2023-05-20 17:00:00
Preconceived ideas regarding the limited capacities of women are tenacious, but in recent years, neuroscience has been helping to gradually deconstruct stereotypes.
Women are multitaskers
Faux. Unlike men who would be “monotasking”, women would be able to carry out several actions at the same time. This prejudice is supported by a study dating back to 1982. This had detected post-mortem, on regarding twenty individuals, a larger corpus callosum in women than in men. This bundle of nerve fibers connects the two cerebral hemispheres, hence the idea that this would allow women to more effectively activate their two hemispheres simultaneously, thusperform multiple tasks at the same time. The analysis of regarding fifty studies concluded a few years later that there was no significant difference in the thickness of the corpus callosum. Better still, researchers are now questioning the very possibility of being “multitasking”. In a study published in 2010, Étienne Koechlin and Sylvain Charron, from Inserm’s cognitive neuroscience laboratory, showed that the brain is only able to do one thing at a time, whether you are a man or a woman. Thanks to medical imaging, they highlighted in all the volunteers a brain area which activates while performing two tasks. It would act as a switch ensuring the transition from one task to another so quickly that we are not aware of it. Which would give us the impression of doing two things simultaneously.
The women don’t know how to orient themselves
True and false. Several studies confirm that men are on average more efficient than women in maintenance tasks. space navigation (finding the shortest path in a virtual maze) or rotation in space (recognize 3D objects from different angles). An asset that some researchers attribute to testosterone, while others see it as a consequence of education – for example, boys play outside more often and prefer collective games. However, it is enough for women to train to improve their sense of direction, and even equal that of men. Researchers at the University of Toronto tested the ability of women and men to locate a moving target on a screen, noting best results in the latter. But during a second test, following ten hours spent on a video game, the two sexes arrived neck and neck!
The women have the maternal instinct
TRUE. Some researchers argue that taking care of babies is innate in them. They invoke the role of oxytocin – presented as theattachment hormone and secreted in quantity during pregnancy – which would act on the brain of mothers. However, fathers are not left out! They too know neural changes following the birth of their child, but researchers are only just beginning to study them. In the presence of the newborn, the father brain activates the same areas dedicated to parenthood as the mother and also experiences an increase in oxytocin. This is certainly what allows them to succeed as well as mothers in recognizing their baby’s cries among those of other children.
Women are gossips
TRUE. But only when they are small. Studies show that they develop an earlier language and better verbal fluidity: from 6 months, their babbling slightly exceeds that of boys, and the differences become more pronounced around 2-3 years – richness of vocabulary, production and comprehension of words and sentences… The reasons for this better control are not known. But available data on adults no longer reveal significant differences.
The women are intuitive
TRUE. But not necessarily more than men! In neuroscience, intuition is the rapid and unconscious recognition, without resorting to reasoning, of certain “patterns” encountered repeatedly and which are therefore anchored in our memory. For example, it can be a matter of making the link between facial expressions and mood, or between a list of symptoms and a medical diagnosis. In 2005, a British study of 15,000 Internet users asked them to distinguish frank smiles from simulated smiles among 10 pairs of photos. While 77% of women defined themselves as “very intuitive” compared to 58% of men, both sexes responded with the same success rate (71 and 72%), tending to prove that they have everything so much intuition. However, a new Chinese study published in October contradicts this result: this time, its participants, equipped with an electroencephalogram, not only made more intuitive and faster decisions but they also obtained best results.
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