Delusions of gender : how our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference
Cordelia Fine (Author)
"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"--Publisher's description
xxix, 338 pages ; 22 cm
9780393068382, 9780393340242, 0393068382, 0393340244
449865367
"Half-Changed World," Half-Changed Minds. We think, therefore you are ; Why you should cover your head with a paper bag if you have a secret you don't want your wife to find out ; "Backwards and in high heels" ; I don't belong here ; The glass workplace ; XX-clusion and XXX-clusion ; Gender equality begins (or ends) at home ; Gender equality 2.0?
Neurosexism. The "fetal fork" ; In "the darkness of the womb" (and the first few hours in the light) ; The brain of a boy in the body of a girl ... or a monkey? ; Sex and premature speculation ; What does it all mean, anyway? ; Brain scams ; The "seductive allure" of neuroscience ; Unraveling hardwiring
Recycling Gender. Preconceptions and postconceptions ; Parenting with a half-changed mind ; "Gender detectives" ; Gender education ; The self-socializing child
Epilogue : And s-t-r-e-t-c-h!