Barbie or Lego? Reading maps or emotions? Do you have a female or male brain? Or is that the wrong question?
On a daily basis, we face deeply ingrained beliefs that our sex determines our skills and preferences, from toys and colours to career choice and salaries. But what does this mean for our thoughts, decisions and behaviour?
Using the latest cutting-edge neuroscience, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that bombard us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mould our ideas of ourselves and even shape our brains.
Rigorous, timely and liberating, The Gendered Brain has huge repercussions for women and men, for parents and children, and for how we identify ourselves.
This highly accessible book has the power to do vastly more for gender equality than any other.
Sience, Gender and the Brain
Gina was also part of a BBC series called “No More Boys and Girls”. Here’s the first episode for you:
About the Author
Professor Gina Rippon is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Birmingham. Her research involves state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate how the brain interacts with its world, and what happens when this process goes wrong.
She is an outspoken critic of “neurotrash”, the populist (mis)use of neuroscience research to (mis)represent our understanding of the brain and, most particularly, to prop up outdated gender stereotypes.
In her book “The Gendered Brain”, she challenges the idea that there are two sorts of “hardwired” brains, male and female, and offers a 21st century model for a better understanding of how brains get to be different.
