The Gendered Brain: How our world can change our brains and make up our minds

Do you have a female brain or a male brain? Or are we asking the wrong question? There is a long history of debate about biological sex differences and their part in determining gender roles, with the ‘biology is destiny’ mantra being used to legitimise imbalances in these roles. The tradition is continuing, with new brain imaging techniques being hailed as sources of evidence of the ‘essential’ differences between men and women, and the concept of ‘hardwiring’ sneaking into popular parlance as a brain-based explanation for all kinds of gender issues. This includes the failure of numerous well-meaning initiatives attempting to address the marked gender imbalances in many areas of achievement, especially science.

Drawing on new views of the brain, sex and gender, this talk challenges such deeply ingrained beliefs about sex differences in the brain, where they come from, how fixed they are and what they might mean for the brain’s owner. We will see how from the very first moments of life, our brains are shaped by society’s stereotypes and driven down binary pathways. We will see that, in order to truly understand our highly individualised and profoundly adaptable brains, we must acknowledge what goes on outside the brain is just as as important as what goes on inside. A gendered world will produce a gendered brain.