Anne Moir

In a sense, Moir & Jessel just list the popular wisdom about male and female differences. Men are generally more aggressive, while women tend to focus on communication. Women are skilful articulators of emotion, while men more easily use abstractions. Etcetera.
According to Moir and Jessel, these differences have a biological basis: the brain of the average man is differently structured than the average woman’s. For example: men’s abilities tend to be located in separate, relatively isolated brain centers, while women’s are more dispersed. Hence men’s single-mindedness and women’s gift for multi-tasking.
Moir and Jessel argue that these neural differences stem from prenatal conditions. At the onset, male and female fetuses are the same (except for their xx or xy chromosomes). After six weeks however, male fetuses are flooded with testosterone, causing their brains to adopt a masculine structure.
To make their point, Moir & Jessel discuss a number of exceptions. Men who experience themselves as female, have been exposed to unusually low levels of testosterone in the womb. For women it’s the other way round. In short: some men have ‘female brains’, some women have ‘male brains’.
In general, this theory sounds plausible to me.
However, there are a few downsides to the book.
First, Moir & Jessel seem to over-simplify the male/female divison. Of course it’s useful to look at averages, for the sake of clarity. But to do so exclusively tends to be a bit boring. Everybody knows that not all masculine men are masculine in the same way, nor are all feminine women. Besides, people can consider themselves masculine or feminine up to a certain point.
Second, the book is unnecessarily hostile to feminism, reducing a multifaced movement (that has been around for two centuries) to some radical varieties of the seventies. This renders the book outdated.
Third, Moir & Jessel are blind to cultural influences. Indeed, society can not eradicate gender differences, and maybe it shouldn’t want to either. But biology is but a rough diamond. Education and cultural circumstances do matter a lot when it comes to actual behavior.
Fourth, they seem prescriptive. They stress that they’re not, correctly noting that biological averages do not imply social norms. But this value-free principle doesn’t always resound in their actual phrases. Especially in later chapters (on work and child rearing) they seem to say: men ought to do this, women ought to do that.
Certainly there’s no need for such rigidity in a highly developed and individualist society.
Still, I found the book interesting. It’s accessible, and, broadly speaking, convincing.… (más)

Here's what I was expecting: A book about how nauture shapes a male and female brain. Hormones acting on brain development help determine that a boy will be better at spatial activities and a girl will be better at verbal. I have read a book that does this well, including adding suggestions on how to help children learn (Boys and Girls Learn Differently!). I was hoping Why Men Don't Iron would be a grown-up version of this-kind of a biological Men are from Mars.

I was very disappointed. Rather than actually getting in to the biology of sex differences (which is what the authors repeatedly say they are doing in this book), they rail against gender studies and metrosexuals, constantly talking about the women and homosexual agenda to turn men into women. I've missed this one. I'm sure it happens somewhere, but this book is not the remedy.… (más)