The Female Brain

The Female Brain.

For women and feminists everywhere.

More than 99 percent of male and female genetic coding is exactly
the same. Out of the thirty thousand genes in the human
genome, the less than one percent variation between the sexes is
small. But that percentage difference influences every single cell in our
bodies—from the nerves that register pleasure and pain to the neurons
that transmit perception, thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
To the observing eye, the brains of females and males are not the
same. Male brains are larger by about 9 percent, even after correcting
for body size. In the nineteenth century, scientists took this to mean
that women had less mental capacity than men. Women and men, however,
have the same number of brain cells. The cells are just packed
more densely in women—cinched corsetlike into a smaller skull.
For much of the twentieth century, most scientists assumed that
women were essentially small men, neurologically and in every other
sense except for their reproductive functions. That assumption has been
at the heart of enduring misunderstandings about female psychology
and physiology. When you look a little deeper into the brain differences,
they reveal what makes women women and men men.