Livia Margon & Livia Xie
Biological Semiotics
Instructor Andrew Yang
Man, Woman, Female & Male
Our project topic is a broad and tough one;
we sought out to understand the biological differences and similarities between
men and women, specifically intellectual aptitudes and affinities. In looking
at this topic we wanted to understand the role that science plays in stimulating
gender differences in society. We
believed that scientific theories about female and male differences supported
biological determinists conclusions and we wanted to investigate this
hypothesis further and look to prove or disprove it.
The
history of this discussion is equally hard to grasp because of its expansive
nature. The scientific terms that we tackled the most were natural selection,
sexual selection and evolutionary psychology. The first two came up in subtle
ways, in that they pertained to evolutionary psychology. The main reference,
from which most of our project spawned, was the debate between Elizabeth Spelke
and Steven Pinker where both of them approach the topic of careers that men and
women pursue from that perspective.
We started thinking about the debate with
the belief that, ultimately, both Spelke and Pinker explained intellectual
differences between the sexes from the perspective that our qualities have been
directly developed by survival needs. In this light it would make sense that
one sex has dedicated abilities to nurture children and the other to provide
food and security. We believed that the debate had many different aspects that
couldn’t be contained by this perspective, however. As we investigated the
questions posed by the debate and the debate itself further we changed our
approach because we found that Spelke did in fact address many of our concerns
in the larger context of the debate.
For example, she argued that even if our
abilities had been shaped by basic needs of survival and divided in such a
dichotomous way we had obviously learned to readapt them. What became clear
only after much research, however, was the discovery that the largest part of
research still being done in this area is still highly oriented in a lack of
knowledge of Spelke’s insight. In other words when scientists produce research
and studies into this topic they still interpret them and not only that,
actively pursue to prove that the abilities developed by woman are still and
should still be applied to nurture and care and that, equally men’s abilities
should still be applied to lead. As is clear in researches such as the recent
one by Ragini Verma from 2013 that we site in our project.
Our main goal then, became to show how much
of the research being done is oriented by those archaic beliefs and lacking in
imagination as Spelke’s work is full of. They fail to see that although the
differences in the male and female brain are clear, the way in which they
should be applied is not. Worse than that, they stimulate the limiting social
system in which men and women are discreetly assigned certain careers and
social categories. We argued that
everyone has to loose from these pre determinations because we don’t know the
different insights that can come from having people with different aptitudes
tackling problems they haven’t had the opportunity to tackle in the past.
We also found it further important to stress
that aside from being shortsighted. These researches that overwhelm the scientific
field make a claim as often happens in science to be impartial and objective.
We discovered that a research with objective facts often had conclusive
interpretations that presented itself as objective but was in fact very bias
and at times even arbitrary. The problem is that because it calls itself
impartial, science often puts itself above criticism from the broader public
and establishes certain opaque claims that determine much of the policy that
every day people live under without being subject to revision.
Because our point is so subtle to make and
our topic so delicate we decided to maintain a significant part of our
presentation as verbal explanation and dialogue but in order to maintain its
interest to the viewers, change the diction often varying from story telling to
debating and asking questions.
Along
with the verbal component we incorporated audiovisual components. One is a
montage of classic romantic scenes from film history that we used to invoke
certain stereotypes often seen in the medium. The other audiovisual piece we
used was an interesting take of the previous images that we found. It was a
role reversal of famous Hollywood characters from men to women or vice versa.
We believe that these videos are good
examples of cultural aspects in which stereotypes of appropriate male and
female are enacted and that they will illustrate our point and make it relevant
to the viewer. The other components of
our presentation were images that either iconically illustrated our story or
indexically represented our arguments. As in the audiovisual perspective we
believe that these images will help incite the imagination of our public in
different ways than our verbal component.
To pursue this topic further we would like
to do some research of our own probably setting up scenarios in which men and
women are assigned to “play” roles usually played by the opposite sex for an
extended period of time. This extention of our project would nicely incorporate
the scientific investigative perspective as well as an artistic perspective in
the sense that it could bring about reflection in an unscripted way.
Visualization
Annotated Bibliography
Brown,
Charles, and Mary Corcoran. "Sex-Based Differences in School Content and
the
Male/Female Wage Gap." Journal of
Labor Economics 15 (1997): 431-65. NBER.
National Bureau of Economic Research. Web.
A paper researching the relation between male and
female differences in school content to sex differences in wages. Studies conclude that differences in field of
highest degree account for a significant part of the male-female wage gap among
college graduates, but differences in coursework account for very little of the
equally large wage gap between men and women with less schooling.
Bussey,
Kay, and Albert Bandura. "Social Cognitive Theory of Gender Development
and
Differentiation." Psychological
Review 106 (n.d.): 676-713. University of Kentucky. Web.
A journal paper arguing that gender roles and
conceptions are built from a network of social influences and experiences on
the foundation of human evolution providing bodily structures and biological potentialities.
Geary,
David C. "Sexual Selection and Sex Differences in Social Cognition."
(n.d.): 23-53.
University of Missouri. Web.
Discussing sexual selection and mating behaviors
using different systems of socio-cognitive modules from individual to
group-level to determine evolution in the human mind.
Linn,
Marcia C. "Emergence and Characterization of Sex Differences in Spatial
Ability: A
Meta-Analysis." Child Development 56.6
(1985): 1479-498. JSTOR. Web. 29 Apr.
2015.
A meta-analysis of sex differences arising on
some types of spatial abilities but not others like mental rotation versus
spatial perception and how they can be detected across a lifespan.
"The
Mars and Venus Question." The Economist. The Economist
Newspaper Limited, 2 Aug.
2014. Web.
A news article discussing the studies of Daniela
Weber and her colleagues in how women’s cognitive performance benefits from
factors like greater employment opportunities, increased economic prosperity
and better health more so than men.
McKie,
Robin. "Why It's Time for Brain Science to Ditch the 'Venus and Mars'
Cliche." The
Guardian. Guardian News & Media Limited, 7 Dec. 2013.
Web. 28 Dec. 2013.
An article discussing how studies in the differences in
the hard wiring of male and female brains should not support claims of
biological determinism in old stereotypes of male and female aptitudes like
spatial cognition and verbal skills.
Mcrae, K.,
K. N. Ochsner, I. B. Mauss, J. J. D. Gabrieli, and J. J. Gross. "Gender
Differences
in Emotion Regulation: An FMRI Study of Cognitive
Reappraisal." Group Processes
& Intergroup Relations 11.2 (2008): 143-62.
Columbia University. Web.
An article addressing the study of gender
differences in neural bases of emotion regulation using functional magnetic
resonance imaging. Male and female participants showed different neural
increases and decreases in activity in regions of the brain for emotional
processing and regulation.
Miller,
David I., and Diane F. Halpern. "The New Science of Cognitive Sex
Differences." Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 18.1 (2014): 37-45.Academia.edu.
Academia, 2014. Web.
An article reexamining sex differences and cognitive
similarities due to changes due to new findings regarding prenatal androgens
and large international data sets which help explain how cultural factors like
gender equity and economic prosperity affect males and females differently.
Pinker,
Steven, and Elizabeth Spelke. "The Science of Gender and Science." Edge.
Ed. John
Brockman. Edge Foundation, Inc., 16 May 2005.
Web. 28 Apr. 2015.
An
introduction and transcription of the 2005 Pinker & Spelke debate regarding
the “Science of Gender and Science” in inherent differences in scientific
aptitude between male and females.
Sample,
Ian. "Male and Female Brains Wired Differently, Scans Reveal." The
Guardian.
Guardian News & Media Limited, 2 Dec. 2013.
Web. 28 Apr. 2015.
An article reporting on 2013 studies by Ragini
Verma and her team regarding differences between male and female wiring of the
brain that support many stereotypes of gender capabilities using diffusion
tensor imaging to map neural connections.
Slater,
Dan. "Darwin Was Wrong About Dating." The New York Times.
The New York
Times Company, 12 Jan. 2013. Web.
An article discussing evolutionary psychology in
human sexual behavior and the opposing sides of Darwinian and sociocultural
explanations for mating behaviors.
Spelke,
Elizabeth S. "Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and
Science?: A
Critical Review." American
Psychologist 60.9 (2005): 950-58. Harvard University. Web.
An article overview of Elizabeth Spelke’s
arguments from the 2005 Spelke Pinker debate against the disposition of male
intrinsic aptitude in mathematics and sciences in three areas: male’s early
focus on objects therefore predisposed to mechanical systems, profile of
spatial and numerical abilities, and variability in cognitive abilities hence
in upper reaches of mathematical talent.
Trivers,
Robert L. "Parental Investment and Sexual Selection." Sexual
Selection and the
Descent of Man, 1871-1971. By Bernard Grant. Campbell.
Chicago: Aldine Pub.,
1972. 136-79. Web.
A
1972 journal article by Robert Trivers arguing that women being more selective
about mates due to being biologically obligated to investing more in offspring.
From imbalance in quantities of egg and sperm to unequal feeding duties, men in
comparison are arguably less discriminating and more aggressive in competing
for females.
Wai,
Jonathan, Megan Cacchio, Martha Putallaz, and Matthew C. Makel. "Sex
Differences in
the Right Tail of Cognitive Abilities: A 30year Examination." Intelligence 38.4
(2010): 412-23. Duke University, 9 June 2010.
Web.
A study examining sex differences in cognitive
abilities in SAT and ACT scores taken by 7th graders in the last 30
years. Looking at right tail (top 5% in ability) and extreme right tail (top
1%) to see potential role of sociocultural factors in male-female ability
ratios in recent studies.
Weiman,
Heidi. "Gender Differences in Cognitive Functions." Gender
Differences in
Cognitive Functioning. Ed Psyc Central
Psychoeducational Resource Center, 2001. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.
Generalized paper examining research of
differences between the sexes primarily in brain and cognitive abilities in
young people from behavior to physiology to environment.
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