Gender Differences Found to be Caused Mainly by Social Expectations and Not Genetics

Source: www.scilogs.com

Although there are several differences between males and females genetically, social expectations and stereotypes seem to have a larger impact on why boys become "manly" and girls become "lady-like."

Lise Eliot, in her article in Scientific American, stated that "sex differences that grow larger through childhood are likely shaped by social learning, a consequence of the very different lifestyle, culture, and training that boys and girls experience in every human society."  

Although some differences are innate, most are learned and the gap between genders increases with age.  Eliot states that sex "differences in empathy emerge in infancy and persist throughout development, though the gap between adult women and men is larger than between girls and boys."

Another point that Eliot makes in her article is that "experiences change our brains."  Females and males start out their lives on very similar, clean slates.  As they grow and experience new things and have new interactions, however, they learn how they are expected to act according to their gender, such as what toys they should play with, or later on in adolescent years, what fields they should pursue.  

It is well known that females are stereotypically said to be less analytical, and therefore not as successful in the mathematics and sciences.  This is why there are less women in those fields; girls are told they will not be good at something at a young age, and therefore they feel no need to pursue it.


Social norms presented by things like ads, parenting, and peer interactions cause differences in the way each respective gender acts and in what they become during and after childhood.

Parents have a massive effect on their children, as well as what they eventually become.  Parents tend to discourage their children from acting like their opposite gender is stereotypically supposed to act in any way.

"[B]oys and girls are socialized and encouraged to play with different types of toys by their parents, peers, and the 'society,'" stated Brett Stevens in his article, "Are Gender Differences Innate or Learned?"

Whether a child innately wants a toy designed for their gender or the other, they are immediately taught what they should play with based on their sex.  These expectations are learned from parents, television commercials and other forms of advertisements, and their peers.

When asked if she has noticed less confidence in females than males in the classroom, Ellen Baumann, a graduate student in the Counseling Psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland, said that "there's a lot of individual difference," but she has not had much experience with a significant difference between the genders.

Asking one's gender before math test results in lower scores for females and higher scores for males.


In a study by Lawrence J. Stricker, a control group of high school students took an AP Calculus test without being asked anything about their gender before the test; they were only asked afterwards.  The females and males in this group performed very similarly; females performed, on average, one point better than the males. 

Source: www.eta.org

However, in the other group of participants, the students were inquired their gender before taking the test.  The results changed significantly from the control group's results.  Females scored an average of four points less than males, who scored better than they did in the control group.

The reasoning for this significant difference is that when each gender is reminded of what fields they are thought and expected to be either poor or skilled in, their confidence levels follow suit.  

In this study, when asked their gender, females were reminded that all their lives they have learned that males are supposed to be better at math and science.  Therefore, the females perform worse than they would have without acknowledging this assumption because their confidence levels had then dropped drastically.

Males, on the other hand, are benefited by this inquiry.  They are reminded that they are stereotypically superior in this subject and are expected to excel and so they do.  Their confidence levels rise and the males perform better than if they had without the reminder that they are "supposed" to score better than females on the exam.

Many other studies have also proven that "negative stereotypes hinder women's athletic and cognitive performance on a range of tests," according to an article by Jalees Rehman called, "'She's strong for a girl': The Negative Impact of Stereotypes About Women."

When asked how the perception that males are more competent than females could be prevented, Baumann said she thinks that "awareness about the research that's being done is really important."

Transgender Jan Morris claims that she "was assumed to be incompetent" and found that she started feeling more incompetent because of this assumption once she transitioned into a female.

In Cordelia Fine's book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, Fine interviews a male-to-female transsexual named Jan Morris.  Morris stated in the book, "'The more I was was treated as a woman, the more woman I became.  I adapted willy-nilly.  If I was assumed to be incompetent at reversing cars, or opening bottles, oddly incompetent I found myself becoming.  If a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably I found it so myself.'"

Expectations of how certain people should act, as well as stereotypes in general, affect how those respective people do end up behaving.  The decision to behave in the way others expect a person to is not necessarily a conscious one.  The experiences in which these expectations are revealed mold a person's brain into one that will conform to these expectations.

Fine also addresses the fact that although "'women, on average, do not appear to have more empathetic ability than men, there is compelling evidence that women will display [more empathy] than men when their empathic motivation is engaged by situational cues that remind them that they, as women, are expected to excel at empathy-related tasks."

Baumann stated, "Sometimes the discrimination can be experienced unconsciously" since "a lot of discrimination is not conscious" to begin with, when asked whether she has ever felt discriminated against because of her gender.

Although women are not found to be more empathetic than men on a genetic level, the perception that women should be more empathetic makes them that way.


Cordelia Fine stated that "we can't separate people's empathizing ability and motivation from the social situation.  The salience of cultural expectations about gender and empathizing interacts with a mind that knows to which gender it belongs."

In other words, the reason that women tend to be more empathetic than men is mainly because they are aware of the fact that they are women, and men are aware of the fact that they are men.  There is no way to tell if the fact that empathy is more evident in females than males is truly due to genetics because society has impacted each person with respect to their gender.

Women are typically more empathetic because they have been taught their entire lives that that is what they should be, and what they need to be.  Men are typically less empathetic because it is thought to be a womanly trait, and men are taught to be anything but womanly.

When asked whether she thought gender differences were caused more by genetics or social expectations and stereotypes, Baumann said that "most psychologists agree that it's a little bit of both."

Women are not the only ones subject to the threat of stereotypes.

Although women tend to be the main topic of conversation whenever gender stereotyping is brought up, men are not free from these expectations either.

For example, boys and men are taught that they need to be tall and muscular in order to be considered "manly."  This stems partly from the fact that dolls and action figures targeted to young boys are inaccurately and impossibly muscular and thin.

Source: www.johnriviello.com

Toys that resemble figures like Batman or G.I. Joe give young boys unrealistic goals for what they think their bodies should look like.  Wide chests, massive biceps, and minuscule waists are portrayed in many action figures today.

Dolls marketed towards girls affect their eventual body image as well.  If a Barbie doll were a real person, she would not even be able to stand because of her impossible body proportions.

In an article by Daniel Roberts, he states, "Children today are fed images of what it means to be manly or to be beautiful, before they even have the chance to go online or watch models pose for magazines."

More commonly discussed issues relating to body image are magazines that use Photoshop on their models in order to sexualize them and make them look what is thought to be more attractive, even though the look achieved is unobtainable in real life.

However, males and females are taught what is considered attractive at a much younger age than adolescence.  Toys send the wrong message that boys are expected to grow up to look like G.I. Joe and girls are supposed to end up looking like Barbie.

These expectations are only affirmed by the aforementioned Photoshopped models in magazines who only confirm their beliefs that women should be unhealthily thin and disproportional, and men should be unrealistically chiseled and thin as well.