Wednesday 8 March 2000

Pic of the day: They may have more in common with each other than with their own brothers. Then again, that need not say much ... :)
(This is not another Sims entry, people. Please come back! It's just a picture!)

A happy Women's Day to y'all!
I've been at work all day (and play all night, as the saying goes, or was that dance all night?) so I haven't had the opportunity to see the March 8 processions. I assume that they still carry astrological Venus symbols and banners and hold speeches, and that people in high office say that there should be equal pay for equal work.

But should there be equal work? There is reason to think that there may already be too much of that, since male and female brains supposedly have some basic differences.

It is no longer controversial to claim that we are born with differences in some of the most fundamental parts of the brains. Mostly it seems to run down to the thick "bridge" of nerves crossing between the two halves of our brains. The two halves are able to work independently, as has been verified in "split brain patients" (a rare but valuable treatment for certain cases of epilepsy) where the connective bridge has been cut. However, certain things change when this connection is cut in adults. What are the effects of having it noticeably reduced long before birth? This is one of the effects of testosterone in the fetus.

The most measurable difference is the location of a secondary speech center in the right part of the brain in most women. (The primary speech center is not, as could be deduced from the above, located in the wrong part of the brain. It is in the left part, which controls the right hand side of the body. In some left-handed people the primary speech center is on the right side of the brain too.)

There is a minority of women who have not developed the secondary speech center. Some of them may have reduced connection between the brain halves the way we men have. It is uncertain if high testosterone levels in mothers can effect this, but it is known that male twins routinely influence their female counterparts. This also happens in some cases where the male twin fetus dies early in pregnancy. (In a twin pregnancy, the dead fetus will not be expelled because the surviving twin produce pregnancy-maintaining hormone. The body will try to reabsorb it, if the pregnancy is still in an early stage.) There are probably several such twin pregnancies that are never detected ... male fetuses have a much larger mortality than female, and the difference is even larger than later in life.

Once the baby is born, cultural influences soon start to further segregate the sexes. It probably doesn't help that girl babies are generally quicker to develop. We don't know how much of this is due to the cooperation between brain halves ... it makes sense that such a connection comes in handy when you learn to use both hands to tie your shoelaces, for instance, an effort that girls typically succeed in at least half a year before the small boys.

In adults, the most fascinating sex difference (in the brain, people!) is probably the different way men and women multitask. We all have the capacity to do different things at the same time, like walking and talking, in rare cases also talking and thinking. (Ancient sources claim that Julius Caesar could dictate one letter while reading another. This is extremely rare even today.) Much of the seeming multitasking comes from some of the functions being automated, so they can be handled by the lower orders of the brain. (Biking, car driving, smoking etc.)

Yet when it comes to multitasking more complex tasks, women have a clear advantage. Men tend to multitask by task swapping, in which case one task is in the foreground and the others are suspended. Women are more likely to consciously handle several tasks at the same time. Sociobiologists assume that the children of those who did not died early and so left no genetic legacy.

But what are the benefits of the male way of thinking? It is easy to see that some tasks, like warding off a resentful cave bear, may take a man's undivided attention. But wouldn't it be more useful to have a kind of mental switch that let you suspend multitasking under stress, and go right back to it later?

It is hard to explain, but the statistics indicate that there is a larger variation in men's intelligence. There are more idiots (as my remaining female readers no doubt have noticed) but a genius is also more likely to be a man. It does not need to be just that the female genius is overlooked. It may depend on the higher power of concentration of brain resources. If one of the brain halves is particularly dominant (as the left is in me, for instance) then it may benefit more from being able to shut out distractions from the other side than it would gain from soliciting assistance. Or, if it is doing a poor job, it may go spectacularly down the drain because the helpful twin brain doesn't get through to inhibit it.

Based on this, we can assume that there are some lines of work that are better suited for women, in general: Those where several tasks must be monitored at the same time. In the same way, men should be better suited for those tasks that require total concentration. And experience indicates that total concentration in a man depends on there not being women on the location ...

(Incidentally, The Sims - male and female - think like men, only more so. They devote themselves single-mindedly to the task at hand, and little less than a fire can make them prioritize something else. So if Amber decides that she must take a shower in the morning, she will continue till she is squeaky clean, even if that means she comes 3 minutes too late to reach the car for work.) (And people, I really mean to fade out the Sim stuff in the journal. Really soon now.)