Gender Explains Little of Brain Structure Differences
“We're all fundamentally the same—we all have the same basic brain structure with neurons. After accounting for body size, gender explains only about 1% of structural brain differences. So applying different standards to the same behavior based on gender doesn't make sense. If abandoning a hiking partner is wrong when a man does it, it's equally wrong when a woman does it. The behavior is the problem, not the gender of the person doing it.”
Summary
Research shows that male‑female brain structural differences shrink to about 1 % of variance once body and brain size are accounted for, and there is no single “male” or “female” brain type. Consequently, the minimal anatomical differences do not justify applying different moral standards to identical behavior based on gender; the behavior itself is what matters.
Sources 58 searched
- Dump the “dimorphism”: Comprehensive synthesis of human brain studies reveals few male-female differences beyond size - ScienceDirect
Few male/female differences survive correction for brain size. ... When present, sex accounts for about 1% of variance in structure or laterality.
- Sex differences in the brain are not reduced to differences in body size - ScienceDirect
According to the review by Eliot ... are generally minor: sex/gender accounts for only about 1% of total variance when considering structural and lateralization differences independent of size (although these claims are ...
- Are Sex Differences in Human Brain Structure Associated With Sex Differences in Behavior? - PMC
(2016; within women: r = .129, 95% CI = [.068, .188], p < .001; within men: r = .137, 95% CI = [.065, .207], p < .001). Note that brain size itself showed a stronger association with the behavioral score than any of the shape-based brain scores (r = .162, 95% CI = [.116, .207], p < .001). After we controlled for brain size, the association between brain and behavioral scores was no longer significant (Table 2), whereas when we adjusted for body size (height) instead of brain size, the association remained significant in the total sample and within men (although the effect became smaller; r = .066, 95% CI = [.018, .114], p = .007; women: r = .034, 95% CI = [−.029, .096], p = .294; men: r = .105, 95% CI = [.031, .178], p = .006).
- Progressive Gender Differences of Structural Brain Networks in Healthy Adults: A Longitudinal, Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study - PMC
Gur and colleagues found that females had a higher percentage of GM and a lower proportion of WM than males, which is independent of brain size [3,41]. They also found a stronger association between cognitive performance and WM volume in females, suggesting that females may make more efficient ...
- Sex Differences in Variability of Brain Structure Across the Lifespan - PMC
In n = 3069 participants, from 8 to 95 years of age, we found widespread greater variability in males compared with females in cortical surface area and global and subcortical volumes for discrete brain regions. In contrast, variance in cortical thickness was similar for males and females.
- Sex differences in the brain are not reduced to differences in body size - PubMed
In a recent study that does not have the same limitations as most studies reviewed by Eliot et al., we find that sex differences in total brain volume are not accounted for by sex differences in height and weight, and that once global brain ...
- The brains of men and women aren't really that different, study finds | Science | AAAS
Very few of the brains—between 0% and 8%—contained all male or all female structures. "There is no one type of male brain or female brain," Joel says. So how to explain the idea that males and females seem to behave differently?
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