is an additional, possibly even larger, factor: black men's employment levels have dropped 7.8% in less than 18 months (Christian Science Monitor, 2009). In the same period, according to the CSM, black women have faced "no net job losses," possibly due to higher levels of education.

It is interesting to note how the face of economic struggle seems to have shifted over just a few years. Lovell and Salas (2003) noted that men's unemployment rates were falling, and women's were rising, as recently as 6 years ago, and these shifts were sharper among black men and women than in the general population. Labor participation rates may also be a factor: black women "in the labor force" increased 18.1% between 1996-2006, compared to 11.3% for black men (see 1/26/09 for a discussion of the Labor Bureau definition of workforce).

I often wonder how useful it is for me to talk about "gender roles" at all. At least, I should include the caveat that my experience of gender roles has a middle-class (liberal, academic) white bias, and a fairly strong one at that. One quote from Sheri Parks in the CSM article really brought this home to me:

“If you’re a black woman, you don’t have to convince someone that you’re strong and nurturing and able to do almost anything – it’s almost a brand,” says Ms. Parks. “The prevalent image of a black man is what we call hyper-masculine and often idealized, but not necessarily in the workplace.”

In the Difference Blog Reader Poll, I asked about gender, but I haven't asked about race. I don't know how many of you have experiences different than mine. Still, I feel like this is a good time to re-state the obvious: gendered experience is a cultural experience, and varies in ways I can't imagine.

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Bicycling Gap

2009-03-13T08:32:00.009-04:00

"In the UK, the image
associated with cycling
is male, often in Lycra,
quite likely to be moving
at speed and often not a
very friendly person –
possibly aggressive."
-- Henrietta Sherwin,
Centre for Transport
& Society

BikeRadar (2009), "the world's most comprehensive cycling website", reports on why women in the UK seem to be less likely than their male counterparts to go it on two wheels. Cycling England (2008), for example, suggests that men are three times more likely to ride than women.

The reasons for the disparity may differ between cultures. The surveys suggest that women often cite sweatiness and helmet hair as potential reasons that they do not cycle. In Australia, Garrard et al (2008) found women were more likely to cycle when separated bike paths were available. In Portland, Oregon, Dill and Voros (2007) found that more women than men cited traffic as a barrier to bicycling. These concerns suggest that a gender difference in risk tolerance may contribute to the gap in cycling rates.

I hate the fact that this is true about me, but this may have motivated me to get back on the bicycle this spring. I've gotten private feedback from DB readers that they find themselves trying to fight the gender-stereotyped behaviors I post about. I do it, too. I really believe in cycling as a sustainable mode of transportation, but I have a lot of fear about riding. I'm not good at it. Even on separated bike paths, I feel like I'm in the way of more serious riders. I'm slow and wobbly. I recognize that more practice would probably build confidence and skill, but during my last attempt (a couple of years ago), I got more nervous after a few rides, and stopped. I didn't keep it up long enough to get past the hump.

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Estimated Desirability of Drinking

2009-03-12T09:10:00.005-04:00

LaBrie et al (2009)* suggest that college women may be excessively drinking in order to impress the opposite sex, and it isn't working. Their survey of over 3,000 college students found that 71% of women overestimated the amount a man would want a female friend, date, or girlfriend to drink, and high estimates were linked with higher reported drinking. On average, women thought men preferred a woman who would drink 4.75 "standard" drinks on a typical drinking occasion; men reported preferring 3.18 drinks.

Not much research appears to be available on the gender-construction of drinking in the U.S. college population, as opposed to the U.K., where "ladettes" and portrayal of "feminine drinks" in teen magazines have been an active inquiry for several years (see DB 10/3/06 & 7/7/08; Jackson, 2006; Lyons et al, 2006).

*Not yet available in abstract databases: see EurekAlert (2009) for a summary or download the full article from the Psychology of Addictive Behaviors journal page

I can go ahead and say I was guilty of trying to "keep up" with my male friends' drinking in college. (Hell, I'm probably still guilty of it to a degree.) I was smaller than them, and my fat-to-muscle ratio wasn't comparable either, so I ended up hurting myself more often than I should have. I don't think I was consciously trying to be more attractive, but I definitely thought it would earn me respect if I could keep up. I think knowing my limits would have been more respectable, but I didn't think my limits would increase if I didn't push them, and I was desperately ashamed of my low tolerance (and still somewhat annoyed by it).

However, in my case at least, keeping up with the lads had layers of meaning that are probably missing in LaBrie's sample. For example, the study excluded the 3.7% of respondents who reported a non-heterosexual identification.

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May-December

2009-03-11T08:21:00.000-04:00

Lehmiller and Agnew (2008) examine commitment and satisfaction of heterosexual women in age-gap and age-concordant relationships. Surprisingly, they found that although most people rate older-woman/younger-man relationships as the most likely to fail, younger women involved with older men were more likely to report feeling socially stigmatized. The stigma reported by people in age-discordant relationships may be very severe: earlier research by the same authors (2006) found that these couples report more social disapproval than interracial or same-sex couples.

I've gone a bit younger in a relationship, and it was touch-and-go. I've gone older in a relationship, and it was a terrible idea. My current relationships are with a man 13 months younger than me and a woman 2.5 years younger. They seem okay, but even the 2.5 year gap feels wide enough to make a difference sometimes.

I feel like this is an unpopular idea among some of the circles I run in, but I don't generally think large age gaps are a good idea. However, I disagree with Agnew and Lehmiller's definition of an age gap as being anywhere between 5 and 50 years. (and did they find a couple with an over 50 year gap?) I stick to the half-your-age-plus-seven rule... mostly.

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Differences in Self-Report

2009-03-10T09:11:00.002-04:00

As we've discussed several times, when taking sexual histories from men and women, there seems to be a gender difference in reporting rates (e.g. 8/13/07, 10/28/08). An experiment by Alexander and Fisher (2003) attempted to sort out where this difference was coming from by using the "lie detecting" reputation of the polygraph machine. 96 male and 105 female undergraduates filled out sexual history surveys under one of three conditions: hooked up to a "lie detector", "anonymous", and "exposure threat", where they handed completed surveys to a peer researcher. Women's responses showed more difference between conditions than men's: women reported fewer sexual partners when they thought their responses would be read, more when they thought they'd be caught in a lie. In fact, women in the lie detector condition reported more sexual partners than the men in that condition. However, it must be noted that sex X condition effects did not reach a significant interaction (see more about subgroup analysis on 8/24/07).

The lie detector (or what the researchers called "bogus pipeline") condition is an interesting way to see how social pressure influences responses on "scientific" surveys, but I'm a little depressed that the participants rated the lie detector as accurately as they did. The students rated the machine's accuracy as 3.7 on a scale of 1 to 5 for measuring "true attitudes and feelings". There was no sex difference on this rating, or on the rating of how much the students thought the machine would pressure them to be honest. Previous studies we've looked at have indicated that women are more susceptible to social pressure, so it's not too surprising that the effect would look greater under these conditions.

I don't know if I would have used random assignment to split students among the three conditions, since the groups came out more uneven than I'm really comfortable with: bogus pipeline n = 51 (43%F), anonymous n = 61 (54%F), exposure threat n = 89 (52%F).

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Appearance Recall Accuracy

2009-03-09T09:20:00.005-04:00

Horgan et al (2009) explore the difference between men and women on "appearance accuracy." In previous studies, women have been found to do better on tests of recall about another person's appearance (including skin and eye color, and details about clothing and accessories). In the present study, as well as in Horgan et al (2004), Horgan suggests that women's tendency to focus on people vs. things gives them an advantage over men on these tests of memory: however, there was no difference in men's and women's recall of the objects surrounding the target person. Hall and Schmid Mast (2008) tested appearance accuracy using "male-stereotypic content" and "tasks framed to favor men’s motivation", but still failed to find a scenario in which men outscored women on appearance accuracy.

Off-topic: I put a Difference Blog reader poll up on Friday. I'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to fill it out.

And now back to appearance accuracy: you know, I find it interesting that "clothing and accessories" are not considered "objects" for the purposes of dividing men's and women's fields of attention. I'm not saying that men pay as much attention to clothing as women do: not by half. But I do wonder why the "people vs. objects" dichotomy is directed at this particular task. Where is the line between an object and an accessory? Is a cell phone an accessory? What about an iPod, or a 3-ring binder? An unrelated minor complaint: one question about the office that was asked in the 2009 article was whether it was painted blue or light gray, but no information about the color-vision of the participants was reported. I have fine color vision, and I have trouble between light blue and light gray.

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A boy named Sue

2009-03-06T08:00:00.009-05:00

Yesterday on Twitter, CaptainDomestic shared his theory of gendered name migration: "Boy names can become girl names, but not vice versa¹; I'd guess 5% of men in 1900 had names that are majority female now.²". I made a couple of quick calculations³ ⁴, but promised I'd come up with the real number today.

That number is: 1.06%. Based on the Social Security Administration's lists of most popular baby names in the 1900's and 2000's*, 1.06% of men between 1900-1910 had a name that is in in the top 1,000 most popular names for females between 2000-2007 (and not ranked higher for males). In the 1900s, 1.2% of boys had names more popular for girls in 1900s; 1.0% of girls in 1900 had names more popular for boys at the time. In the 2000s, this reversed: 1.2% of girls had "boy's names", and 1.0% of boys had "girl's names".

One of the biggest changes seems to be that women's names have had a greater move toward diversity. In the 1900's, 90.2% of men and 90.8% of women had one of the 1,000 most common names. In the years 2000-2007, this fell to 81.4% of men and 69.1% of women. Jessie, Sidney, and Guadalupe are the only names to appear on all four lists (male and female, 1900s and 2000s): Jessie went from a girl's name to a boy's name, Sidney went from boy's to girl's, and Guadalupe has always been more popular for girls.

*see limitations of the SSA data here.

So, my partner Grayskale complained (while I was playing with VLOOKUP until my eyes bled) that my operational definition of "girl's name" was weak. Well, I can't really argue with that. What makes something a "girl's name" or a "boy's name". I used the rank on the top 1,000 lists: if it was higher on the girl's list, it was a girl's name. If it appeared on the girl's list, but not the boy's list, it was a girl's name. But that doesn't address things like the question "what percentage of people named Jessie are female?", which would be an equally (if not more) valid measure. It would also be nearly impossible to calculate from the SSA site: more than twice as many women than men appear in the data from 1900.

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Marital Stress

2009-03-05T09:06:00.004-05:00

Nancy Henry and Tim Smith, at the University of Utah, suggest that a bad marriage may be unhealthier for the wife than for the husband (Univ. of UT P.R., 2009). While both men and women are more likely to suffer from depressive symptoms when their marriages are in trouble, men do not seem to develop "metabolic syndromes" in response, but women do. "Metabolic syndrome" is a cluster of symptoms: "hypertension, obesity around the waistline, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low levels of HDL, which is 'good cholesterol'." These factors are tied to increased risk of heart disease, the number one killer of adult women (and men, see 2/9/09). The authors suggest that the female hormonal response to stress may be more harmful than men's stress response. Perhaps relevant to this discussion are findings by Kurdek (2005) and Schmitt and Kliegel (2006) which found no gender differences in marital satisfaction, although Schmitt and Kliegel did find higher reports of "marital stress" among women than men.

Honestly, I was expecting to find that women reported less satisfaction than men. I really was. I thought some of the "happiness gap" (9/28/07) and tendency to complain (12/1/06) would come into play. In my admittedly limited experience, I have found that female partners are more willing to bring up concerns about a relationship, and more likely to worry about them. I had expected this to be reflected in research, but it's nice to be wrong. I'm reminded of one of my favorite Jeff Murdock-isms from the defunct British sitcom, Coupling (2000-2004): "Maybe women are completely different when we're not with them. Maybe they're not cross all the time. "(IMDB)

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Stereotype Stigma in Mental Illness

2009-03-04T08:55:00.006-05:00

Wirth and Bodenhausen (2009) report that the social stigma on mental illness raises the most sympathy when symptoms present counter to gender stereotypes. The experiment presented case studies of an alcoholic and a depressive to 186 "nationally representative" reviewers (recruited through random-digit dialing by Knowledge Networks). When a female case was presented with depressive symptoms, reviewers expressed more "anger and disgust" and less sympathy than when she was presented with alcoholic symptoms. The reverse was true for the male case. Reviewers were more likely to consider the case's cause biological when the symptoms were not gender stereotyped. See Wray Herbert's "Only Human" blog for more on this study.

I am not a unique snowflake. Okay, I knew that, but this study really drove it home for me. I know that I tend to express more sympathy and fellow-feeling for people when they behave counter to stereotyped role. What I didn't realize was how common this reaction is. I would have thought the unexpected would be more threatening; that people would have shown more sympathy to a case that reminded them of an example in their own lives. Come to think of it, it may be parallels in their own lives that made the stereotypical cases less sympathetic: personal hurt to the lashing out of a male alcoholic or female depressive could easily have swayed the results. Which do you think is more likely: that people dislike conformity to stereotype, or that parallels to personal experience decreased sympathy?

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Religious Differences

2009-03-03T09:15:00.004-05:00

Grim and Masci (2008) says that 1.6% of Americans say they are atheists, and that men are twice as likely as women to make this claim. This is according to a survey taken by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life during 2007. However, new analysis of Pew's data, released last week (Pew, 2/26/09) demonstrates a gap between men and women on a multitude of religious measures, such as prayer, service attendance, and others.

Another Pew paper, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (2008, pdf), reports that men are also more likely to claim no specific religious affiliation than women (19.6% to 12.8%). The combined response of 16.1% unaffiliated is identical to the statistical abstract provided by the U.S. Census (2009). **

However, a closer look at the "Other" column in the "Religious Landscape" paper shows that the female advantage only applies to Christian traditions (which make up 78.4% of the survey's respondents). In every one of the "Other Religions" listed (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Other world religions, Other faiths), the percentage of men is higher, with a total of 5.2% of men and 4.2% of women identifying with one of these categories.

I used to be fairly active in the neopaganism movement, since that was the religion I was raised in. One of the movement that I really believed in (and still believe in) was the call to use the umbrella term "Pagan" on the census and other surveys, so as to appear as a distinct category. "Stand up and be counted," and so on. I last thought about this in probably 1995 or so. I just noticed that "New Age" religions make up 0.4% of the U.S. population, according to the 2009 Census abstract. In 1990, no results for "Pagans" were reported in the census; in 2001, 140,000 people answered "Pagan".

**edit 2:42pm: I just noticed that the US Census data includes Atheist in Unaffiliated, which Pew didn't. So the 16.1% is not an identical number.

See also:
Mental Health and Religious Attendance 1/22/08
Very superstitious 3/2/07
Differences in Religiosity Pt 1 1/29/07 and Pt 2 1/30/07

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Financial Independence

2009-03-02T08:57:00.006-05:00

A Reuters Synovate survey asked 4,500 women (and an equal number of men) about their financial responsibility. According to the Reuters story (2009), over half of all respondents believed women were more financially responsible than men. The Synovate website (2009) gives more detail: 61% of women and 40% of men thought women were more responsible (meaning the actual division is basically equal).

Pahl (2009) suggests that couples in the United Kingdom "and elsewhere" are becoming less financially intertwined, which in some cases may indicate independence, but for others, may breed inequality. The Reuters Synovate survey found that 41% of women defined financial independence as not being dependent on a partner for money, while 30% defined it as living debt-free. 58% of the female respondents thought they were financially independent. Jay MacDonald (2005), writing for BankRate, suggests that the main difference between men's and women's spending habits is timeline: women have a "now-money orientation" while men have a "future-money orientation".

I'm probably overly cautious about keeping my finances separate from my partner's. Despite having cohabited with partners pretty consistently since 1996, I have never had a joint checking account. I've only purchased one large household item jointly (and ended up getting "bought out" of my share a few months later), and my partner and I keep fairly detailed spreadsheets regarding who has covered which household expenses (pretty much everything except food). Even so, my biggest worry is making sure I'm pulling my own weight. I do think transition changed my outlook on money, but not because of social role or hormones. My outlook changed because transition is expensive: I had to plan for big expenditures.

see also: Bankruptcy, 1/12/09; Sexism in Lending, 11/10/08.

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Brain for Beauty

2009-02-27T08:07:00.001-05:00

The Associated Press (2009) story says that "women use more" brain than men in evaluating beauty. What Cela-Conde et al (2009) actually reported was greater bilateral activity as measured by MEG in women, relative to men, when being asked to rate landscape paintings or photographs as "beautiful" or "not beautiful." The actual ratings of beauty were not related to gender: "It is curious that, using different neural networks, the final result is very similar in women and men. But this seems to be the case".

Some days, I really want to hang up the DifferenceBlog and write an entire blog about science writing in the popular media; "more brain", seriously? Then again, I'm not sure what you do with this study.

My first guess for why women's results were more lateralized: they were more likely to think about whether the images were "objectively" beautiful -- at least, that's how I'd get distracted, and second-guess myself. My completely unfounded suspicion is that women were not just thinking "do I enjoy this image" but also "would most people enjoy this image?" Then again, I get totally paranoid whenever I have to rate my enjoyment of anything. I feel like there's something wrong with me if I don't enjoy something that someone else can.

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Embarrassed by Peers

2009-02-26T09:08:00.007-05:00

Gallup et al (2009) found that being the target of victimization in middle and high school affects men and women differently. The survey found that "diminishing, demeaning, and embarrassing" types of indirect aggression predicted sexual behavior in college, but in opposite ways. Girls who had been victimized reported more and earlier sexual partners; boys reported fewer and later activity.

Gallup points to reduced social status leading to fewer "mating opportunities" for boys. For girls, Gallup offers two possible explanations: first, that the girls are picked on because they are more attractive than their peers, or second, that the girls are less able to resist "sexual pressure" from males due to reduced self-esteem. Reduced self-esteem due to peer victimization would be consistent with Paquette and Underwood (1999), who reported that girls' self-concept was more affected by this type of relational aggression than boys' self-concept.

There's a bit of hand-wavy theorizing going on here, so bear with me. It looks like getting picked on in school reverses normal gendered behavior, according to Gallup's study: girls get more sexual, boys get less sexual. I am dubious about the reduction of mating opportunities for low-status boys: boys in general have fewer opportunities than girls, and I think that's important for the girls' result as well. What Gallup isn't catching, and what I think is really important here, is the way sex can be used to prop up faltering self-esteem, at least in the short-term. It was nearly the only source of my self-esteem between the ages of 19 and 22, so I may be biased.

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Marijuana Use

2009-02-25T08:42:00.003-05:00

In a Canadian survey, Tu et al (2008) examined correlates of cannabis use among 7th through 12th graders in British Columbia. They found that 14.3% of boys and 8.7% of girls met their criterion for "heavy" marijuana use: 10+ instances in the past 30 days. Most predictors were shared between sexes; ethnicity predicted use only for boys, while poorer mental health predicted use for girls. In the U.S., Kerr et al (2007) found that marijuana use had declined among men 18-25 since 1984, but had not among women, leading to convergence near 20% of people in this age group using within the past year by 2000; a similar convergence occurred in adults over 26, around 5%.

Interestingly, McGregor and Arnold (2007) found that female rats self-administered intravenous THC at a greater rate than males, and that this effect disappeared with ovarectomy. The authors argue that this could point to a estrogen-mediated reward system for the active compound in cannabis.

You know, the age 26 cut-off seems "right" to me. When I find out someone my age uses marijuana, I find myself adding the word "still" to that sentence: "she still smokes pot." I don't use the word "she" as a generic pronoun. I'm having trouble coming up with any man I know well who uses marijuana after age 25. I can think of several women, and they all seem to use it responsibly. However, one of my comic weaknesses is that I can't actually tell when people are under the influence of just about anything: my drug-dar is as faulty as my gaydar. So, it's entirely possible that half my friends are permanently stoned, but I just haven't noticed.

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Throw like a girl

2009-02-24T08:50:00.003-05:00

Watson (2001) calls the male advantage in aimed throwing one of the "largest reliable human sex differences known." Watson argues that these differences can not be strictly learned, citing studies of pre-sports-age children and differential ability between hetero- and homosexual matched pairs of men and women (Beer & Fleming, 1989; Hall & Kimura, 1995 respectively). More evidence for an "innate" difference in throwing ability is Duffy et al (2004, PDF), who found that time spent playing darts did not explain gender differences in dart-throwing performance.

I do not throw well. I have had very little experience with throwing, and most of my childhood was spent with a deeply ingrained distrust for sports of any kind, so it's not particularly surprising, and (in my case) not easily explained by gender. The thing I found most interesting about Watson's argument was that brain processing was given such high priority in throwing ability: the window for releasing a thrown object for accurate aiming was given as 1 to 10 ms. I can't come up with a particularly reasonable argument for "no innate difference" in throwing ability given this evidence, but I do question the causality suggested. Do men have greater throwing ability because they have better spatial sense, or do they have better spatial sense because they throw things? Sex differences on spatial tasks have been shown to be malleable (10/9/07), moreso than the throwing differences discussed here.

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A double standard for the Oscars

2009-02-23T08:31:00.003-05:00

Last night, at the 81st Annual Academy Awards (Oscars), the Oscar for leading man went to 48 year old Sean Penn, and the Oscar for leading woman went to 33 year old Kate Winslet. Some researchers have pointed out that, on average, male Oscar winners tend to be older than female Oscar winners. Markson and Taylor (1993) point out that only 27% of the female Oscar winners from 1927-1999 were over 39, but 67% of male winners were over 39.

Lincoln (2004) provides an alternate explanation for the age discrepancy than a sex-based double standard: the male winners, she suggests, started their careers later. Therefore, Lincoln believes that experience may be a moderating factor. However, Bazzini et al (1997) suggest that the roles written for older women may be "unattractive, unfriendly, and unintelligent" compared to their male contemporaries. Bazzini et al's analysis was based on top-grossing films, so consumer preference may influence the films included for analysis.

I'm not a big watcher of movies in general, and very few of the movies I do watch are dramas. Therefore, I've very rarely seen any of the Oscar-nominated performances. This year, I hadn't seen any of the best picture or best actor/actress nominated films. So, of course, I turn to my bestest friend: Wikipedia. Wikipedia has lists of Best Actors and Best Actresses by age at time of award. It's depressing, but I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of any older female roles which I found really compelling, and haven't seen many of the films on either Wikipedia list. Jessica Tandy in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) is the only one I can really think of. Who's your favorite older female character from film?

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Sexuality in Older Adults

2009-02-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

In their survey of sexual activity and health among U.S. adults over 57, Lindau et al (2007) state: "At any given age, women were less likely than men to be in a marital or other intimate relationship, and this difference increased dramatically with age". There seems to be a "dance partner" problem (8/13/07) with this finding, except for the tendency for women to choose older partners* (e.g. Buss, 1989). 35% of women and 13% of men reported that sex was "not at all important". However, similar difference were seen between the oldest and youngest groups (41%:15%) or the not-sexually-active vs. sexually-active groups (48%:5%), suggesting that more than gender is a factor in sexual desire. This study also found one of the rare areas of health care where women are less likely than men to seek treatment: despite similar levels of "problematic" sexual dysfunction, women were less likely to have spoken about it with a physician (22% to 38%). 14% of men and 1% of women had taken medication or supplements in the past year to improve sexual function.

*Or men to choose younger ones. Whatever. In the couples Lindau et al studied, the mean difference between men's and women's ages was 3.2 ± 5.7 years. With over 2,000 data points, a standard deviation that big suggests a lot of variation to me.

Now, I feel like I need to point out that this was a population prevalence survey. The authors did not seem to be aiming at drawing any causal conclusions, and I'd warn against that, too. The effects of aging on hormone levels, and any possible tie between hormones and libido, are not explicitly studied here (and barely mentioned). Same-sex relationships were explicitly mentioned, but the population was too small for subgroup analysis (8 out of 3,005 reported a same-sex relationship).

I hope I keep having sex as long as it's interesting. Five years ago (maybe even last year), I would have said "as long as I live", but ... well, now I can at least picture what it's like not to care about it. For me, there definitely seems to be a hormonal component, but I get less certain about that every year, as my prescribed dose of testosterone stays the same, but my libido creeps ever lower.

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A matter of taste or of faith?

2009-02-19T11:35:00.004-05:00

Shepherd and Towler (2007) found significant differences between men and women in regards to their attitudes towards nutrition and various classes of food. This difference was most pronounced in evaluations of the harmfulness of fried food: although both men and women considered fried foods harmful, women expressed far more negative attitudes about it. Differences in general evaluations of meat and dairy were non-significant.

Wardle et al (2004) found that half of the behavioral differences between men and women's dietary habits could be tied to their beliefs about their food choices. However, the Shephard and Towler study found disconnects for women between belief, intention, and behavior, especially around dairy products.

My relationship with food is complicated enough. I don't dare throw gender-politics into it (although I have noticed that I'm more self-conscious about just ordering a salad when I'm out!) My boyfriend, as I'm sure I've mentioned, seems to have some sort of biofuel engine that runs on deep-fryer oil. I love fried foods, but I don't feel great after consuming a lot of them. He seems to feel even better after a large meal of fried stuff with cheese. I have to wonder whether this is an adaptation to eating this kind of diet, or whether he actually has an easier time converting fried foods into energy and well-being.

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Forgive us our trespasses

2009-02-18T08:52:00.005-05:00

A Jesuit priest claims to have found gender differences in men's and women's sins, according to articles in the British papers (The Telegraph & The Times; 2009). According to Roberto Busa's examination of confessional data, men are most likely to commit sins of lust, gluttony, or sloth, while women's top sins were pride, envy, and anger.

This is only partially consistent with a multi-denominational survey conducted in the United States: Capps and Cole, 2000 found changes among U.S. laity between 1989 and 1999. Women in the U.S. survey most identified with a description of the sins of envy, gluttony, and pride in both years. However, "men's struggles with lust and melancholy increased dramatically" in the 10-year gap (p. 365). Perhaps most interesting from the U.S. survey was the finding that men tended to judge the sins they struggled with as the "worst", while women judged the sins they least identified with as more severe.

The studies are probably too dissimilar to compare: the information was collected in different countries, at different times, from people of different faiths, and the method of collection was vastly different. Capps and Cole avoided using the word "sin" in their survey, and instead used descriptions to avoid a stigmatized reaction. The information was collected under the name "Life Attitudes Survey"; struggling with the sin of lust, for example, was described as "an abusive and manipulative attitude toward persons of the other sex; treating them as objects or pawns." None of Capps and Cole's respondents in 1989 admitted to "lust."

I feel like there ought to be a sexy word for the study of sin: sinology is the study of Chinese culture. *typing noises* Ha! The internet knows everything: hamartiology is the study of sin. At any rate, I know I've personally rated my "favorite" sins a number of times, but I guess that's one thing the internet doesn't know. In eight years of blogging, I don't seem to ever have posted about it. I think sloth has been topping the list for the past year or so, but only because lust is too much work.

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The Nose Knows, but it isn't telling

2009-02-17T09:46:00.005-05:00

According to an article in the New York Times (2009), human women's brains respond differently to sweat samples from sexually aroused men than unaroused men.* The women, however, don't report noticing any difference, so this reaction appears to be unconscious. The study (Zhou & Chen, 2008) scanned women using fMRI as they were asked to rate scent samples for intensity and pleasantness. The samples were obtained from men's armpits while watching either an erotic film or a neutral one. This study is unlike other studies we've looked at (e.g. Rantala et al, 2006) in that it did not rely on self-report exclusively to judge women's reactions.

So, to start with a caveat: I can not make any conclusions about what my brain is doing on a subconscious level. I hope this is obvious, but I feel like it bears repeating. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find no studies about men reacting to women's sweat. There is at least one study about women reacting to women's sweat, which I'll definitely want to look at more closely later (Berglund et al, 2006). I suspect three reasons for the lack of gender parity in these studies:

The general bias towards studying what makes women like men, as complained about last week (2/11/09)
The fact that women tend to have more sensitive sense of smell (2/7/07)
The fact that men have a stronger smell than women (9/17/07)

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Hormonal effects on preferences

2009-02-16T12:16:00.000-05:00

Interestingly, women with relatively high salivary T were found to have a greater preference for masculine faces than women with low levels (Welling et al, 2007). Roney and Simmons (2008) found greater preference for masculine faces in women when their estradiol levels were higher. Conversely, Welling et al, (2008) found that men preferred more feminine faces on women when their testosterone levels were relatively high. This effect did not transfer to men's assessments of femininity in male faces.

So, I've actually been thinking quite a bit about how my preferences seem to have changed since my transition. My most favorite women's faces used to be feminine faces with masculine trappings. I have developed more appreciation for masculine feminine faces - but a lot of that is probably related to the increased masculinity in my own face. I see a masculinized feminine face every day; so maybe I'm just more used to it.

(sorry today's post is late -- I forgot it was Monday, because I have a work holiday)

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Valentine's Day Surveys

2009-02-13T08:50:00.004-05:00

A Canadian Harris Decima poll (2009) found that men were more likely than women to have made special plans for Valentine's Day (tomorrow). This is perhaps unsurprising, given the results of a Men's Health/Women's Health survey (ABC news, 2009) in which 30.3% of readers responded that "the guy" was supposed to plan the day (compared to 1.6% who thought the girl should).

The MH/WH survey also found that most (82.1%) of readers planned to spend $50 or less on Valentine's Day gifts, and (84.1%) thought their partner should spend $50 or less. Given that the respondents were split evenly by sex (1,000 each), this still seems low in comparison to Discover Card's annual survey (BusinessWire, 2009) which found men planned to spend an average of $118.30, while women planned an average of $49.80. An alternate average of $102.50 was reported by the National Retail Federation's annual survey (Miami Herald, 2009).

I think, and maybe I'm speaking too soon, that I've gotten over my Valentine's Day neurosis (2/14/07) about the heart-shaped box of chocolates. For years, I've accepted that I had to have it. I was disappointed to the point of hysteria if I didn't get the right box (pictured above, the one I got in 2007). It was what my father got for my mother, and I got completely insane about receiving one. But I don't think I got one last year (sweetie, I'm sorry if I've forgotten), and I was okay. This year, I have again given my partner permission to skip it. Still, I know that I have an irrational fixation on what's "supposed" to happen with Valentine's Day, and I'm working on it.

So far this year, I've spent about $20, but that's split between two recipients, and includes cards. I'm feeling really cheap after reading the consumer polls (presumably, that's the intention, right? A writer at WSJ had the same reaction), and I may run out for some last minute shopping this afternoon.

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Status and Stereotypes

2009-02-12T08:52:00.003-05:00

Much of the gender research on personality suggests that women tend to be expressive while men tend to me more instrumental/assertive. Gerber's review (2009) in the journal Sex Roles suggests that belief in personality differences and self-evaluation of personality in accordance with these stereotypes can be tied to social status. This holds especially true for the socially desirable aspects of these traits: "assertiveness" and "communion" are more likely to be explained by status than than "domineering" and "social aggression". The article is very reminiscent of a management research review nearly twenty years older: Gregory (1990). Gregory also suggested that gender differences in personality traits diminish when social status is controlled. Bozer and Yoden (2008) offer experimental support for this theory, with their replication of Williams and Sommer (1997): the 1997 study showed that women, but not men, worked harder when ostracized by coworkers. Bozer and Yoden's experiment showed that this difference could be erased when social status was manipulated.

So, what I'm seeing here is that men are dominant because they can be. Women build consensus because they have so little individual power. Honestly, I've always had a hard time understanding the appeal of the so-called feminine personality traits. When women have said that collaboration makes them enjoy being female, it's always struck me as sour grapes. Then again, my inability to understand the appeal of femininity was sort of related to my eventual rejection of the female role, so I'm probably not a good judge.

Possibly Related: Social Status & Adolescents, 11/20/07

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Facial Femininity vs. Estrogen

2009-02-11T09:00:00.002-05:00

Yesterday (2/10/09), we discussed the relationships between hormone levels and male facial characteristics. The way that hormones effect facial characteristics in women seems to have received far less study. In fact, only Smith et al (2006) seem to have tested hormonal levels when categorizing women's faces for relative femininity. Smith's study found that femininity in women's faces was a predictor of estrogen levels, but less so for progesterone levels (femininity rated with and without make-up). Feinberg et al (2005) suggested that women's voice-pitch and facial femininity are tied to estrogen levels, citing Thornhill and Grammer (1999) for the connection. The 1999 paper cited eleven references for this connection (going back to Cunningham, 1986), none of which appear to have measured hormone levels in their female sample.

In a footnote to yesterday, Thornhill and Gangestad (2005) found that masculine traits in male and female faces correlated to respiratory disease, suggesting that whatever characteristics lead to facial masculinity may have a protective effect against some forms of disease.

I have another partial post written about hormones and faces, but I'm going to have to drop this topic for a little while, because it's getting under my skin. Right now, the conclusion I'm drawing isn't about hormones, or development, or facial dimorphism: it's about researchers. I can find a lot of studies about attractiveness. I can find a lot of studies where images of women are used as study stimuli. But I'm also finding a lot of evolutionary psychology which cites back to itself but no one ever seems to have tested the assumptions. I'm not finding a lot of women being studied as women, rather than being studied in relationship to men: what they find attractive in men, what men find attractive in women, etc. This line of research really has me feeling a second-class status for women, and I don't trust myself to continue fairly until I take a break.

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Facial Masculinity vs. Testosterone

2009-02-10T09:09:00.005-05:00

In the comments last week (2/4/09), Piterburg and I had a conversation about the evidence regarding relationships between facial masculinity and testosterone (T) levels in women. I suggested that I was unable to find any evidence that normal ranges of sex hormones were linked to facial masculinity. Today, I thought I'd give that a closer look:

Penton-Voak and Chen (2004) did find a connection between circulating T levels (salivary T) in men. The men with higher salivary T levels were judged to have more masculine faces by raters. In contrast, Peters et al (2008) found no correlation between salivary T and rated facial masculinity in men. This disconnect is noted by Peters et al, who explain: "there is no correlation between testosterone levels during adulthood and adolescence when masculine features are developing" (see von Bokhoven et al, 2006).

Sadly, I found no studies that examined the masculinity of female faces in relationship to T. However, such results might be suspect if they did exist: Granger et al (2004) notes that there are gender differences in the accuracy of T tests. Granger et al state: "the measurement of testosterone (in saliva or serum) in females is less accurate than in males" (see also: Shirtcliff, Granger, & Likos, 2002, Taieb et al, 2003).

So, to summarize: the masculinity of men's faces is probably an indication of their testosterone levels in adolescence, which bears little-to-no relationship to their adult testosterone levels. There appears to be little more than speculation about the effect of normal testosterone differences in women, but it's hard to tell, because women's T is hard to measure accurately. The difficulty is probably partially because there's so little testosterone in "normal" women: WebMD (2008) gives a normal range of 270–1,080ng/dL for men 20-39, 10-70 ng/dL for premenopausal women).

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Go Red For Women

2009-02-09T08:54:00.003-05:00

The CDC (2009) names February as American Heart month. As part of this month of awareness about heart disease, the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women campaign sponsors Wear Red Day which took place this year on February 6th (last Friday). As discussed a couple of years ago (7/1/07), the CDC's WISQARS database lists heart disease as the leading cause of death for women after age 65, but for men after age 45. However, for all adults (men and women, ages 18+), heart disease is the leading killer overall.

My partner and I attended a hockey game last month with a "Go Red" promotion, and we talked a little about whether additional support for women was appropriate. Generally speaking, women are better at monitoring their health than men. Here's some of what has already been covered in Difference Blog about heart-disease differences between men and women:

Ironically, both sexes seem to feel that heart disease risk is higher for the opposite sex than for their own (3/12/07).
Women's heart attack symptoms present differently than men's, which can lead to misdiagnosis (10/11/06, 1/15/09).
The care regimens for heart disease seem to work more effectively for women than men (12/10/08).

11/26/08

11/15/06

Men and women are equally likely to call an ambulance for a heart attack (9/10/07)

News coverage of the "Go Red" campaign, unfortunately lacking citation, claims that women (and minorities) may delay reporting a heart attack longer than (white) men (New Haven Independent, 2009). If true, this would be the most convincing argument for increased women's heart health awareness campaigns that I've heard.

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Beep Beep!

2009-02-06T09:03:00.002-05:00

Hennessy and Wiesenthal (2001) report that women are just as likely as men to participate in what they call "mild driver aggression": that is, horn-honking and fist-shaking, swearing, and purposeful tailgating. Men were more likely to flash high beams than women as a sign of annoyance, but this was the only "mild" aggressive behavior to show a significant gender difference. Interestingly, this may be a fairly new development, or an artifact of changed testing procedures. Older studies, including the seminal "horn honking" study (Doob and Gross, 1968) found decreased horn-honking among women.

Last night, my partner and I were driving home from a dinner visit, and there were a ton of examples of driver aggression for me to think about. What brought this particular item (horn-honking) to my attention is that I realized that I'd been thinking of the honker behind us as male, and when they passed us on the right, I saw that the driver appeared to be female.

I don't think I've ever honked in anger. I believe I've used the horn on any car less than 5 times. My lack of honk-expression frustrated the hell out of an ex of mine, who once honked the horn of a car I was driving when I got cut off in traffic. I wasn't mad about getting cut off, but I was sure mad about someone interfering with the wheel while I was driving.

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Oh, must they?

2009-02-05T08:00:00.001-05:00

Daniel D. Federman, M.D., from the Harvard Medical School, explains it all in his review for the New England Journal of Medicine, "The Biology of Human Sex Differences":

Everyone in medicine and related fields understands that there are marked sex-based differences in the epidemiology, clinical manifestations, course, and therapy of disease¹. Although very few of these differences are understood in molecular or cellular terms, the explanations must derive from the fundamental biological differences between the sexes." -- Federman (2006) (emphasis mine)

Federman's review covers differences in fertility, hormones (sexual and somatic), and genetics. In these areas, Federman seems to stay fairly factual. There is also a brief caveat just before the conclusion: "This article has focused on biologic factors involved in differences between the sexes, but the socio-cultural environment can produce additional differences", going on to cite examples from "agrarian societies" and "some countries" where "inequalities add to the female burden of illness."

I don't even know what to say to this. The science parts look okay, on first blush, but I'm having a little trouble reading them after the sweeping introduction and the patronizing conclusion. I was looking for some information on testosterone and the female sex drive to answer Piterberg's question from yesterday, but the section on that in this review was a bit of hand-wavy fluff about the magical mystical female sex drive that couldn't be explained by hormones, but maybe had something to do with testosterone. Oooh, women's sex drive is baffling and scary! Let's go to the bar! Seriously, I need to send him the O RLY owl.

Or maybe I'm just cranky and need a nap. That's possible too.

¹Wizemann & Pardue, eds, 2001: Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?

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An untrustworthy face

2009-02-04T09:14:00.005-05:00

Campbell et al (2009) compared women's sexual histories to their perceived masculinity and desirability as a long-term mate. Female raters assessed the women's faces for masculinity, while male raters assessed them for trustworthiness and desirability as a long-term mate. Sexual histories were taken by self-report. The authors concluded that more masculine looking women (who presumably have higher levels of testosterone) were more likely to cheat, and that men find masculine looking women less desirable as long term mates. The Telegraph (UK, 2009) offers examples from celebrity culture that follow this pattern.

This study pokes at one of the areas that bothers me about a lot of the women's testosterone studies: there's a lot of jumps in the reasoning. The size of a woman's chin = her testosterone levels = her sexual behavior? The thing is (1) they didn't test the female exemplars testosterone levels and (2) the studies they cite indicating that more testosterone = bigger chin were based on male subjects. I've poked at a few of the references, and I can't find support for the idea that women who have more masculine features necessarily have higher testosterone levels. That being said, my own features masculinized dramatically with the administration of testosterone at age 25. So, it's tempting for me to believe it, but I don't think that the assertion is supported.

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Seasonal Affective Disorder

2009-02-03T10:08:00.005-05:00

As previously noted (1/9/07), women are more often diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) than men, which may be due to higher rates of depression overall, or could be related to differences in average male and female routines. Lucht and Kasper (1999), for example, reported that 3.6 times as many women as men presented with SAD, and women were more likely to refer themselves to the German clinic that was the basis of their study.

Leibenluft et al (1994) examined whether there were differences in the symptoms presented by male and female SAD sufferers. Leibenluft's team found that clinician-rated symptoms and response to phototherapy did not differ by patient-sex. However, self-report symptoms varied widely: "men reported more severe illness, while women reported more carbohydrate craving, a greater percentage increase in weight, and more hours of sleep per night in the winter." The authors suggest that this may indicate a difference in reporting of symptoms, although it could indicate an actual difference in how the disease is experienced by men and women. These results are relatively consistent with Lucht and Kasper's findings, which found that men tended to underreport symptoms.

I haven't noticed any particular difference in how I respond to winter since transition, but as always, it's hard to distinguish changes due to lifestyle shifts and aging from changes related to transition. I am, however, reminded of one of the commercials from the SuperBowl this past weekend ("Pepsi Max", 2009 video), which showed a series of men getting hurt and responding "I'm good!" I feel like my tendency to downplay injuries and symptoms has increased -- except as relates to my transition. In a strictly Pavlovian response, I've found that I need to be fairly assertive in how I report transition-related discomfort, since it's the only way I can get treated for it.

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Groundhog day

2009-02-02T09:31:00.007-05:00

Happy Groundhog Day! The Canadian Encyclopedia (n.d.) claims that the marmota morax's weather predictions are accurate 37% of the time, which is no more than chance. Despite this, one-quarter of people surveyed by Rain-X (2007) put their faith in the Groundhog's predictions. No gender difference was reported in groundhog-faith, although a regional one was (people in the Northeast were more skeptical). However, Rain-X's survey did note that "women are more likely to know the date of Groundhog Day than the name of their local senator" (only 55% of all survey participants were able to correctly identify February 2nd as Groundhog Day).

The Howell Nature Center in Michigan suggests that their groundhog, Woody, has a better accuracy rate than the more famous Punxsutawney Phil. According to an interview in the Ann Arbor News (2008), handlers suspect that her accuracy is due to "intuition": most groundhog meteorologists are males. This could be due to the pattern of male groundhogs leaving the hibernation burrow earlier in order to start courtship (EurekAlert, 2003).

I feel like the Rain-X claim is ridiculously unfair: they didn't say how many men could name their local senator. I never feel like I need to know it: I look it up if there's a vote I care about, because I'm likely to be writing or calling three or four people about it, and it's not worth keeping track of all of their names. They change too often.

I was curious, this morning, over whether any of the major groundhogs were females, and whether women were more likely to believe in the prediction. Two years ago, I did find some evidence that women were more likely to believe in superstitions than men (3/2/07). Thinking about it, women may be more likely to believe in capricious fate due to a historically low level of control over their own lives. Well, ain't that a depressing way to end a post about an animal also known as the "land beaver"?

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Sex Hormones in NPP

2009-01-30T08:00:00.001-05:00

Nature: Neuropsychopharmacology's (2009) most recent issue is having a special theme on the role of sex hormones in neuropsychopharmacology (NPP). Young and Becker's "Perspective" (2009) gives a brief summary of some of the background and highlights. For example, Young and Becker point out that although women are more prone to depression, SSRI antidepressants seem to work better for women as well (citing Kornstein et al, 2000, and Young et al, 2008).

Of particular interest is Schmidt et al's (2008) finding that sexual function was affected in both healthy men and women by artificially induced hypogonadism. Men's sexual function was able to be corrected by injected testosterone. However, it was not possible to correct sexual function to baseline in women by administration of exogenous hormones. As Young and Becker note: "there was no testosterone replacement, nor any combination of sex steroids, which would approach the normal hormonal milieu of women."

Okay, it's fair to say I'm biased in my selection of the "particularly interesting" article. I'm also probably biased in my interpretation. I love studies that say that a shot of testosterone is all it takes to make a "normal" male hormonal milieu. It's one of the reasons I'm often glad I'm a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual instead of vice versa. On the other hand, the MTFs have better surgical technology, so maybe it all balances out.

Honestly, mostly I'm just grateful I eventually figured it out, instead of staying miserable and lost.

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