Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference [Hardcover]

Cordelia Fine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2010

A brilliantly researched and wickedly funny rebuttal of the pseudo-scientific claim that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

It’s the twenty-first century, and although we tried to rear unisex children—boys who play with dolls and girls who like trucks—we failed. Even though the glass ceiling is cracked, most women stay comfortably beneath it. And everywhere we hear about vitally important “hardwired” differences between male and female brains. The neuroscience that we read about in magazines, newspaper articles, books, and sometimes even scientific journals increasingly tells a tale of two brains, and the result is more often than not a validation of the status quo. Women, it seems, are just too intuitive for math; men too focused for housework.

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain” and a “female brain,” Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender.

Passionately argued and unfailingly astute, Delusions of Gender provides us with a much-needed corrective to the belief that men’s and women’s brains are intrinsically different—a belief that, as Fine shows with insight and humor, all too often works to the detriment of ourselves and our society.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In a methodical and devastatingly effective manner, Fine eviscerates the recent trend in attributing society’s gender-based differences to biology. The sheer girth of her analysis is staggering as she addresses everything from scientific studies going back more than a century to the latest assertions of “Mars and Venus” author John Gray. Fine pivots from studies on gender-based clothing and toys to a discussion of education, and reviews recent Caldecott Award-winning children’s books, noting that one gender is consistently described as “beautiful, frightened, worthy, sweet, weak and scared.” (Guess which one.) Fine also explains how experiments are manipulated to provide desirable results and how results are presented without necessary caveats (such as the fact that men were not part of the study). This is social science at its hard-working best as Fine uses solid references to refute the notion that biology trumps pervasive stereotyping, and offers a sterling rebuttal to agenda research and the lure of pseudo-science. --Colleen Mondor

Review

“Fine turns the popular science book formula on its head. Chapter-by-chapter, she introduces ideas about innate differences between the sexes… and then tartly smacks around studies supposedly supporting them.” (Dan Vergano - USA Today )

“Cordelia Fine’s thorough (and funny!) Delusions of Gender punches a giant hole in the idea that women's brains are somehow ‘hardwired’ for nurturing and domesticity.” (Anna North - Jezebel.com )

“[Fine] effectively blows the lid off of old tropes… Weaving together anecdotes, dense research and quotes from numerous experts, she offers a well-balanced testament to the many ways in which cultural rules inform behaviors often mistaken as organic to our brains, as opposed to learned… [An] informative and often surprising study.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“Starred Review. With a fabulous combination of wit, passion, and scholarship, Fine demolishes many of the common theories offered to explain the construction of gender in contemporary society…. She shows that the fact that we spend our lives in environments that promote gender differentiation makes those differences nothing more than self-fulfilling prophecies. This marvelous and important book will change the way readers view the gendered world.” (Publishers Weekly )

“Delusions of Gender takes on that tricky question, Why exactly are men from Mars and women from Venus?, and eviscerates both the neuroscientists who claim to have found the answers and the popularizers who take their findings and run with them… [Fine] is an acerbic critic, mincing no words when it comes to those she disagrees with. But her sharp tongue is tempered with humor and linguistic playfulness… [R]ead this book and see how complex and fascinating the whole issue is.” (Katherine Bouton - The New York Times )

“In Delusions of Gender Cordelia Fine does a magnificent job debunking the so-called science, and especially the brain science, of gender. If you thought there were some inescapable facts about women’s minds—some hard wiring that explains poor science and maths performance, or the ability to remember to buy the milk and arrange the holidays—you can put these on the rubbish heap. Instead, Fine shows that there are almost no areas of performance that are not touched by cultural stereotypes. This scholarly book will make you itch to press the delete button on so much nonsense, while being pure fun to read.” (Uta Frith FBA, FMedSci, FRS; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London )

“Cordelia Fine has a first-rate intellect and writing talent to burn. In her new book, Delusions of Gender, she takes aim at the idea that male brains and female brains are ‘wired differently,’ leading men and women to act in a manner consistent with decades-old gender stereotypes. Armed with penetrating insights, a rapier wit, and a slew of carefully researched facts, Fine lowers her visor, lifts her lance, and attacks this idea full-force. Whether her adversaries can rally their forces and mount a successful counter-attack remains to be seen. What’s certain at this point, however, is that in Delusions of Gender Cordelia Fine has struck a terrific first blow against what she calls ‘neurosexism.’” (William Ickes, author of Everyday Mind Reading: Understanding What Other People Think and Feel )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 338 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (August 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393068382
• ISBN-13: 978-0393068382
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #111,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A myth-busting, incisive, mind-changing delight, August 28, 2010

By 

Kristin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book. It is witty and absorbing and just about impossible to put down. It is packed with the results of a multitude of studies. It is a myth-busting, incisive, mind-changing delight. It deals with the "delusions" that many people have concerning gender differences, and how these delusions have a powerful (though often unconscious) effect on people's lives.

The central myth that the author confronts is that men and women have widely different sets of ability that are mostly innate, hard-wired, and unchangeable. The author argues that this has not been demonstrated. In fact, it is not even clear that these differences in ability exist.

Take empathy. If you test people's empathy by asking them how empathetic they think they are (and yes, some scientists actually do this), then women test much higher than men. But if you actually test their abilities (by, for instance, asking what emotions are being expressed in a particular face), women do only a tiny bit better than men. And if you design the study to get rid of gender biases (the author shows how researchers do this), then women do no better than men.

Or take the ability to mentally rotate objects in space which, for a long time, has been considered to be necessary for success in math and engineering. Usually men do better than women. But if you fib and tell a group of test-takers that "women perform better than men in this test, usually for genetic reasons," then women perform as well as the men.

And on it goes. The author shows how subtle cues in our environment affect our identities and thus our behaviors and thus our life course. And how our implicit beliefs are often diametrically opposed to our explicit beliefs and how this can wreak havoc in our societies.

There are also sections on more obvious instances of gender bias in the workplace and at home, the difficulties interpreting MRI studies, the subtle ways that parents "teach" gender to their children even while claiming (and believing) that they are being gender-neutral, the effects (or not) of pre-natal testosterone, sex differences in animal behavior (did you know that a male rat will take care of an infant rat if it's placed in it's cage?), the "seductive allure" of neuroscience, and more.

A wonderful book. I think I'm going to go and read it again. . . .

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top Drawer Reading!, September 22, 2010

By 

an academic (new york, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (Hardcover)

It is exceedingly rare to find such a gem of a book. The book is academically serious, but it is written with such flair and panache -- and clarity and concision -- that you don't have to be a brainiac to understand the Fine points made within.

What Fine does in this book is 1) survey some of the best known literature concluding that there are biological or innate gender differences 2) expose very real problems in methodology and reasoning in this literature 3) and uncover some of the little-known work that does not suffer from such appalling errors which casts doubt on the claim that there are biological or innate gender differences. Fine is extremely careful about how she states her conclusions; she's no messianic fanatic who declares that there are no such innate differences. She is too smart to think that the data out there give us a firm answer either way. What she shows, brilliantly, is that those who pretend that there is such definitive evidence are guilty of a rush to judgment.

Fine is a serious academic who has done the public a great service by making clear to ordinary people how shibboleths about gender difference that permeate our culture do not have firm grounding in the neuroscientific studies on which they often draw. At the same time, she does the academy a great service; gender studies in neuroscience needs to up its game.

And while she is accomplishing all this, you, the reader, will be laughing, gasping, smirking, grinning, and just plain enjoying the fun way she presents her material. Kudos to such a young talent! This is going on my holiday gift list!

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning amount of research, August 27, 2010

By 

Rich Clayton "Rich Clayton" (Oop north) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (Hardcover)

found this book stunning. All around you see all this stuff about 'Men's brains' and 'Women's brains', and it always struck me as odd that a sex that has, for example, written so much brilliant literature should be deemed semi-autistic, etc etc. So here comes this brilliantly researched book (just take a look at the pages and pages of notes at the end - this author knows her onions backwards and forwards and sideways) - and she points out how shoddy it all is.
And she's funny!
No one will ever again have to sit through a dinner party with some parent going on about how 'I thought that too, but you only have to LOOK at my two children to see there are innate differences... bleh bleh'. She unpicks it all and shows how social pressures are so important and the brain differences that are so often claimed are, essentially, neurotosh, aka neurosexism. I think I shall carry a copy round with me.