Gender stereotypes teach boys not to express their emotions, and tell girls to be nice and obedient and to care about their appearance. If we impose rigid ideas of masculinity and femininity on children, we limit their potential and actually cause real harm in later life. Gender stereotypes, on the surface, may seem like a trivial issue, but it’s not just a case of too much pink and blue. Society prescribes the patterns of gendered behaviour we follow – not our genetics. It is flexible, malleable and changeable.’ Ultimately, the majority of gender differences are not biologically determined but created by social constructs and our environment. She talks about how ‘our minds, society and neurosexism create difference. In her book, Delusions of Gender, Neuroscientist Cordelia Fine points out the flaws in assumptive studies and demonstrates how very few structural differences exist.
When we look at the gender gap, from how the share of unpaid care is allocated, to the proportion of female MPs in the house of commons (34%) it might be easy to argue that there must be innate biological differences between men and women. However, recent research in the neuroscience and developmental psychology field show that the differences in the ‘male’ and ‘female’ brain have long been overstated. I've always been curious about the nature versus nurture debate, and how it relates to gender inequality.
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