The Feminist Hub

the hub's response to the person writing about gender brain differences. i just finished reading delusions of gender and it was totally incredible in the way it dismantled the whole idea of hard-wired "brain differences". there's a lot of discussion about stereotype threat and how badly people perform when a stereotype about their gender (or race or any other factor) is activated- oart of the reason women perform worse than men at tasks you mentioned is because they know the stereotypes about them. in studies where those stereotypes were combated with false data such as "in these studies, women frequently outperform men" or "past studies have shown no gender differences in these tasks" women perform just as good as the men do. i couldn't recommend "delusions of gender" any more highly. also, rebecca jordan-young came and spoke at my university and her book "brain storm: the flaws in the science of sex differences" looks and sounds awesome. though, to be honest, i haven't read it yet. but yeah! best wishes to anyone combating the crap stereotypes! i know i personally feel like i have a lot of "ammunition" for debates with my family members who believe in "hardwired" differences now. :)