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Low participation in math and science activities by girls is keeping them from achieving their full potential and weakening the nation's ability to compete, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Monday. "We need definitive insights into what goes wrong, when and why," Spellings said. She asked her department's Institute of Education Sciences to review existing research and determine why girls are not as well represented in the sciences as boys. Schools have put more emphasis on math in the past five years because of the No Child Left Behind law, which requires testing and yearly progress in the subject. "This is...

MEN and women are from the same planet, but scientists have the first strong evidence that the emotional wiring of the sexes is fundamentally different. An almond-shaped cluster of neurons that processes experiences such as fear and aggression hooks up to contrasting brain functions in men and women at rest, the new research shows. For men, the cluster “talks with” brain regions that help them respond to sensors for what’s going on outside the body, such as the visual cortex and an area that co-ordinates motor actions. For women, the cluster communicates with brain regions that help them respond to...

Even oft-repeated gender stereotypes harbor some truth: Angry men are more likely to yell or punch a wall, whereas angry women sit silently stewing. Now, a new study is tracing these distinctions in how men and women process emotion to an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain. Not only does the structure, the amygdala, function differently by gender, but its activity in men is also coupled with very different brain regions than it is in women. The amygdala straddles both sides of the brain and helps control how emotions such as fear are processed and remembered. Several studies have found...

The president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, announced this week that he will resign from his position at the end of this academic year. This became almost inevitable after he made a speech last winter claiming "innate differences" between the sexes may well explain why more men succeed in math and sciences than do women. Not the most radical statement in history, perhaps, but bold enough to make him a hated figure on campuses and a punching bag for radical feminists. I don't really know if there is a different aptitude for science between men and women and don't particularly...

Last week, Drew Westen of Emory University announced the results of a study conducted before the 2004 election, which examined the brains of George Bush and John Kerry supporters. The results of this study suggested that partisan thinking derives not from reason but pure emotion. When faced with favorable facts about their candidates, the men’s brains lit up like junkies getting their fix on. When presented with negative facts, their brains simply refused to consider what they heard. This, of course, comes as no surprise to me. I’ve always wondered why the things I say to most liberals and conservatives...

Men enjoy others' misfortune more than women By Patricia Reaney Thu Jan 19, 6:00 AM ET LONDON (Reuters) - Germans have a word for it -- schadenfreude -- and when it comes to getting pleasure from someone else's misfortune, men seem to enjoy it more than women. Such is the conclusion reached by scientists at University College London in what they say is the first neuroscientific evidence of schadenfreude. Using brain-imaging techniques, they compared how men and women reacted when watching other people suffer pain. If the sufferer was someone they liked, areas of the brain linked to empathy and...

Men appear to get greater satisfaction than women from witnessing painful retribution, according to a brain scanner study published today. This evidence of male schadenfreude, or pleasure at seeing revenge enacted, suggests men may have evolved to be less empathetic than women so they can more easily mete out punishments to help keep society cohesive, speculate the team at University College London. In the team's study, published today in the journal Nature, 32 volunteers watched actors who had previously cheated them get electric shocks as the UCL researchers monitored what was happening in their brains. Dr Tania Singer, who led...

DURHAM, N.C. – Aspirin can significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular events -- a combined endpoint including stroke, heart attack and death due to cardiovascular disease -- in both men and women, according to a new meta-analysis of more than 95,000 patients by a Duke University Medical Center cardiologist. However, the researchers found, the major reasons for the risk reduction differed between the sexes. For men, aspirin lowered the risk of a heart attack, while in women, aspirin reduced the risk of a stroke. The use of aspirin, however, also carries an increased risk of bleeding among both sexes, the...

Study: Men Enjoy Seeing Bad People Suffer Wednesday, January 18, 2006 NEW YORK — Bill Clinton said he felt others' pain. But a new brain-scanning study suggests that when guys see a cheater get a mild electric shock, they don't feel his pain much at all. In fact, they rather enjoy it. In contrast, women's brains showed they do empathize with the cheater's pain and don't get a kick out it.

Pound for pound, females appear to be better at holding their liquor than males, and now scientists may have found one reason why. A new study in rats suggests that hormone levels in the brain may mediate alcohol's potency, giving females a leg up at certain times during their hormonal cycle. The gender gap in alcohol metabolism is no secret. Women metabolize alcohol more slowly than men and that makes them more susceptible to alcoholic liver disease, heart muscle damage, and brain damage. Rat studies suggest that males and females in their teenage years are equally affected by the equivalent...

CHICAGO, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- Men and women use the Internet rather differently, with women employing e-mail more often than men to communicate with family and friends, but with men logging online more frequently to obtain news or sports updates, experts tell United Press International's The Web. A report released last week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that men pursue many Internet activities more intensively than women and that men are still "first out of the blocks" in trying the latest technologies. By Gene Koprowski

Just like human boys and girls, male monkeys like to play with toy cars while female monkeys prefer dolls, a research project has shown. This intriguing discovery is one of many signs of deep-rooted behavioral differences between the sexes that scientists are exploring with the latest tools of genetics and neuroscience. Researchers report significant differences in the structure and functioning of male and female brains — in humans and in animals — that show up in different behaviors. The differences apparently date far back in evolutionary history to the time before humans and monkeys separated from their common ancestor some...

Internet users share many common interests, but men are heavier consumers of news, stocks, sports and pornography while more women look for health and religious guidance, a broad survey of U.S. Web usage has found. The study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project to be released on Thursday finds men are slightly more intense users of the Web. Men log on more frequently and spend more time online. More men also have access to quick broadband connections than do women. "Once you get past the commonalities, men tend to be attracted to online activities that are far more...

NEW YORK — Women are now as likely to use the Internet as men - about two-thirds of both genders - yet a new study shows that gaps remain in what each sex does online. Men who go online are more likely than women to check the weather, the news, sports, political and financial information, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported Wednesday. They are also more likely to use the Internet to download music and software and to take a class. Online women, meanwhile, are bigger users of e-mail, and they are also more likely to go online...

Until last winter, I had assumed that fundamentalist feminism had peaked in the early 1990s with the Anita Hill brouhaha, and that Bill Clinton's political survival in 1998, which hinged on his near-unanimous support from hypocritical feminists, ended the era in which anyone took feminism seriously. The Larry Summers fiasco, however, showed that while feminism may have entered its Brezhnev Era intellectually, it still commands the institutional equivalent of Brezhnev's thousands of tanks and nuclear missiles. After just a few days, Harvard President Lawrence Summers caved in to critics of his off-hand comment that nature, not invidious discriminations alone, might...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Now, there's proof: Men, women differentBy Jennifer HarperTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished December 2, 2005 Attention, Dr. Frankenstein, and maybe Gloria Steinem: There are girl brains, then there are boy brains. But there's not one generic human brain, no matter what hand-wringing feminists may insist in their quest for sexual equality.     Some stark new clinical evidence shows that men and women are just not the same upstairs.     "The comedians are right. The science proves it. A man's brain and a woman's brain really do work differently," a research team from the University of Alberta in Canada announced yesterday....

A DIFFERENCE in the way women's brains work could explain why they have fewer road accidents than men. Insurance companies recognise women as safer drivers and adjust their premiums accordingly. Men, on the other hand, pride themselves at being better at parking and reading maps. Sex hormones could be the reason for their different abilities, scientists believe. A new study by researchers at the University of Bradford found that women are significantly better than men at shifting concentration. Amarylis Fox, who helped to conduct the study, said: "Women seem to realise that they are being asked to do something new...

Three years ago, Jeff Gray, the principal at Foust Elementary School in Owensboro, Ky., realized that his school needed help—and fast. Test scores at Foust were the worst in the county and the students, particularly the boys, were falling far behind. So Gray took a controversial course for educators on brain development, then revamped the first- and second-grade curriculum. The biggest change: he divided the classes by gender.

The battle of the sexes is back. According to a study set for release in The British Journal of Psychology this fall, men's IQs exceed women's by an average of five points. The disparity is more pronounced at higher levels, with three men for every woman scoring above 130 and more than five men per woman above 145 IQ. As you might expect, the study is being derided as sexist and dismissed as an inappropriate line of inquiry. Jessica Valenti, executive editor of the popular feminist blog "Feministing," wrote>A: "Excuse me if I don't take this very seriously... You can't...

When the late Richard Herrnstein and I published The Bell Curve eleven years ago, the furor over its discussion of ethnic differences in IQ was so intense that most people who have not read the book still think it was about race. Since then, I have deliberately not published anything about group differences in IQ, mostly to give the real topic of The Bell Curve—the role of intelligence in reshaping America’s class structure—a chance to surface. The Lawrence Summers affair last January made me rethink my silence. The president of Harvard University offered a few mild, speculative, off-the-record remarks about...

Link only: MEN have larger brains – and higher IQs – than women, according to a controversial new study.

Where are all the women who forsake social outings to stay up all night writing computer code and read science fiction? Most of those computer "geeks" (as the stereotype goes) live in countries that mandate math and science courses through the teenage years. That's one of the conclusions of a new study exploring the gender gap in computer science, a profession dominated by men. Professors of sociology at the University of California at San Diego and Western Washington released a study Friday that showed that women are vastly underrepresented in computer science in 21 nations--Germany, Czech Republic and Belgium being...

TWO big scientific debates have attracted a lot of attention over the past year. One concerns the causes of autism, while the other addresses differences in scientific aptitude between the sexes. At the risk of adding fuel to both fires, I submit that these two lines of inquiry have a great deal in common. By studying the differences between male and female brains, we can generate significant insights into the mystery of autism. So was Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, right when he remarked that women were innately less suited than men to be top-level scientists? Judging from current...

WHETHER it is to do the dishes, clean the car or vacuum the living room, men now have an answer to their wife's war cry that they never listen: it's not me, darling, it's my brain. Scientists now have discovered that women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to, and process information from, than the voices of other men. Researchers at the University of Sheffield tracked activity in the brains of 12 men while playing recordings of different voices. The results showed that there were startling differences in the way the brain responded to male and female sounds....

LONDON (AFP) - Men who are accused of never listening by women now have an excuse -- women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to than other men's, a report said. The Daily Mail, quoting findings published in the specialist magazine NeuroImage, said researchers at Sheffield university in northern England discovered startling differences in the way the brain responds to male and female sounds. Men deciphered female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music, while male voices engaged a simpler mechanism, it said. The Mail quoted researcher Michael Hunter as saying, "The female voice...

...Whatever the merits of [gender differences elsewhere, in] movies... the classic trope of female vulnerability and male strength has been upended and replaced with the childish and somewhat delusional notion that women can surpass men in every area of competition. One of this summer's biggest movies, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," about a married couple who don't realize that they are both paid assassins, stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and received a lot of buzz for the supposedly heated off-screen romance between the two actors. Less remarked upon, however, was the violence their characters inflict on each other onscreen and...

Scientists have found that women`s voices are more difficult for men to listen to than men`s. Researchers at the University of Sheffield tracked activity in the brains of 12 men while playing recordings of different voices. There were startling differences in the way the brain responded to male and female sounds. Men deciphered female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music. Male voices engaged a simpler mechanism at the back of the brain. Researcher Dr Michael Hunter said today: "The female voice is actually more complex than the male voice, due to differences in the size...

Dig (cough, cough, hack, hack) the cover of today's Sunday newspaper insert "Parade." Pix of "wise guys" on the cover, including Benevolent Maximum Leader (a/k/a Bill Clinton), ID'd on the cover as "World Leader." Ditto the inside back cover, article "Investing in Education Pays Off," a puffy puff about the "global education crisis" featuring -- ta da! -- Hillary! Well, at least the photo was not the best one of her highness out there (musta been picked out by "Walter Scott")... Three-and-a-half more years of this caca. I don't know if I can take it...

The physical differences between men and women have long been understood, and can be traced directly to our primeval roles as hunters and child-bearers. But until recently, the many behavioural differences between have perplexed us. So what is it that makes women want to chat about the events of their day while men would rather reflect on theirs in silence? Why do men generally gravitate to computer and sports magazines while women prefer gossip and relationship glossies? And why do men and women often seem to want such different things from their relationships with each other? A new BBC television...

NEW YORK, JULY 9, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Boys and girls have marked physical and psychological differences and hence they have to be educated differently. This is the thesis of a book published earlier this year by psychologist and family doctor Leonard Sax. In "Why Gender Matters" (Random House), he takes issue with the modern tendency toward gender-neutral child-rearing. According to this theory boys and girls behave differently because of the way they are educated, or because of cultural factors. Sax describes how in the mid-1990s he began to see more and more young boys arrive at his office with requests for...

Women's brains have more cells than men By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 13/11/2001) WOMEN'S grey matter is packed more densely with brain cells compared with that of men in a region that plays an important role in higher mental processes, according to a team of American researchers. Differences in the density of cells in the thin rind on the surface of the brain responsible for judgment, personality, planning and working memory have been found by Prof Sandra Witelson, of McMaster University, Ontario. Women have up to 15 per cent more cell density in this region, the frontal lobe, suggesting ...

On a gray day in mid-January, Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, suggested that innate differences in the build of the male and female brain might be one factor underlying the relative scarcity of women in science. His remarks reignited a debate that has been smoldering for a century, ever since some scientists sizing up the brains of both sexes began using their main finding--that female brains tend to be smaller--to bolster the view that women are intellectually inferior to men. To date, no one has uncovered any evidence that anatomical disparities might render women incapable of achieving academic...

Ahmedabad:Whoever said women and science don’t go together! A new study claims that women make better scientists than men and recommends more representation for them in the field. “Women in formal and informal science,” a research paper authored by Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) director general R A Mashelkar, rebukes prejudiced views of the male-dominated world of scientific research. In the process, they indirectly challenge Harvard University president Lawrence H Summers’ controversial remarks that women are less suited to science, which sparked a worldwide debate earlier this year. “Intuition is...

Harvard President Lawrence Summers continues to beg forgiveness for having wondered aloud whether "intrinsic human nature" might be one of the factors that explain the high male-to-female ratio in science. Among other things, Harvard has just announced it will spend $50 million on efforts to diversify the school's faculty, though it will not go so far as to make Summers wear a dress. Yet. The uproar at Harvard has generated enough hot air to dry out Phil Spector's white-man afro. But it also has generated some thoughtful discussion, such as a recent debate between Harvard psych profs Steven Pinker and...

Some people like to think that men and women are becoming increasingly alike in our unprecedentedly equal society. A few even try to maintain that nearly all gender differences are acquired rather than innate. A quick way to realise neither claim is true is to look at what men and women read for pleasure. Let us take the two nationwide bestselling mass market fiction titles, after the dreadful productions of Dan Brown and Patricia Cornwell have been discounted. Love and Devotion by Erica James (Orion, 536 pages, £6.99) sold 18,188 copies last week; The Increment by Chris Ryan (Arrow, 440...

What (Most) Women Want A review of Taking Sex Differences Seriously by Steven E. Rhoads By Christine RosenPosted May 16, 2005This review appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Click here to send a comment.   That men and women are different is an accepted tenet of popular culture— indeed, the success of everything from reality television shows to self-help books relies on the notion that la difference is a fact that yields happy, challenging, and occasionally comic results in the course of everyday life. The acknowledgment of difference has also provided fuel for...

Kenneth Dickerman for The New York TimesAlex Korves, an eighth grader from Manhattan, said that in Nashville, the hallways were filled with boys roughhousing, and that "when they find out you're on the opposing team, they're nasty." CHICAGO, May 15 - Suleidy Quesada, 14, said her chess coach has taught her a special strategy that goes beyond mastering openings and endgames: "I look straight in their eyes, I touch my hair, I lick my lips," explained Suleidy, who has been playing four years. "If you're losing and ask for a draw, they say yes." But at a tournament here...

'Alcohol worse for female brains' Experts warn more and more women are taking up drinking Women are far more vulnerable to alcohol-induced brain damage than men, scans have shown. CT pictures of the brains of more than 150 volunteers revealed how women come to more harm and quicker than men when they drink heavily. Scientists have suspected for some time that men might be more resilient to booze than women. The German research gives visible evidence of this. The University of Heidelberg team published their findings in Alcoholism. Women may be more vulnerable to chronic alcohol consumption Study author...

That men and women are different is an accepted tenet of popular culture— indeed, the success of everything from reality television shows to self-help books relies on the notion that la difference is a fact that yields happy, challenging, and occasionally comic results in the course of everyday life. The acknowledgment of difference has also provided fuel for many a political fire. One of the phrases often chanted during the previous century's battle for women's suffrage was, "For the safety of the Nation to the Women Give the Vote / For the Hand that Rocks the Cradle Will Never Rock...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) biology Professor Nancy Hopkins recently sparked a media maelstrom that mercilessly hounded Harvard President Lawrence Summers, eventually leading him to multiple mea culpas and Soviet-style gender-sensitivity reeducation. But this isn’t the first time feminist “It” girl and Machiavellian publicity-hound Hopkins has drawn headlines for outing alleged gender bias in the Ivory Tower. Summers tried in vain to have academia’s feminists check their gender politics at the door during a conference organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. He provocatively offered up three “positive” (free of value judgment)...

It turns out that male and female brains differ quite a bit in architecture and activity. Research into these variations could lead to sex-specific treatments for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. ___ On a gray day in mid-January, Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, suggested that innate differences in the build of the male and female brain might be one factor underlying the relative scarcity of women in science. His remarks reignited a debate that has been smoldering for a century, ever since some scientists sizing up the brains of both sexes began using their main finding--that female...

In a showdown of the sexes on Friday, Johnstone Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker and Professor of Psychology Elizabeth Spelke debated whether innate differences lead to the underrepresentation of tenured women in math and the sciences. In front of a packed Science Center B crowd, they analyzed the data behind University President Lawrence H. Summers’ controversial January comments on women in science. Pinker, whom Summers recruited to Harvard last year, cited evidence arguing that male superiority in skills like mental object rotation and problem solving provides a biological basis for the argument that men are more talented at math and...

On a gray day in mid-January, Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, suggested that innate differences in the build of the male and female brain might be one factor underlying the relative scarcity of women in science. His remarks reignited a debate that has been smoldering for a century, ever since some scientists sizing up the brains of both sexes began using their main finding--that female brains tend to be smaller--to bolster the view that women are intellectually inferior to men. To date, no one has uncovered any evidence that anatomical disparities might render women incapable of achieving academic...

When Lawrence Summers suggested that biology might be partially responsible for the relative rarity of female mathematics professors, he was provoking an academic giant. Powerful as the president of Harvard may be, his influence is as nothing compared with that of the behemoth that is the women’s studies movement. The field of women’s studies originated in the heady sixties and grew exponentially through the seventies and eighties. By the mid-nineties, when Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge published Professing Feminism, their searing critique of the field, more than 600 undergraduate and several dozen graduate women’s studies programs were up and running...

An international team of 250 scientists just completed a full map of the X or "female" chromosome that determines gender. The researchers expressed general amazement at finding a much greater than expected genetic variation between human males and females — a discovery that suggests that nature, not nurture or sexism, is directly responsible for many if not most of gender-based norms. Their new conclusions appeared in the prestigious British journal "Nature," and suggested that "men and women may differ by as much as 2 percent of their entire genetic inheritance, greater than the hereditary gap between humankind and its closest...

[W]hat has been ignored in the case of Brian Nichols is the role that affirmative action has played in hiring standards for police... For example, in a study I published in 2000 examining the effect of affirmative action on police hiring, a comparison of male and female public safety officers found that female officers had 32 percent to 56 percent less upper-body strength and 18 percent to 45 percent less lower-body strength than male officers... Increasing the number of women officers under these reduced strength and size standards consistently and significantly increases the number of assaults on police officers. In...

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University hosted a conference last week entitled "Impediments to Change: Revisiting the Women in Science Question." The auditorium in Agassiz Theatre in Radcliffe Yard was packed. Dedicated in 1904, the theatre has been the site of many a spirited intellectual exchange. But on this day it was a forum not for debate but for indignation over the insult that the assembled referred to as "1/14" -- the date when Harvard President Larry Summers fatefully speculated about the possibility of inborn differences between the sexes. The six assembled panelists, four from Harvard, two...

“The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is now lost.” Although these lines from Galadriel are in reference to Tolkien’s Middle Earth as opposed to our modern age, they aptly describe the revolution in social relations that has transpired since the 1960s. Former ways of interacting are now obsolete. The old social mores and rules are gone forever. Nowhere can this be seen more vividly than in attachments between the sexes. Until only recently on the historical timeline, interconnections occurred with...

<p>A few years ago, one of my sisters-in-law came to town with two of her kids, a boy and a girl. Over ice cream the adults in the group said: Let's assume that everyone involved in the Terri Schiavo controversy has operated in good faith. In other words, let's imagine that Michael Schiavo isn't a homicidal money-grubber; that the Republicans aren't political opportunists performing a Kabuki dance for the right-to-lifers; that the so-called evangelicals really do care deeply about Terri Schiavo and are not fighting a cynical proxy war against abortion; and that the Democrats siding with the Florida courts' decision to starve Terri to death are not doing so out of a reflexive petulance toward anti-abortion and conservative forces.</p>

A few years ago, one of my sisters-in-law came to town with two of her kids, a boy and a girl. Over ice cream the adults in the group asked these great kids what they'd do if they found a treasure chest full of gold. My nephew pondered. Then he said, "A gun." Then, more pondering. "No, wait. A sword would be good, too. Maybe I'd get a gun and sword." We then asked my niece the same question. She immediately replied, "A cheerleader uniform and a grown-up makeup kit." She didn't need to revisit the question. She was positive....