I’m sure you’ve heard the stereotype that men do better in science and math while women do better in language and writing. Although scientists often say there is more diversity between individuals than there are between the sexes, there may be some truth to this stereotype.
Image from Middlebury College
A study from UC Irvine found there to be a difference between men and women in certain areas of the brain. Women were shown to have significantly larger (nearly 10 times the amount of) “white matter” in their brains, whereas men had significantly larger (nearly 6.5 times the amount of) “grey matter” in their brains.
Grey matter represents “information processing” and white matter represents “networking” or “connections between processing systems.”
In easier terms, men may be better at math because it involves a localized process, and women may be better at communicating because it involves the integration of information.
However, it’s important to note that there is no difference between levels of overall intelligence in men and women.
I have to say, that in my own experiences, I have seen this to be true. Calculus was a huge struggle for me in high school, and it seemed impossible for me to get through without having my guy friends help me “get it.” And usually “getting it” involved memorizing some formula, but not actually seeing the bigger picture. I never understood new concepts on the first try.
Then in English classes, I end up writing a book and my guy friends would write a paragraph. It just seemed like the words would flow out of my mind and they would struggle even filling up a page.
Many of these differences between men and women could be due to social constructs and parents indirectly teaching their children these sex differences however. For example, whenever I needed help on a math problem, it was always “Go ask your dad!” and if I needed to know how a word was spelled, I had to “Go ask mom.”
However, brain imaging studies, like the one above, show that there may be some truth to major biological differences between the brains of males and females.
