Why aren't men smarter than women?

Factual Questions
1

The average human male takes ~2 years longer to reach full maturity than the average human female. In Biology class I remember learning that the longer a species’ offspring takes to fully develop, the more complex that species is. As far as I can tell men don’t have any different functional structures besides the–ahem–obvious (and I think we can agree that the female version is equally if not more complex).

That pretty much leaves the brain as the area that requires additional time, particularly since men tend to develop slower psycho-socially as well as physically. And yet…men don’t do any better than women on IQ test (at most it seems that men tend to better at spacial relationships while women excel at verbal function). With two extra years, why aren’t boys smarter?

Oh, and for the record, I’m of the female persuasion :-).

2

I don’t know how literal we should interpretet the term “complex” here, but I’d say it simply takes about those two years for guys to become taller, broader and heavier then girls.

3

Um…do you have a cite as to which gender is smarter? Can you define “smarter”?

On topic (though I can’t find a cite myself), I remember reading somewhere that women had a higher average IQ score, but men had a wider margin. Basically, the smartest men are smarter than the smartest women, but the women population is smarter overall.

4

“Women are smarter than men because they have always possessed what we have been seeking.” --Dave Gardner

WAG: We’re the same species, so your biology rule doesn’t apply.

5

The reason is that in men the brain is essentially bifurcated into the big “cranial” brain, and the little or “penicular” brain. When a man attempts to engage a problem rationally interference from the the penicular brain can often interfere with intellectual focus.

As an example:

Cranial Brain - "Now the X quantity in this equation…mmm… titys

Penicular Brain- …and speaking of titties that T.A. has quite a rack…mmm… wha… where was I?

6

Male and females brains are sufficiently different in architecture that comparisons like this don’t work well. According to brain scans, even when men and women score equally well on something, they appear to be solving the problem differently. They have different proportions of grey and white matter as well. So, any difference in development time is likely due to the male brain just taking longer to set up.

And the differences between bodies also makes judging brain differences difficult, since they are so closely connected. Men, for example, have proportionately larger brains than women *; but that appears to be that because with more muscle and less fat they have more heavily enervated tissue for the brain to interact with the brain. And no doubt that alone would affect development time some, without making men smarter since the brain tissue involved isn’t for reasoning.

  • Would it surprise anyone that this was once used to claim that women were stupider ? I thought not.
7

Any surmise based of the premise of differences in measured I.Q. has to be carry the caveat that I.Q. is a poorly understood and difficult to uniquely categorize (in terms of practical effect) concept. Women, as a group, are clearly better, or at least more invested in, a lot of sociological interactions, i.e. they gossip, weight, and speculate about interpersonal interactions. Since the viability and success of females (who are, in humans and other primates, dimorphically smaller and weaker than males of the same species) requires their ability to gauge truthfulness, felicity, et cetera, this makes sense. Males, on the other hand, are typically more involved in protective and hunting activities which require both a high degree of physical dexterity and a mental conception of spatial relationships. Males of all extant primate species are generally more confrontational (though not uniquely so) and less prone to solving issues via empathy or subterfuge.

So men are (categorically) “smarter” than women on the basis of behaviors we generally think of as being “smart”, i.e. math, toolmaking and construction, et cetera; basically, building stuff and figuring out how things work. This is amplified by the fact that most of these activities are traditionally sociologically discouraged in women, so we see more male mathematicians, engineers, scientists, chess players, et cetera. This is probably a gross amplification, as many prototypically female activities, like sewing, also require no small amount of spatial sense. Women, however, are clearly better at a lot of complex activities, particularly those involving rearing a child, as one might expect. An I.Q. test, however, doesn’t really measure the kind of competencies involved in the area of “home economics,” or other traditional female roles, and so women as a group are more limited in that particular measurement than men. One might as well measure one’s locomotive ability based upon how well they can jump on a pogo stick.

As for development rates and brain sizes, these are only rough correlations to intelligence between species, and don’t compare well on the basis of specific individuals, else one might assume that a 300 lb giant is smarter than a 125 lb nerd. The reality is, obviously, quite different.

Stranger

8

Considering I and approximately 10% of other people were (are?) thought by some scientists to have “undetectable brain damage” as an excuse to explain how our brains work differently than most, I’m not surprised in the least.

Flander, I’ve read the same thing several times. Men dominate both the lowest and highest ends of the IQ scale, while far fewer women are found at the extremes. (I’m kind of surprised 130–140 is considered one of the two extremes…)

9

I was going to explain it by the reduction in blood supply to the male brain during erectional events, but we’ll go with your explanation. It sounds more scientific and you have an example and everything. :cool:

10

To clarify a few points: whether IQ tests are valid or not, and whether you believe in one “g” that defined intelligence or a multitude of vectors…I think everyone can agree that some people are smarter than others.

The time to full maturity = complexity does work intra-species, as recently demonstrated by a study that found children with high IQ scores took longer to achieve certain brain developments: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/29/AR2006032902182.html

Complexity could, of course, simply refer to the additional cells (i.e. size). But if that’s the only factor here you would expect that short slim men would mature before tall burly women. I don’t believe that’s the case.

11

A 130 IQ is well over the 90th percentile, I’d call that the extreme range.

12

I bought a book when my son was born called “Why boys are different.” In the book they mentioned (I’m paraphrasing as I can’t find the book right now) that when IQ tests were originally put together many sub-tests had extreme differences between boys and girls. The final combination of spatial, mathematical, verbal etc. tests were specifically chosen to be more balanced between boys and girls.
In some tests girls outperformed boys and in some boys outperformed girls. I remember the book mentioned one specific spatial intelligence test in which girls scored so low that some researchers concluded girls had almost no spatial ability.
A quick Google search can’t pick up any cites or more information (and I don’t have too much time on my hands) so consider my post an interesting anecdote.
One thing that I think is certainly true is that there are definite differences in the “types” of intelligence between boys and girls, but it is difficult to say, overall, who is more intelligent, and certainly it differs between individuals.

13

I am a (female) specialist in gifted education, working particularly with mathematically gifted, but also across all the domains. There is much testing to show that boys consistently outnumber girls at the very top and of the testing - whatever measure you use. They also outnumber at the lower end, but people don’t get concerned about that - only the claim that they do at the top. So they keep trying to find ways to make maths and physics (my main teaching fields) more attractive to girls. What is the fuss about making class ratios 50:50? I hear much less fuss about the fact that girls outnumber boys by similar ratios in biology and literature.

Having worked with many really gifted kids over 30 years in this specialty, I have had many more boys in the extreme top level. That doesn’t mean that any judgment can be made over the ability of any specific girl when she strolls through the door of a special education program. So it should make no difference to the opportunities offered to any given student who needs extension.

14

Yay! A Brother Dave reference. Thanks.

[/hijack]

15

I think this is the key. Male humans develop larger and more robust skeletons and musculature; that takes an extra couple of years. At the age when girls first menstruate and become capable of reproduction, they’re often taller than contemporary boys, but they also often stop growing soon after, whereas the boys soon catch up and keep growing for several years.

Tired, witless jokes aside, I don’t think either gender is significantly more likely to be distracted by libido.

16

Thanks for validating that. I wasn’t sure if I imagined that statistic or not.

Examples of male variance in IQ:

Highest IQ = Cecil Adams!
Lowest IQ = [politics aren’t allowed in GQ so this answer is intentionally left blank]

:smiley:

17

Stranger On A Train, the vast majority of the measures you mentioned are culturally caused, not biological. For example, the low rates you observe of female scientists are due more to prejudices in the field than any inability to compete with males. Not that there aren’t any biological differences in cognitive performances between the sexes. Differences in spatial-ability are real and seem to be cross-cultural with males still outperforming females in cultures that rely a great deal on spatial-abilities.

Now, I’m not sure where I placed my notes, but early maturation of females is very common in primate species. Average age of sexual maturation from the help of the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology:

Gorilllas: Female 10, Male 15
Orangutan: Female 7, Male 10*
Chimps: Female 10-13, Male 12-15
Siamangs: Males and Females 6-7
Gibbons: Males and females: 6-8

I believe that Gibbons and Siamangs do show a slight sexual variation not reflected in this work (since this website also had Bonobos as equal in time which I know to be false). However, we can see a general tend of greater sexual dimorphism, the greater difference in time between male and female sexual maturity. Orangutans make the picture messy because there are two distinct forms of males with different sizes. Since men take longer to develop their bodies due to greater size and testosterone poisoning, the intelligence of the sexes balance out.

Others have mentioned the fact that men show greater variation in IQ level. This is due to the ‘balancing’ of a second X chromosome in women. Some researchers believe that our ‘unnatural’ explosion in intelligence seen in our evolutionary past was due to sexual selection of women of intelligent men.

18

This is a common argument in this thread (expect for the testosterone poisoning bit–elaborate please?). But I repeat the refutation: if the additional time required is due purely to size, small-statured men should mature earlier than large-statured women. I challenge anyone to find a study demonstrating this.

19

deleted pointless post - some browser quirk showed me an OP with no replies - my reply consisted of stuff already said above.

20

Over the past 30 years females in higher education have tended to be ever more equal to, or dominant over, males in a wide variety of academic and occupational categories except those requiring heavy math and abstract analytical skills (ie the skill sets required by scientists).

Your claim that “prejudices in the field” are the primary reason for the lack of female scientists would require that scientists are somehow innately more prejudiced than businessmen or lawyers re the entry of women into the field academically and professionally, and yet women have been fearless and successful in getting law and business degrees in great numbers.

Intellectually most productive modern scientists in the harder sciences have to be at pretty much the tip top standard deviation of intellect in mathematical and related abstract analytical reasoning skills. If women tend not to fall into this standard deviation cohort as often as men why does it have to be “prejudice” vs innate differences in cognitive skill sets that yields the “fewer female scientists” result?