Difference Between Men & Women: All In Your Head

Man: So how do I get there?
Woman: Take Commercial toward the mall and turn right at the Taco Bell. Keep driving until you see Wal-mart and take that left.
Man: So, it’s north of Commercial?
Woman: Um, I’m not sure. Just go right when you see the Taco bell across from the shoe store. Then left when you see the Wal-mart.
Man: So I’ll be heading east?
Woman: Yes, I think, just take a left at the Wal-Mart and you’ll see a gas station.
Man: On the west side of the street?

(This continues for another five or six minutes, both people not understanding why the other can’t comprehend the simplicity of these directions. Frustration ensues. He showed up 30 minutes late and the date was doomed from the get-go.)

What’s the communication problem? Whose fault is it? Why can’t he understand how to recognize simple landmarks? Why doesn’t she explain things with cardinal directions so he can understand?

The answer is simple, yet, entirely complex. Men and women are different. Their brains are wired differently, and for different tasks. There have been numerous scientific studies concerning the differences in the brain make up of men and women. But how do they differ?

To answer these questions, we look to the largest professional organization studying this “gray matter,” the Society for Neuroscience. They report that evolution is the key to understanding these differences. The two sexes had specific roles to ensure survival of the species: Men hunted; women cared for children and gathered food close to home. Certain brain areas developed to facilitate these activities.

Professor David Geary from the University of Missouri, a top researcher in the field of gender differences, agrees:

“In evolutionary terms, developing superior navigation skills may have enabled men to become better suited to the role of hunter, while the development by females of a preference for landmarks may have enabled them to fulfill the task of gathering food closer to home.”

While they may be able to do the same tasks, men and women may have distinctly different ways of doing them. In one study from the University of Alberta, researchers report that men and women actually use different parts of the brain to accomplish some of the same tasks.

Geary also contends that the advantage of women concerning verbal skills also makes evolutionary sense. “While men have the bodily strength to compete with other men, women use language to gain social advantage, such as by argumentation and persuasion.”

Does one little Y chromosome really make that much difference?

Yes, of course. Gender differences dictate our lives, and are apparent from only a few months after birth, when social influences are still relatively inconsequential. In their fascinating and divisive book Brain Sex, Anne Moir and David Jessel offer explanations for these very early differences in children:

These discernible, measurable differences in behavior have been imprinted long before external influences have had a chance to get to work. They reflect a basic difference in the newborn brain, which we already know about — the superior male efficiency in spatial ability, the greater female skill in speech.

But before you swear off the opposite sex, consider the Society for Neuroscience’s disclaimer about the differences in the sexes: “Variation between men and women tends to be smaller than deviations within each sex, but very large differences between the groups do exist.”

So, yes, men and women are different, but women and women are different, and men and men are different.

We’re all different. We just have to learn to play to our strengths and improve on our weaknesses. Essentially, we’re all working toward the same things.

Can’t we all just get along?

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