# What are the differences between men and women? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 16, 2025, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688 "2025-03-16T22:42:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2025, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/141 "2025-03-21T21:15:02Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Say _what_?! > > Cite, please? Just googling got me [this](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/size-matters-how-male-female-brains-compare/). > **CBS News Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton** explained,“There appears to be a difference in the size of the brain when you compare men versus women, we’re talking about the anatomy here. Obviously, male brains tends to be larger, because men tend to be, but within the brain certain structures and parts of the anatomy, some are bigger in women, some are bigger in men. So, for example, in male brains, men have six and a half times more gray matter than women do. Gray matter is partly responsible for information processing, so may explain in general men tend to be better in math.” > > But women, Ashton said, have as much as 10 times as much white matter – the part of the brain that’s I partially responsible for connecting information processing centers. Ashton said this could contribute to why women are such good multi-taskers. An order of magnitude difference in the type of brain matter is bigger than the _entire_ difference in brains between any random two species of about the same size. [More](https://stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/) [googling](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6782697/). The idea that men and women are basically identical is a political dogma, not something based on fact. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2025, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/142 "2025-03-21T21:15:50Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Not interested; since I don’t know how much of it the AI, ah, made up. If you want to know, you easily can, because it cites its sources. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2025, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/143 "2025-03-21T21:46:10Z")
> [@Ms2001](#): > > > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > > Quite possible; it’s certainly widespread. I don’t have it, though > > Hmm. Do people often mistake you for a prepubescent boy on the phone? Because a lot of what distinguishes (young) male voices from female voices is gender-specific learned behavior. I didn’t mean that at all. I meant that I don’t have “the idea of coding behaviors as either male or female”. > [@Ms2001](#): > > The overwhelming majority of people _can_ be identified as either male or female, and that means there’s some separation between those clusters. Not on specific categories of behavior. To some extent on primary and secondary external sex characteristics; though even some of those get pretty blurry. Nobody’s going to mistake my breasts for a man’s; but there are men with larger breasts than some women have. But that isn’t behaviour (except in cases of medical intervention, which are a pretty recent possibility.) > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > So, for example, in male brains, men have six and a half times more gray matter than women do. Quoted by Der\_Trihs, not written by Der\_Trihs. My three minutes’ googling turned up this: [The difference between male and female brains | Endeavor Health](https://www.endeavorhealth.org/articles/differences-in-men-women-brains) > Women also tend to have more grey matter in their brains. and this: [Why Sex Matters: Brain Size Independent Differences in Gray Matter Distributions between Men and Women - PMC](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3110817/) > Among the most replicated sexually dimorphic characteristics are larger overall brain sizes in men and larger global gray matter (GM) proportions as well as regional GM volumes and concentrations in women\> [. . .] > > When conducting _post hoc_ tests, there were no regions of larger GM volumes in men than in women at _p_ = 0.001 (uncorrected), regardless of which subgroups were compared with each other. In contrast, we revealed a number of regions where women had larger GM volumes than men at _p_ = 0.001 (uncorrected). These sex effects (women \> men) decreased slightly when brain size differences between men and women declined ([Fig. 1](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3110817/#F1)_b–e_). Importantly, we also revealed clusters of significantly larger GM volumes in women than in men in all four comparisons when applying FDR corrections at _p_ = 0.05 and restricting outcomes to clusters exceeding _k_ = 1000 voxels. There seems to be some disagreement in this matter. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2025, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/144 "2025-03-21T21:47:37Z")
> [@Ms2001](#): > > > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > > Not interested; since I don’t know how much of it the AI, ah, made up. > > If you want to know, you easily can, because it cites its sources. Have you checked its sources? You’re the one posting it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/145 "2025-03-22T02:52:29Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > An order of magnitude difference in the type of brain matter is bigger than the _entire_ difference in brains between any random two species of about the same size. That seems absurd. You’re arguing that, say, the brains of iguanas and cats are more similar than the brains of male and female humans? Anyway, trying to interpret differences in absolute size and proportion of different types of brain tissue as implying major differences in brain function sounds suspiciously reductionist. That’s certainly not a reliable equivalence in other parts of the body. For example, hand size and proportions on average differ between male and female bodies. But that doesn’t mean that men and women don’t use the same hand motions for writing or typing or handling utensils etc. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/146 "2025-03-22T03:00:34Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > For example, hand size and proportions on average differ between male and female bodies. But that doesn’t mean that men and women don’t use the same hand motions for writing or typing or handling utensils etc. Because that’s not at all similar. If men and women had an order of magnitude difference in how much bone, skin or muscle they proportionally had in a limb, that would be a more accurate analogy. At that point you’d basically be talking about “men are built like the Hulk, women have an exoskeleton” levels of difference. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/147 "2025-03-22T03:38:39Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > If men and women had an order of magnitude difference in how much bone, skin or muscle they proportionally had in a limb, that would be a more accurate analogy. At that point you’d basically be talking about “men are built like the Hulk, women have an exoskeleton” levels of difference. Nah. For example, even male bodybuilders with tremendously swole biceps, where the muscle tissue proportion is ten times greater than it is on a small slender woman, still use basically the same arm motions for, say, opening a door that that small slender woman uses. That’s nowhere near “Hulk vs. exoskeleton” level of fundamental physiological function difference. Furthermore, your claim about men and women having an order of magnitude difference in any type of brain tissue proportion still seems quite disputed, to say the least. [Here,](https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/700086) for example, is a description of a 2021 meta-study of brain studies that found much smaller sex-based brain differences, most of them attributable to overall brain size difference. > [@](#): > > “Men and women’s brains do differ slightly, but the key finding is that these distinctions are due to brain size, not sex or gender,” Dr. Eliot said. “Sex differences in the brain are tiny and inconsistent, once individuals’ head size is accounted for.” […] > > Women’s brains are about 11% smaller than men’s, in proportion to their body size. Smaller brains allow certain features, such as a slightly higher ratio of gray matter to white matter, and a higher ratio of connections between, versus within, cerebral hemispheres. > > “This means that the brain differences between large- and small-headed men are as great as the brain differences between the average man and woman,” Dr. Eliot said. “And importantly, none of these size-related differences can account for familiar behavioral differences between men and women, such as empathy or spatial skills.” […] > > Dr. Eliot and her collaborators […] conducted a meta-synthesis of three decades of research, assimilating hundreds of the largest and most highly-cited brain imaging studies addressing 13 distinct measures of alleged sex difference. For nearly every measure, they found almost no differences that were widely reproduced across studies, even those involving thousands of participants. For example, the volume or thickness of specific regions in the cerebral cortex is often reported to differ between men and women. However, the meta-synthesis shows that the regions identified differ enormously between studies. > > Male-female brain differences are also poorly replicated between diverse populations, such as Chinese versus American, meaning there is no universal marker that distinguishes men and women’s brains across the human species. > > “The handful of features that do differ most reliably are quite small in magnitude,” Dr. Eliot said. “The volume of the amygdala, an olive-sized part of the temporal lobe that is important for social-emotional behaviors, is a mere 1% larger in men across studies.” And [here’s the cite for the published meta-study itself.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804?via%3Dihub) Yeah, I think we’re going to have to ditch that “order of magnitude difference” claim unless you can find some better support for it than an apparently freestanding assertion by a “CBS medical correspondent”. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/148 "2025-03-22T06:44:23Z")
Males have a much, much firmer grip than females: [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/ltD6MoU.jpeg "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/ltD6MoU) After puberty, there are virtually no females that even match a _median_ male in grip strength. Most females at their age _peak_ cannot outgrip a median male at age 80. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/149 "2025-03-22T11:52:45Z")
I’m a man, therefore my grip strength is stronger than Serena Williams? Seems unlikely. I see a ton of overlap in your chart. There are tons of boring obvious differences when you talk statistical likelihoods between men and women. On average, men are taller, have more penises, create more sperm, go bald more often. On average, women are more nurturing, have more babies, ovulate more, live longer. Wow! Such revelations! ---
**Author:** ![Zoobi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/13edae/32.png) [@Zoobi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoobi)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/150 "2025-03-22T13:44:28Z")
While that image might very well be true (and probably is), I generally distrust completely uncited plots, especially from imgur. Even a link to the data seems like a minimum. This is the debate forum isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/151 "2025-03-22T16:39:22Z")
Just want to say I hate the whole sports comparison thing. That whenever there’s a video of a woman performing a feat of incredible athleticism, you can bet that the comments will be almost entirely guys saying “This is nothing, men can do 10% more jigglyhops than this!” As if _any_ such posters have the talent and/or dedication, to do what that athlete is doing, regardless of gender. And also it plays into a fallacy, that I made a thread of once, of using professional competition to make bad extrapolations about populations. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/152 "2025-03-22T19:32:27Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > I’m a man, therefore my grip strength is stronger than Serena Williams? Seems unlikely. I don’t know how old or fit you are. But there’s a good chance you would in fact be stronger. This study looked at people in a younger age range specifically: > **[Hand-grip strength of young men, women and highly trained female athletes -...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17186303/)** > > Hand-grip strength has been identified as one limiting factor for manual lifting and carrying loads. To obtain epidemiologically relevant hand-grip strength data for pre-employment screening, we determined maximal isometric hand-grip strength in... The money quote: > Moreover, to assess the potential margins for improvement in hand-grip strength of women by training, we studied 60 highly trained elite female athletes from sports known to require high hand-grip forces (judo, handball). > … > Less expected was the gender related distribution of hand-grip strength: 90% of females produced less force than 95% of males. **Though female athletes were significantly stronger (444 N) than their untrained female counterparts, this value corresponded to only the 25th percentile of the male subjects.** > [@RitterSport](#): > > I see a ton of overlap in your chart. I didn’t say otherwise. I said that there are very few female persons that reach even a _median_ male level of grip strength. Here is a chart from the paper above, which basically shows the same thing: [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/zqohej0.png "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/zqohej0) Again, even the _very top_ of the female range doesn’t reach the median male. At 400 N, only a small number of males perform worse and a small number of females perform better. The picture looks even worse when you consider that the very bottom of any fitness range isn’t very interesting, because the subjects likely have something wrong with them such as injury, illness, pain, etc. (the study looked at “healthy” subjects, but that can still cover a lot of negative effects). There is _unlimited_ capacity to be worse at something. The upper end of any fitness spectrum is limited by biology, though. There isn’t unlimited capacity on the upper end. And here we see that the most elite females can only outgrip the very weakest males. > [@RitterSport](#): > > There are tons of boring obvious differences when you talk statistical likelihoods between men and women. There are spectra where there is a great deal of overlap, like height, and ones where there is not, like strength. It’s counterproductive to pretend these are all the same. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/153 "2025-03-22T20:15:18Z")
> [@Zoobi](#): > > While that image might very well be true (and probably is), I generally distrust completely uncited plots, especially from imgur. The original chart is from here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/almost\_all\_men\_are\_stronger\_than\_almost\_all\_women/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/almost_all_men_are_stronger_than_almost_all_women/) The top post has links to the original data and some more details. (The OP also apologizes for the misspelling on the Y axis). But if you want something a bit more academic, see the paper I linked to above. It shows essentially the same thing (with the extra bonus that they included some elite athletes). ---
**Author:** ![Zoobi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/13edae/32.png) [@Zoobi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoobi)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/154 "2025-03-22T22:22:49Z")
Thanks. Completely uncited plots are pet peeve of mine, they’re worse than useless. ---
**Author:** ![yarblek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/71e660/32.png) [@yarblek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yarblek)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2025, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/155 "2025-03-23T15:19:22Z")
> [@Ms2001](#): > > If there were no way to tell whether someone was male or female without talking to them, wouldn’t that be one of the first topics of conversation on every first date? Nitpick: I think people in such a culture or society would in general want to know what sex/gender somone else is well _before_ any dating takes place, otherwise it’d be pretty inefficient and a huge time sink. I agree with your overall point though. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2025, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/156 "2025-03-23T16:48:30Z")
It’d certainly be one of the first topics of conversation upon initially meeting. Sorta like how when two dogs first come together, there’s mutual crotch-sniffing. Just to be sure. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2025, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/157 "2025-03-23T20:22:14Z")
More data on strength: [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/FoyeMpM.jpeg "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/FoyeMpM) This data is when matched on muscle thickness. And there are still enormous differences! “Upper Body Isometric” is particularly remarkable, with almost zero overlap despite the matching. And, obviously, males do in practice have far more upper-body muscle mass than females on average. Why harp on this? First, because the OP asked a broad question that included biological factors. But also because there are some people out there claiming that there are no inherent differences. In particular, a book was just released “Open Play: The Case for Feminist Sport” which contains a fantastic number of absurdities. [Among them](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/19/opinion/trans-girls-sports-abolish-gender-divide/): [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/BfAj7eX.png "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/BfAj7eX) Just total nonsense. And this kind of argument comes up repeatedly. For instance: > **[Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/09/sports-gender-sex-segregation-coed/671460/)** > > Though school sports are typically sex-segregated, a new generation of kids isn’t content to compete within traditional structures. [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/lo1csYS.png "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/lo1csYS) No, it can’t be. As the data above shows. What’s especially dumb about these arguments is that many male sports competitions already allow women. They’re open rather than male-only. But, obviously, women prefer to compete in a segregated category. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2025, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/158 "2025-03-23T21:42:22Z")
As Robert Anton Wilson pointed out, the average human being has one testicle. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2025, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/159 "2025-03-23T22:22:54Z")
The only solution I can think of to persuade such feminists is to give them exactly what they want. If they want to do away with women’s-only sports and make women compete against men, with the argument that there are no physical differences - by all means. The results would quickly be clear. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2025, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688/160 "2025-03-23T23:12:59Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > In particular, a book was just released “Open Play: The Case for Feminist Sport” which contains a fantastic number of absurdities. [Among them](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/19/opinion/trans-girls-sports-abolish-gender-divide/): The link is paywalled. Among the reviews of that book that I can find, none make the claim that it is about denying that men have a natural physical advantage. I am going to guess that they might dispute aspects of male physical advantage but I’d wager it’s more nuanced than the Boston Globe is suggesting here. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > And this kind of argument comes up repeatedly. For instance: I also need to make an account to read that article, but from the bit I can see in preview, it’s about trying to encourage school sports to not be segregated. I can see why a case for that can be made; especially if it is in tandem with offering more sports in which girls and boys can play reasonably safely together, like racket sports. In fact, now I think about it, all the sports in my high school _were_ mixed gender playing together. There were some semi-pro teams, playing on the weekends that were segregated, but the regular in school hours stuff was was with your “form” (groups of about 20 boys and girls randomly assigned at start of the school year). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-differences-between-men-and-women/1015688.md?page=9)