General Chat

It is futile to maintain that the sexes are interchangeable or that one gender is superior to the other. In the crèche, classroom, bedroom or boardroom, boys will be boys and girls will not.

He or she comes into the world with genetic, behavioural biases and innate patterning. In modern parlance, our brains are hard-wired by birth. Inborn tendencies grow stronger as the brain responds to the world.

As we grow up the interaction between our perceptions and the thinking “muscle” of the brain affects the brain’s structure, just as exercise transforms any other muscle. Conversely, like other underused muscles, when brain functions are underused they become flabby.

Sex differences show up at an early age. At just a few hours in the case of certain sensory perceptions, meaning that there must be an innate underlying sex difference in the brain which makes girls and boys see, feel, respond and react to different things in different ways. In some ways, the world means different things to each sex. Even language tends to have subtly different nuances and meanings.

Over thousands, perhaps millions of years, men and women have evolved to meet different life-styles as hunter-gatherers. It was a matter of survival for a man to detect movement, calculate speeds and work out trajectories but less important for a woman. In a woman’s case it served her better to have a keener sense of touch and taste, to be able communicate feelings and empathise with others especially children. There are many other subtle differences.

It is only over the last few hundred years that society has changed but we are still stuck with the genes laid down maybe half a million years ago.

Men tend to excel at some things, women at other things but, overall, complement one another.