DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEXES, THE MISMEASURE OF WOMAN

Newsweek de 5 Agosto 2006

Men and women think differently. But not that differently.
Just behave.
Differences in behaviour between the sexes must, in some way, be reflections of systematic differences between the brains of males and females. Such differences certainly exist, but drawing inferences from them is not as easy as it may appear.
For a start, men?s brains are about 9% larger than those of women. That used to be cited as evidence of men?s supposedly greater intelligence. Actually, the difference is largely (and probably completely) explained by the fact that men are bigger than women.
In recent years, more detailed examination has refined the picture. Female brains have a higher percentage of grey matter (the manifestation, en bloc) of the central bodies of nerve cells), and thus a lower percentage of white matter (the manifestation of the long, thin filaments that connect nerve cells together), than male brains. That, plus the fact that in some regions of the female brain, nerve cells are packed more densely than in men, means that the number of nerve cells in male and female brains may be similar.
Oddly, though, the main connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, which is known as the corpus callosum and is made of the white matter, is proportionately smaller in men than women. This may explain why men use only one side of the brain process some problems for which women employ both sides.
Violent or not, women have as many angry thoughts as men, if not more. In a study carried out in 2004, Robin Simon, of Florida State University, and Leda Nath, of the University of Wisconsin, found no difference between the sexes in the reported frequency of incidents of feeling angry over a period of time. However, women tended to report anger that was more intense prolonged.
Men do not excel in all spatial tasks, though. Again contrary to popular myth, men and women are equally good at navigating. But this is another example of a task in which the sexes take different paths to the same destination. Women tend to rely on remembering landmarks, whereas men rely on their geometric skills to work out direction and distance.