"Who Says a Woman Can't Be Einstein?"

Well, I do, because Einstein was a man. And he's dead.

On a more serious note, this was the title of a rather interesting TIME article in March that I recently had the pleasure to remove from a Royal Alexandra Hospital waiting room. It was subtitled The Real Truth About Women's Brains and the Gender Gap in Science.

Apparently, Harvard University President Larry Summers recently held a speech claiming that he thinks the reasons for the gender gap in science are, in order of importance, and quoted from the article:

1) Women are just not so interested as men in making the sacrifices required by high-powered jobs

2) Men have more "intrinsic aptitude" for high level science

3) Women may be victims of old-fashioned discrimination

I'm especially liking the "may" in the 3rd reason, and its absence in the first two.

But apart from discovering that the president of Harvard is allowed to make blatantly sexist statements like that and still remain in office, the article talks about the newest discoveries that have been made in the last decade or so with and advancement of brain imaging methods.

Here are a few interesting tidbits, that I think everybody should reflect about a bit:

1. There are real differences between the male and the female brain- more than we thought there were a decade ago; after all, the brain *is* a sex organ.

2. These differences don't necessarily change our behaviour, as men and women perform equally on IQ tests. They might change how we go about solving the same problems, though.

3. There are some major differences in perceptive ability, for example in the retina: men have more cells that detect movement and spatial perception, and women have more cells responsible for determining the colour and the texture of an object. These different "feeds" cause real differences over time, as

4. Brains change constantly due to life style. This means that our social makeup reinforces differences and changes brain structure accordingly. For example, female students perform equally on Math tests in grade 4, but are left far behind by the time they leave High School.

5. Research also indicates that girls and boys develop regions of the brain in a different order, but in the end, there is not really an absoulute difference. However, since boys and girls are treated equally and are asked to perform equally at the same ages, girls start hating science and math and boys start hating language arts. These preferences contribute to identity formation and aren't challenged later on in life, giving the impression that they are permanent.
(On that note, when packing for my upcoming move yesterday, I found my old report cards. Math was always a tad worse than my other grades, but the first course here at University I aced with an A+)

6. The moral goes along the line that we should neither try to eradicate gender differences nor celebrate them, but create an environment in which differences don't become limiting and are not reinforced artificially.

I liked that article. That's why I sto...uh, removed it.