Análisis de los sensores

a supplicatory whining intonation a rising inflection, smiles, laughs,

of voice downward glances

b deferential manner b flattering manner

c concealment of real feelings c 'feminine wiles'

d outwit 'white folks' d outwit 'menfolk'

e careful study of points at e the same

which dominant group is susceptible to influence

f fake appeals for directives; f appearance of helplessness

show of ignorance

TA B LE 6 Castelike status of women and negroes (right and left columns respectively).

the group ('I'm only a woman' 'I'm only a housewife') and hatred o f other members o f the group amounting to self-castigation (the 'bitchiness' o f women directed at other women.) Women tend to be possibly even more prejudiced than men about the potentiality they have as a sex fo r fu ll and equal participation in social, economic and political life. Helen Hacker compared the status o f women and negroes, and its influence on their personalities (see Table 6).

The double bind inherent in this situation consists in the clash between the consequences o f women's status as a m inority group and the democratic egalitarian ideology o f our society which, super­ ficially at least, encourages women to achieve as much as men and to be equal w ith them at significant points in their lives— particularly during formal education. Women are thus being given tw o contrary directions at the same time— 'Be equal' (be

'masculine') and 'Be unequal, because you are'. Anyone watching the progress o f the Women's Liberation Movement can easily observe one o f the effects o f women's m inority group thinking, which is to make them relatively unaware o f their situation as a sex and gender-group. Awareness o f 'sisterhood' is low and many women fail to see just how they are discriminated against as women.

O f course, the biological differences between the sexes may have some bearing on the parallel

differences in personality types. The problem is one o f proving any connection between biology and personality, and o f giving a convincing explanation of the impact one has upon the other.

Some lines o f enquiry have been started. Two researchers have found, fo r example, that newborn females are significantly higher than newborn males in basal skin conductance (that is, the degree to which their skin w ill conduct electricity). They are more sensitive to pain and show more immediate and marked responses to physical changes— the removal o f a covering blanket, airjet stimulation o f the abdomen — than do males. Does this tie in w ith their greater avoidance o f physical aggression from childhood on? If

so how? The assumption o f course is that the further back one can go in demonstrating the existence o f sex differences, the more likely they are to be innate. But is it possible that even these sex differences in the newborn could be some sort o f early response to sex-differentiated culture? Though this suggestion may sound outrageous, further research on basal skin conductance among newborn children showed that second and later children have a significantly higher skin conductance than firstborn, independently of their sex. If the mechanism here is a physiological one, it is a very mysterious one indeed. As an alternative explanation, differences in parental handling o f second and later babies compared to first are known to exist.

It is also possible to hark back to hormones as an explanatory factor. Although there is no sex

difference in the newborn baby's secretion of hormones, the brain is probably one o f the parts of the body which are differentiated by sex during the development o f the foetus, under the control o f the hormones (see Chapter 1). Harry Harlow, in his studies o f animal behaviour, has demonstrated the sex differential in the aggressive play o f young monkeys, and this has been associated to some extent with hormonal influences. He has described how male monkeys engage in more aggressive and threatening physical play than females, and more often take the initiative. In particular, the 'threat' response

(stiffening of posture, baring the teeth etc) is much more common in males than females. (The human equivalent o f the threat response is unprovoked aggression.) Male monkeys threaten both males and females, whereas females seldom threaten males and threaten other females only half as often as the males threaten the females. The particular value o f the Harlows' experiments lies in the fact that these monkeys were reared by inanimate surrogate mothers who were not in a position to transmit culture to their infants. It is interesting that female monkeys

reared in this fashion differed from females reared by monkey-mothers in their use of the threat response.

The latter are likely to present sexually (invite intercourse) when threatened by a male: the former threaten the male instead o f presenting to him. With the large differences in size and strength between adult males and females this is a suicidal act, and it seems possible that monkey culture trains the female in the substitution of sexuality fo r aggression. The parallel in human culture is obvious.

(This example prompts the suggestion that the way in which learning can affect aggressive behaviour in animals has been neglected. One researcher has shown that aggressive behaviour in animals is significally dependent on how it is reinforced: mice and dogs can be trained to relative passivity by altering the type o f reinforcement that aggressive behaviour is usually given.)

The general controversy about whether sex differ­ ences in personality and behaviour are innate or learned w ill probably rage fiercely fo r many years to come. As it is, it is obvious that culture plays an important part in the shaping o f male and female personality, and nowhere is this more clearly

demonstrated than in the cross-cultural evidences. On the other hand, it seems possible that biology may

indicate the direction o f the difference, although not

its extent. Dr John Money, who has done important research on the social-sexual identity o f people who are biologically intersexual (and who does not believe that we can equate biological maleness w ith

aggressiveness or biological femaleness w ith passivity and dependence on the basis o f the present evidence concerning either animals or humans) has this to say in general:

The simple dichotom y of innate versus acquired is conceptually outdated in analysis o f the develop­ mental differentiation of fem ininity and masculinity, which is not to say that one should obliterate the distinction between genetics and environment. Rather, one needs the concept o f a genetic norm of reaction that defines limits w ithin which genetics may

interact w ith envirnoment and, vice versa, of an environmental norm of reaction that defines limits w ithin which environment may interact w ith genetics.

3_Sexand

intellect

It used to be a tradition among anti-feminists that the smaller size o f the female brain was proof o f woman's inferior intelligence. It is true that the average

circumference o f male heads exceeds that o f female heads at all ages, but head circumference has no known intellectual correlates. Brain size does, however, bear a direct relationship to body size, and the female's brain is smaller than the male's because females are on average smaller than males. (Actually, ounce fo r ounce, the female has a slightly bigger brain than the male.)

If we want to investigate the relationship between intelligence and biological sex we must discard the idea o f intelligence as a single quality, because existing tests o f general intelligence have been standardised to minimise the known sex differences in composite abilities. Items which differentiate consistently between the sexes are never included. (This is the reverse procedure from the one used in the Masculinity-Femininity Test described in Chapter 2.) One significant fact which does emerge from tests o f general intelligence is the tendency fo r girls to score higher in the early years (particularly before six) and boys higher later on (particularly after puberty). The results o f tests administered over a period o f time in late adolescence and adulthood to the same sample show a fairly consistent tendency fo r men to improve their scores relative to the women in the sample.

If we break intelligence down into components, sex differences emerge in the following abilities: verbal ability, number ability, spatial ability, creativity and analytic ability.

Verbal ability is a feminine speciality, particu­ larly in the years before formal education begins. Girls speak sooner than boys, use longer sentences earlier and are generally more articulate. Girls learn to read sooner, and more boys than girls need remedial teaching in reading. Detailed studies o f verbal ability show that the female

advantage can be precisely located: in tests o f verbal comprehension and verbal reasoning the sex differ-

ences are negligible, but in word fluency and language usage the girls are distinctly better. Thus the female superiority in verbal ability should properly be called linguistic, since it is in speech and communication that females excel.

The primary sex difference in vocabulary is ironed out by the age o f five or six when boys catch up with girls, but the sex difference in reading skills remains until the age o f ten. In tests o f grammar, spelling and word fluency, boys never catch up w ith girls, who excel in these areas throughout the school years.

In number ability, there appear to be no sex differences in the early years. Gesell's observations tend to show a slight superiority among the girls; but

later in school life boys do better than girls on tests o f numerical/arithmetical reasoning, though on tests o f computation the girls are better. A fte r the age o f eleven the male's ability to perform well on tasks of arithmetical reasoning becomes consistent and marked. Figure 6 shows the distribution o f scores on an arithmetical reasoning test undertaken by eight and nine-year-olds. Other studies show less o f a difference than this one— but the diagram serves as a good illustration o f how, on any such distribution, the m ajority o f individuals fall w ithin the same range o f scores, regardless o f sex.

Sex differences in creativity differ according to how the term 'creative' is defined. On aesthetic appreciation in music and fine art, females excel: however, there is direct evidence that this is because o f the different training males and females receive in artistic subjects. Another meaning o f 'creativity' has been investigated by a test which asks children to think o f ways in which toys could be improved. On the whole males appear as more inventive. Up to about seven, children o f both sexes score better on toys appropriate to their own sex: after seven, boys are able to think o f more ways o f improving both masculine and feminine toys.

A more fundamental meaning o f creativity involves the ability to 'break set* or restructure a problem in a new way— allowing the subject to show his or her

Scores

6 Distribution of scores by sex on a test of arithmetical

reasoning. The mean score of the boys is 40.39 and that of the girls 35.81. It can be seen that nearly ail individuals in both sex groups fall within the same range of scores.

originality. This is closely related to some components o f analytic ability (and is also associated w ith

arithmetical reasoning ability— hence perhaps the not unusual conjunction o f mathematical and musical abilities in the same person.) In tests measuring this type o f analytic ability, the ease w ith which a subject breaks set has been found to be associated w ith the kind o f spatial orientation he or she has. In particular it is associated w ith the presence or absence o f 'field dependence'.

An example of a field dependence test is one in which the subject is confronted w ith a chair and a room which are both tilted at angles independently of each other: the subject has to set one o f them

upright. This requires an ability to disregard

misleading visual cues, and males tend to be better at this test than females, although the scores equalise if the females close their eyes. In general females show more field dependence than males.

This perceptual tra it is a relatively stable one, and so is the sex difference correlated w ith it. It has been confirmed in Dutch, French, Italian and Hong Kong samples. There is also a tendency fo r differences w ithin each sex on masculinity-femininity scales to be associated w ith variations in the extent o f field

dependence, so that, fo r example, more masculine men score high in the analytic field-independent approach, and the less masculine among them have a more characteristically female field-dependent score. The same relationship exists between masculinity- fem ininity scores w ithin each sex, and the ability to solve problems requiring restructuring.

Other tests have found females to excel generally only where tasks call fo r the rapid perception of detail and frequent shifts o f attention. These abilities tend to be relevant to tasks which are concerned w ith ways o f grouping different objects or pictures. People who group on the basis o f some selected elements the pictures have in common tend to be males, if the subjects are over the age o f about seven. Males have also been shown to be less influenced by background stimuli (either irrelevant details in the pictures or

outside distractions such as noises). Females are more aware o f any stim uli, whether connected or

unconnected w ith the task in hand.

Tests o f analytic ability, therefore, show (1) that the spatial abilities and orientations o f males and females tend to differ, and (2) that the ability o f people to concentrate single-mindedly on a particular task tends to be differentiated by sex.

The differences in spatial orientation have been generally confirmed. For example, Erik Erikson has observed that boys and girls playing w ith toys differ in the use they make o f space. Erikson confronted three hundred children aged to to twelve w ith the task o f 'constructing' a scene w ith toys on a table. He gave each one the same toys and tested him or her three times in the space of tw o years. He saw that the configurations boys and girls made w ith the toys differed: the girls' orientation emphasised what he named 'inner space' and that of the boys 'outer space'. To test whether the qualities he believed he detected had an objective existence that could be recognised by other observers, he asked other people to sort photographs o f the to y scenes into male and female piles, using his criteria: the correlation between his own evaluation and those o f the other observers was in fact statistically significant. The assessments also correlated w ith the actual sexes of the children who had done the tests.

Erikson defines the typical 'male' and 'female' configuration:

4

...the girls' scene is an interior scene, represented

either as a configuration of furniture w ithout any

surrounding walls, or by a simple enclosure b u ilt w ith

blocks. In the girls' scene, people and animals are

mostly within such an interior or enclosure, and they

are prim arily people or animals in a static (sitting,

standing) position. Girls' enclosures consist o f low

walls, i.e. only one block high, except fo r an

occasional elaborate doorway. These interiors of

houses w ith or w ith o u t walls were, fo r the most part expressly peaceful... ^

Boys' scenes are either houses w ith elaborate walls

or facades with protrusions such as cones or cylinders

representing ornaments or cannons. There are high

towers; and there are exterior scenes. In boys'

constructions more people and animals are outside

enclosures or buildings, and there are more automo­

tive objects and animals moving along streets and intersections. There are elaborate automotive

accidents, but also tra ffic channeled or arrested by the policeman. While high structures are prevalent, in the configurations o f the boys, there is also much

play w ith the danger o f collapse or downfall; ruins

were exclusively boys' constructions.

The male and female spaces, then, were dominated respectively by height and downfall and by strong motion and its channelisation or arrest; and by static interiors which were open or simply enclosed, and peaceful or intruded upon.

Not surprisingly, Erikson, as a psychoanalyst,

considers that this different use of space by males and females is a reflection o f their anatomy. In his view the inner space (womb) o f girls and outer space (penis) o f boys is a factor o f irremediable importance to them, moulding their orientation to space outside their own bodies and creating a different awareness o f space itself.

The sex difference in spatial orientation as

described by Erikson seems to echo the difference in analytic ability found in tests o f field dependence. In Erikson's play constructions, males were charac­ terised by the use of height, downfall, strong

movement and its channelisation and arrest; females by the enclosure o f static interiors. In the 'chair and room' test, the female's relative inability to distin­ guish between the positions o f the chair and the room shows a field-dependent approach that seems to have something in common w ith the girls' predilection fo r the static and the enclosed in the play-construction scenes. The male's sharper perception of the

relationship between horizontal and vertical planes in the 'chair and room' test correspondingly suggests the

exploratory use o f space visible in Erikson's play scenes, so that both these experiments may demon­ strate the same characteristic difference in spatial orientation between the sexes in our culture.

Measured IQ is one thing: demonstrated intellectual achievement is another. Throughout school life girls achieve better results than boys, and generally do better in examinations. If this intellectual achieve­ ment is compared w ith aptitudes fo r specific subjects, it is clear that girls do better even in subjects where boys tend to have the greater aptitude. This

difference is usually attributed to the superior linguistic ability o f girls (a factor which is related to memory).

Yet, despite the generally higher achievement o f girls at school, there is a curious disparity between the achievement o f individual girls and their measured IQ. (With boys, the disparity tends to be between achievements and aptitudes in specific subjects.) Many studies reveal a closer relationship between achievement and measured IQ fo r boys than fo r girls, and this disparity extends beyond school life: one

follow-up study o f gifted children revealed no

relationship between the level o f occupational achievement and measured IQ fo r girls, though there was a substantial correlation fo r boys. Another study o f gifted children followed through to adulthood showed a close relationship between IQ and occupational level fo r the men but virtually no relationship fo r the women, although both had started in the same high IQ range as children. The occupations o f the adult women were undistin­ guished. Two thirds o f those w ith IQ's o f 170 or above were housewives or office workers. A t

adolescent and adult levels the women in this sample were also subject to a greater drop in IQ than were the men. Girls thus seem particularly prone to 'under-achievement' in relation to their measured IQ.

Since there are these disparities between intellec­ tual achievement on the one hand and specific aptitudes and measured intelligence on the other.

what does this suggest? The form er finding indicates that the linguistic-verbal component in intellectual achievement is considerable (and favours girls); whereas the latter indicates that external factors influence the conversion o f measured intelligence into intellectual achievement (which favours boys).

Female under-achievement usually begins around puberty, while the (less frequent) male under­ achievement characteristically begins earlier. The decline in girls' achievement takes place at a time

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