UNNATURAL EQUALITY

Recent research hints that there may even be sex differences in the brain. According to some experimenters, the presence of the male hormone testosterone in the fetus may “masculinize” the brain, organizing the fetal nerve centers in characteristic ways. This possible “sex typing” of the central nervous system before birth may make men and women respond differently to incoming stimuli. In fact, newborn girls do show different responses in some situations. They react more strongly to the removal of a blanket and more quickly to touch and pain. Moreover, experiments demonstrate that twelve-week-old girls gaze longer at photographs of faces than at geometric figures. Boys show no preference then, though eventually they pay more attention to figures. Even after infancy, the sexes show differential interests that do not seem to grow solely out of experience. Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson found that boys and girls aged ten to twelve used space differently, when asked to construct a scene with toys. Girls often build allow wall, sometimes with an elaborate doorway, surrounding a ‘quiet interior scene. Boys are likely to construct towers, facades, with canons and lively exterior scenes. “The difference,” Erikson says, “seems to parallel the morphology (shape and form) of genital differentiation itself: in the male, an external organ, erectable and intrusive; and, internal organs in the female, with vestibular access, leading to statically expectant ova.” In aptitude as well as in interest, sex differences become apparent early in life. Though girls are generally less adept than boys at mathematical and spatial reasoning, they learn to count sooner and to talk earlier and better. Some scientists think this female verbal superiority may be caused by sex-linked differences in the brain. While girls outdo boys verbally, they often lag behind in solving analytical problems, those that require attention to detail. It is a paradox that even though the number of educated women is at an all-time high, the representation of women in traditionally male professions is still extremely low. Harvard psychologist Matina Horner guessed that one reason for this may be that women actively fear success, and began seriously looking into this when she discovered that the few studies that had been made of women’s motivation for achievement showed they had high anxiety. Reasonably certain that this meant women were afraid of competition, Horner decided nonetheless to test that assumption. Putting men and women into competitive and noncompetitive situations, she found that males showed a spurt of motivation in competition. Females did not. It was anxiety about competition that apparently held the women back. There are personality differences between the sexes too. Some distinctions turn up remarkably early. At New York University, for example, researchers found that a female infant stops sucking a bottle and looks up when someone comes into the room; a male pays no attention to the visitor. Another experiment showed that girls of twelve months who become frightened in a strange room drift toward their mothers, while boys look for something interesting to do. At four months, twice as many girls as boys cry when