Gender inequality may shrink women’s brains, new research suggests.
A global study by Oxford University which looked at brain scans of more than 7,800 people found significant brain thinning in women living in countries with fewer female rights and male-dominated cultural norms.
In countries where there was greater gender inequality, such as India, Turkey and Brazil, the thickness in the grey matter of the right hemisphere of women’s brains was between three to five per cent thinner than men’s.
However, in Scandinavian countries such as Sweden and Finland, there was no significant difference between the sexes, with women showing greater volume than men in some areas.
Even in Britain, researchers found around 0.5 per cent thinning in the right hemisphere of the brain in women which they say could be attributed to gender inequality.
Women living in societies with high levels of gender inequality experience greater adversity, and this could negatively impact their brain development.
University of Oxford and Associate Professor in the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile, said: “Our analysis suggests some sex differences in brain structure are associated with the adverse social environment under which many women live.
“These changes were particularly located in brain regions involved in the control of emotions and that are also affected in stress-related disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“We, therefore, think that what we are seeing is the effect of chronic stress in women’s brains in gender-unequal environments. Stress affects neurons’ connections, which we would then see as thinning of the grey matter cortex in MRI studies.
“However other mechanisms could also be involved, such as the effect of reduced opportunities including education in women’s brains, leading to lower development of connections.”
Gender inequality can take many forms, including women being prevented from getting an education, being forced into child marriage or suffering gender-based violence.
This is completely ridiculous. Inequality imposed on women by men plus total misogyny have been in existence for aeons. Human beings have existed on the planet for thousands of years. Therefore, according to this ‘study’, no woman on Earth should have any brain left at all. It is an excuse to impose yet more misogyny on women – saying women have smaller brains so therefore at deficient. More of the same. And incidentally it reminds me of the proposition in the past that the larger the brain the more intelligence it had – a proposition promoted to privilege men over women until it was realised that no, a larger brain does not denote more intelligence so this theory went west and men shut up about it. That will happen with this ridiculous proposition. The way to end male privilege over women, male impositions on women, inequality imposed by men on women is for men to stop, not to blame women for having ‘smaller brains’.
Hmmm…7500 odd brains studied is interesting. I wonder what numbers of brains in “sexist” countries this broke down to and what quality the evidence is that this “thinning”in the scanned brain structures is correlated with trauma including trauma – defined how? – living under patriarchy? I think only the most severe abuse in childhood irrevocably changes the child’s growing brain. As pregnancy enriches Mothers neurology I’d also like to know if these women scanned were mums?