Gender+Difference+(Miranda,+Amy,+Hierry,+Ching)

__ Group members __ Chan Ching, Dorathy (08653736t) Chow Yim Fong, Amy (06739432t) Man Shui Ying, Hierry (08629400t) Wong Suk Ching, Miranda (08639361t)
 * Topic : 2. ****Are gender differences in psychological functioning consequences of biological variables? How do these differences affect you? **

**__ Outline: __** 1 Introduction (by Amy)

2 How do the Brain Differences Affect Gender Differences in Cognitive Functioning? (by Dorathy) 3 How do the Brain Differences Affect Gender Differences in Emotional Functioning? (by Hierry) 4 What Are the Environmental, Ecological and Social Factors That Might Interact with the Biological Variables? (by Miranda) 5 What are The Positive and Negative Impacts on the Well Being of A Society? (by Amy) 6 Suggestions for Improvement of Negative Impacts (by Amy) 7 Conclusion (By Amy)

** 1 Introduction **** (by Amy **** ) ** There are some common gender differences between men and women. Men are perceived better in spatial and navigation, logical thinking, and tend to be more aggressive. Women are considered better at verbal, languages and relation, and more sensitive to feeling and emotion. This study is aimed at exploring how the biological differences affect the gender differences in psychological functions. Specifically we explore the following questions: l What are the biological differences between men and women, with focus on brain differences? l How do the biological differences affect the gender differences in psychological functioning of cognition and emotion? l What are the environmental, ecological and social Factors that might interact with the biological variables? Below are three videos for highlighting the common gender differences and brain differences between men and women. **__ Video1 __** : An Animation On Common Gender Differences in Daily Life: “Women vs Men - Funny Animation” media type="youtube" key="XlcaDhRu1AQ" height="315" width="420"

**__Video 2__****:** Men's Brain vs Women's Brain media type="youtube" key="0BxckAMaTDc" height="315" width="420"

__ Video 3 __ : Male and Female Brains are Different - fMRI media type="youtube" key="hvSgw50bc4I" height="315" width="420"

Now let’s move on to explore how the brain differences affect the psychological functioning of men and women, with focus on cognition and emotion. We highlight some past research findings which support and challenge the view of whether the biological differences affect the gender differences in psychological functioning.


 * 2. How Do the Brain Differences Affect Gender Differences in Cognitive Functioning? ** ** (by Dorathy ** ** ) **

In my part of our presentation, we focus on the cognitive functioning in general intelligence, visuospatial processing and languages. These involve different parts of the brain, including cerebral cortex, lingual gyrus cerebellum, corpus collasum and parietal lobe etc.

__ Video 4 __ : The difference between men and women's brains media type="youtube" key="NoCPDvQBG5Y" height="315" width="420"

** Figure 1: The Brain Anatomy ** ** 2.1 General Intelligence ** There is no sex difference in general intelligence (see, e.g., Collaer and Hines, 1995). However, some measures of specific cognitive abilities show sex differences. These include specific subtypes of visuospatial, mathematical, language and verbal ability etc.
 * 2.2 Visuospatial Processing **

__Video 5:__ Introduction to parietal lobe media type="youtube" key="VW2VScHV7b4" height="315" width="560"

According to some adults studies studying in visuospatial processing, they mainly investigate a network of activation within the frontal, occipital and parietal lobes is reported (Butler T, et al, 2006; Clements AM, et al, 2006; Weiss E, et al, 2003;Thomsen T, et al 2000). Males are advantage in doing mental rotations or the ability to rotate two- or three-dimensional. The difference is present in children (Linn and Petersen, 1985), and adults (Voyer et al., 1995), and may increase with age. The sex difference on 3D tasks (d = 0.92) appears to be larger than that on 2D tasks (d = 0.26) (Linn and Petersen, 1985; Voyer et al., 1995). [quote by Hines M. (2002)]

Weiss et al. (2003). showed a differentiation between inferior and superior parietal lobe, Men showed stronger parietal activation when compared women showed greater right frontal activation significantly, and perhaps more efficient use of white matter (Bilker W, et al.1999).The parietal lobes are related to spatial processing in general (save & Poucet, 2000; Jagoroo, 2004). Some researchers (Sheryl, Laurie and Amy, 2008) showed that sex difference was noted in males having significantly greater activation in right lingual gyrus and cerebellum than females. The cerebellum is a region associated with motor planning and sequencing, whereas the lingual gyrus is associated with the encoding/decoding of spatial memories. So it suggests that males use regions much more degree than females implicated in visuospatial processing. Figure 2: Brain differences in the activation in right lingual gyrus and cerebellum. (Sheryl, Laurie and Amy, 2008) However, some studies (Linn and Petersen, 1985; Voyer et al., 1995) showed no sex differences in visuospatial ability and spatial visualization. These tasks require complex and sequential manipulation of spatial information. Measures include tests identification of simple figures within complex designs and the construction of specified shapes from three-dimensional blocks etc. Sex differences on these types of tasks are negligible (d = 0.16). The Language areas of the brain include: Temporal Cortex, [|Angular gyrus], [|Supramarginal gyrus] , [|Broca's area] , [|Wernicke's area] , and [|Primary auditory cortex]. Figure 3: The Language Areas of the Brain
 * 2.3 Language **

Have you notices that there are more women in the professions of social sphere because women have higher verbal abilities than men have in general. For example, we have more female teachers than men. Some studies proved that women have higher average verbal abilities than men. For examples, “boys, from various cultures, are superior to girls on spatial problems; girls are superior to boys on verbal tasks” (Kagan 1971); “females are consistently superior to males in a wide range of verbal tasks” (Galsworthy et al. 2000). Mau and Lynn (2000) analyzed the 10 and 12 graders’ (16–18 year olds) test results in the American National Educational Longitudinal Study. The studies showed that females got significantly higher mean scores in reading than male. Some researchers (Harasty et al, 1997) reported that language-related area such as the superior temporal cortex and Broca’s region larger in female. And larger corpus callosum in females compared to males (Steinmetz et al., 1992; Bamiou et al., 2007). Davatzikos and Resnick conducted a study to test the sex difference in corpus callosum morphology, the corpus callosum size is associated with better performance in female but not male.114 participants with 68 male and 46 female. MRI was using and correlations with regional callosal size were tested for 5 neuropsychological tests(Card rotations, Figural Recognition Memory, Verbal recognition memory, Boston Naming test and Letter Fluency ), three of them are related to verbal ability and language. It showed that larger corpus callosum size related to better performance in female. (Davatzikos and Resnick, 1998; Luders et al., 2007). But there are no associations between corpus callosum size and performance in male. However, some studies did not showed any sex differences in structural hemispheric asymmetry or in the size of the corpus callosum (Aboitiz et al., 1992; Jancke et al., 1994; Bishop and Wahlsten, 1997; Lebel and Beaulieu, 2009). Hyde and Linn (1988) conducted a meta-analysis on 165 American language studies of both children and adults, including tests of vocabulary, reading comprehension, speaking or other verbal communication and general verbal ability tests etc. It pointed out that 44 (27%) of the studies showed that females performance significantly better than males, 109 (66%) showed no significant sex difference, and 12 (7%) showed males performance significantly better than females. Overall, this led to negligible female advantage, but when accounted for the effect-size from the different studies, due to the largest study (including more than 900,000 subjects) finding showed a small male advantage. The authors conclude that: ‘‘Our meta-analysis provides strong evidence that the magnitude of the sex difference in verbal ability is currently so small that it can effectively be considered to be zero” (quote by Hines M, 2000, p. 434-436). ** 2.3.2 Language Lateralization **
 * 2.3.1 Verbal ability **

According to the studies of speech and language disruption following neural injury and the studies of normal language function. Both male and female are more likely to show disruption following injury to the left than the right hemisphere, but the impairment reported to be less severe in women (McGlone, 1980). Since females use both hemisphere for processing language and speech .Some researchers found that greater inter-hemispheric connectivity in girls compared to boys, consistent with the hypothesis of a more bilateral representation of language in women than men.( Bitan et al, 2010). Some functional imaging studies showed sex differences in lateralization in adults with more bilateral activation in women than men (Shaywitz et al., 1995; Jaeger et al., 1998; Kansaku and Kitazawa, 2001; Phillips et al., 2001). The midsagittal area of posterior callosal regions, particularly the splenium, has been found to relate negatively to language lateralization and positively to verbal fluency in women (Hines M et al, 1992) However, other functional imaging studies did not show any sex differences in language lateralization (Frost et al., 1999; Sommer et al., 2004


 * In summary, ** the differences in the way men and women perform verbal, language and visuospatial tasks have been well documented in scientific literature, but the past research findings have been inconsistent as to whether men and women actually use different parts of their brains or how sex brain difference affect the performance in cognitive funcitons. The inconsistency are possibly due to the limitation of different researches, such as the variability and complexity of different tasks performed by different age of participant, the failure of matching research subjects on performance equivalency and different analysis methods etc.


 * 3 How Do the Brain Differences Affect Gender Differences in Emotional Functioning? (by Hierry) **

It is commonly perceived that females concern more on emotion, feeling, relation and empathy while males are better in logical thinking, less emotional and more aggressive. __ Video 6: __ Differences between Males' And Females' Brains, How They Function media type="youtube" key="vKVwcwXc4Dk" height="315" width="420" Figure 4: The Structure of Limbic System

Susannah (2010) re ports that the limbic system of the brain shows a great difference between females and males. Female has a larger limbic system than male does. This may explain why females are generally more sensitive to feelings. This may also explain females’ intuition. Females are naturally more nurturing towards children, and they can connect with people more easily.


 * 3.2 Orbitofrontal to Amygdale Ratio **

Louann Brizendine (2006) indicates that Orbitofrontal cortex is a region involved in regulating emotion and the size of the amygdale implicated more in producing emotion reaction. Female possesses a larger orbitofrontal to amygdale ratio than male does. Females may prove being more capable of controlling emotional reaction. .For males, their parietal cortices (in charge of space perception) and amygdalas are larger. This might explain why males find the visual-spatial tasks easier. Mak and his colleagues (Mak et al., 2009) reported that men and women recruit different brain regions in regulating positive and negative emotion responses to arouse images. Both men and women engage left anterior cingulated cortex when regulating negative emotions and left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex when regulating positive emotion. In comparison with women, men also demonstrate greater activity in lateral orbitofrontal cortex when down-regulating positive emotion. Cahill (Cahill et al., 1996) examined whether sex influenced the lateralizatio n of the amygdala relationship to the long term memory for emotional materials by directly comparing activities in the brains of men and women. He reported that a large area of the right but no left hemisphere amygdale activity, which was significantly related to the enhanced memory for the emotional film clips for men. Women revealed a large area of left and not right hemisphere amygdala activity, which was related to the enhanced memory for the emotional films. Figure 5: Comparison in Emotion Processing between Men and Women

Canli (Canli et al. 2002) also examined the relationship of amygdala activity at encoding and subsequent memory for a series of images of varying emotional co ntents. The study showed that activity of the right hemisphere amygdala was significantly more related to subsequent memory for emotional images in men than women, but the activity of the left hemisphere amygdala was significantly more related to subsequent memory for emotional images in women than men. ** 3.3 H **** ippocampus **

The hippocampus is a part of the brain that forms initial memories. Studies show that male brain has smaller hippocampus than female brain does. Women remember more details of their memory that things happened before. Connellan, Baron-Cohen, S,et al (2000) finds that the sex differences in human neonatal social perception. When dealing with the tests on mental rotation, men can perform very well. Women may depend on their stronger remembrance to help remember something much better than men.


 * 3.4 Corpus Callosum **

The size and structure of corpus callosum are different between male and female in the study, Gurian, M & Stevens (2004). The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres of the brain, and is known to give faster data transfer between each hemisphere. Female brain has a larger corpus callosum, which gives greater access to each hemisphere, especially in language processing. The larger corpus callosum of female brain connects a bundle of nerves that connect emotion and cognition. Gurian, M & Stevens (2004) report that female are better in language abilities and reply more heavily in oral or verbal communication.
 * 3.5 Brain Cells **

The corpus callosum and brain cells affect the mental processing of different genders differently. It affects memory, thinking, multi-or single-tasking, verbal communication and emotion. The male brain is known to contain a higher number of cells. The female brain may have less cells, but it has a higher number of connections between cells. This may explain why women interpret and process language, passage of time, and speed of an object differently than men. On the other hand, Drago, F. (1984) believes that males tend to be more analytical and left-brained than females. This may also explain why there are more male mathematicians and mechanical engineers. ** 3.6 Sexual Drive ** Money (1970) and Bancroft, J. (1988) believe amygdala that controls sexual urges and desire is larger in male. This may be the reason why more males cheat. Females cheat, but not as often as males. Females also relate romance and feelings with sex, while most males just want sex. Sex is the way a male shows the female how he feels.

Vaux (1988) and Wheeler (Wheeler et al., 1983). report that males tend to be lonelier later in life, while females are affected by loneliness earlier in life. It seems that male and female emotions work opposite to each other, but this may be what attracts and complements between males and females.

There are also sex differences in aggression, including the expression in fantasy, imitation of aggressive models, verbal insults, and responses on paper-and-pencil questionnaires. Across cultures and from childhood to adulthood, males are more aggressive than females (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). Meta-analytic results suggest that the sex difference is moderate in size (d = 0.50). The sex differences may be larger in young children than adults (d = 0.58 versus 0.27), although this apparent age difference could be related to the use of different measures of aggression at different points in the life span (Hyde, 1984). In aggression, the social influences interact with the biological variables in some way. In the next part, we continue on exploring other external factors that might interact with biological differences in affecting the gender differences in psychological functioning.
 * 3.7 Aggression **

Besides the brain differences, other external factors also influence the gender differences and interact with biological variables to a certain extent. ** 4.1 The Influence of Evolution, Social and Environmental Factors on Gender Differences ** ** 4.1.1 The Evolution of Human History ** In the earlier human societies, the division of labor and activities that generally characterized the two sexes is big game hunting versus gathering. Women performed the gathering tasks in order to take care of family as well as child upbringing. Men were competitive and aggressive as they were the hunters in the primitive hunter-gather societies. They were better in spatial and navigation ability. In 2005 the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) ( [|http://www.mendeley.com/research/sex-differences-mental-rotation-line-angle-judgments-positively-associated-gender-equality-economic-development-across-53-nations/#] ) conducted an internet survey on human sex differences with the topic of “Secrets of the Sexes”. A total of 255,114 subjects (age of 18-40) from 53 nations responded to the survey. They answered six-item mental rotation test (Peters et al,1995) and a 20-item line angle judgment test (Collaer, 2001; Benton, Varney and Hamsher,1978). The results show that men’s mean performance exceeded that of women on two visual-spatial tasks. The magnitude of sex differences is positively associated with the nations’ gender equality and economic development. The results are consistent with the evolutionary theories which hypothesize the interaction between sex-linked dispositions evaluation and environmental affordance (Schmitt et al, 2008). In the past males had to go out for hunting and navigation, hence they performed better in visual-spatial performance than women did. ** 4.1.2 **** Gender-Role Behavior ** Both within and across different cultures, we find great consistency in the standards of desirable gender-role behavior. Males are expected to be independent, assertive and competitive; females are expected to be more passive, sensitive and supportive. These beliefs and expectations have changed little. __ Video 7 ： __ Gender Roles - Interviews with Kids
 * 4 **** What Are the Environmental, Ecological and Social Factors That **** Might Interact with The Biological Variables? (by Miranda) **

media type="youtube" key="pWc1e3Nbc2g" height="315" width="420"

** 4.1.3 Environmental and Social Influence ** Beside the evolutionary development, the environmental and social influences also play a significant role certainly. From day one, starting with their initial noisy entrance into this world, babies are viewed and treated according to their gender; even with color coding them right away. “Oh, it's a girl!” God forbid if this child ends up wearing blue, and she may have a social identity crisis. With their clothes, toys and even their rooms are decorated accordingly, it would be difficult to remain untouched by this social stereotyping that goes on in society throughout life. Society plays a significant role in initiating and perpetuating the role-assignments of genders, and influencing decision making and social behaviors. ( [] ) The social value does not support men in expressing emotions freely while females are free to express emotions. The amount of emotion between males and females may be somewhat the same, but males are not encouraged to express emotion publicly.
 * 4.1.4 **** The Influence of Parents and Teachers **

As predicted by the cognitive social learning theory, parental characteristics influence gender typing in terms of role models that are available for children to imitate. Parental power has a great impact on sex typing in boys, but not in girls; the femininity in girls is related to the father's masculinity, his approval of the mother as a role model, and his reinforcement of participation in the feminine activities. The parents and teachers play an important role in upbringing children of different sex differently. For examples, boys are considered better at mathematics, science, engineering and abstract thinking. This perception affects the expectation and communication style of parents and teachers. The caretakers tend to give more encouragement and opportunities to boys in a way to reinforce boys to develop better cognitive ability and academic achievement. On the other hand, girls are considered better at languages and verbal communication, and poorer in abstract thinking. Parents tend not to encourage girls in learning science as girls are considered without talent in this aspect, which result in girls’ poorer development and ability in logical thinking. Mothers tend to spend more time to interact and communicate with daughter than sons, which reinforce girls’ abilities in verbal communication, expressing emotions and relating with people. ** 4.2 **** The Influence of Biological Sex ** Hormones secreted by the gonads are known to exert potent effects on behavior. After the seventh week of pregnancy, the structure of the developing fetal brain is influenced by the introduction of testosterone, a male hormone. Subsequent changes in neuroanatomy differentiate the male brain from the female brain, in addition to promoting the development of external genitalia, a larger musculature and, eventually, facial hair in the male.
 * 4.2.1 The Impact of Sex Hormones **

Women have small amount of testosterone and men have small amounts of female hormones estrogen. The differences are quite small in childhood, but these increase markedly in adolescents and adults. Figure 6: A Frontal Section of A Rat Brain The above Figure 6 shows a frontal section of a rat brain with the hypothalamus, containing the sexually dimorphic nucleus, lying between the anterior commissure and the optic chiasm. ( [] )

A result of hormone differences is the distinctive cognitive styles, with males and females performing somewhat differently in various cognitive tasks.

In the animal studies: Young, Goy, and Phoenix (1967), some female monkeys were injected with testosterone prenatally or around the time of birth. Genetic female offspring were pseudohermaphrodites (that is pseudo half male and half female). Their genitalia were more masculine (large clitoris), and their behavior was also masculine (that is more aggressive, more mounting behavior (a male mating behavior), more rough and tumble play, and more socially dominant). Similar behaviors were elicited in the study of genetically female rodents injected with testosterone. ( [] )

In the human studies, girls who have received testosterone or testosterone-like hormones prenatally have masculinized behavior. These girls are genetic female, but their genetalia are typically masculinized at birth (enlarged clitoris, fused labia that resemble a scrotum). They often receive operation to make her appear more feminine. These girls have masculinized behavior, such as tomboyish, like vigorous athletic activities, simply utilitarian clothing, little interest in dolls, babysitting, child care, jewelry, cosmetics, or hair styles. They also have more male-type achievement pattern and male-type attitudes toward sexuality. They prefer boys’ toys and prefer boys as playmates. ( [] )

There is strong evidence on the relationship between hormone levels and cognitive functioning. In women, the sex hormone [|estradiol] has been shown to have an effect on the female neurological processing during a language task. This includes the support for a curvilinear relationship between testosterone levels and spatial ability, and a linear relationship between estrogen levels and verbal skills. Additionally, the healthy young males with an injection of female hormones not only showed the reduced practice effects on a spatial task, but also significant increased performance in verbal fluency.


 * 4.2.2 **** David Reimer **** Case **

There are cases supporting the nature versus nurture debate, such as the infamous David Reimer case. David Reimer, a Canadian man, had been raised as a girl for the most of his first fourteen years of life.

In 1967, David had an accidental castration, and a medical decision was made, that was to raise him as a girl with the help of surgery. The physician, Dr. John Money, supervised the case for several years and eventually wrote a paper declaring the success of the gender conversion. The money's experiment was a disaster for Reimer that created psychological scars on him that he ultimately could not overcome ( [] ). The fact was that he could not adjust to the change and he chose to return to his former male sex. __ Video 8: __ David Reimer Story - Short Form  media type="youtube" key="GazeE8KHIfE" height="315" width="420"

The above case illustrates that despite the external factors of subsequent upbringing and social influence, the innate biological sex play a more si gnificant role in shaping the male gender and masculine identity.

** 4.2 **** Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory ** Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theoryviews a child’s development within the context of the system of relationships that form his or her environment. Bronfenbrenner’s theory defines complex “layers” of environmental effect, each layer having an effect on a child’s development. Figure 7: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory

This theory has recently been renamed as “Bioecological Systems Theory” to emphasize that a child’s own biology is a primary environment fueling his / her development. There are dynamic interactions among different layers in the child’s maturing biology, including his / her immediate family and community environment, and the societal landscape, which fuel and steer a child’s development. Changes or conflicts in any one layer will ripple throughout other layers. To study a child’s development, we have to consider not only at the child and his / her immediate environment, but also the interactions of the outer exosystem and macrosystem ( [] ). As mentioned above, when we study the gender differences between men and women, we also need to consider the effect and interaction of different layers of systems. ** 4.4 T ** ** he Nature - Nurture Debate **

Video 9: Nature – Nureture Debate media type="youtube" key="26wQgAfTwA4" height="315" width="420"

The turbid relationship between nature and nurture is muddied. All human behaviors are resulted from the dynamic interaction of ecological factors, environmental factors as well as social influences. For example, men have a slight advantage on spatial tasks. They tend to seek more spatially related activities, which in turn encourage them to act as appropriate sex role.

** 4 **** What Are the Positive and Negative Impacts on the Well-Being **** of A Society?(by Amy) **

The biological differences of different genders affect the well-being of the society in both positive and negative ways. It is beneficial for a better understanding of gender differences from the biological aspect as well as more effective disease treatments. It also results in negative impact on sex and gender identity, gender roles and expectation.

** 5.1 The Development of Neuroscience and Diseases Treatment ** Sabbatini stated positively that, “neuroscience has made great strides in the 90s, regarding the discovery of concrete, scientifically proved anatomical and functional differences between the brains of males and females. While this knowledge could in theory be used to justify misogyny and prejudice against women, fortunately this has not happened. In fact, this new knowledge may help physicians and scientists to discover new ways to explore the brain differences in the benefit of the treatment of diseases, the personalized action of drugs, different procedures in surgeries, etc. After all, males and females differ only by one Y chromosome, but this makes a real impact upon the way we react to so many things, including pain, hormones, etc. ” ( Sabbatini, []  ** ). **

** 5.2 The Positive and Negative Impact of Stereotypes ** Stereotypes often function as schemas. There may be positive or negative stereotype. Baron (2006: 220) stated that positive stereotypes can lead to accurate perceptions of social groups. However, stereotypes are not perfectly accurate as exceptions are unavoidable. Stereotypes help us form perceptions of group beliefs efficiently, which lead to individual and self esteem. Stereotype accuracy can be enhanced in managing gender differences and cultural differences by increasing gender awareness, reducing miscommunication and group conflicts.

There are negative stereotypes and misuse of stereotypes about gender differences. Wikipedia describes the prejudice against females ( [], ”Such as, being female characterizes one as a woman, and being a woman signifies one as weak, emotional, and irrational, and is incapable of actions attributed to a "man". Does biological differences imply a superior or inferior relationship between men and women? It is over-generalization and over-simplification to assume that men are automatically better than women in some areas. Sabbatini quoted the view of Dr. Courten-Myers, ( [] ), “The recognition of gender-specific ways of thinking and feeling, rendered more credible given these established differences, could prove beneficial in enhancing interpersonal relationships. However, the interpretation of the data also has the potential for abuse and harm if either gender would seek to construct evidence for superiority of the male or female brain from these findings.”

Negative stereotypes have resulted in inequal or deprived rights and opportunities for women in education, family, employment, politics and society, especially in the early societal development.

** 5.3 **** The Negative Impact on Females in Family And Employment **

Traditionally men are considered the breadwinners in the families while women act as the primary caretakers in housework and child rearing. The earning power affected the power status in family. Most women stayed home and are not economic independent. The traditional family structure was male dominant. Wikipedia (Wikipedia, [] ) brought out, ”The gender inequality has a great impact especially on women and poverty. In the poverty stricken countries, it is more likely that men have more opportunities to have an income, have more political and social rights than women. Women experience more poverty than men do due to gender discrimination.” (Wikipedia, [] ) In the old days, the workforce place was male dominant. In some occupations and professions, there are much more men than women, such as engineers, lawyers, accountants and pilots. Men were dominant in senior management / leader roles. Women usually earned less than men did. The old workplace polices were more favorable to men without caretaking responsibilities in family. Men could dedicate to work with full commitment. Women experienced struggles in the male dominated workplace. In late 1970s, the accounting field was male dominated with about 90% of the profession HKICPA – “A Plus 3.2009”. Female top executives faced salary discrepancy in the big eight international public accounting firms in the mid 1980s.


 * 6 Suggestions for Improvement of Negative Effects (by Amy) **

We have to let go of the common stereotypes. Gender differe nces are not equal to abilities. Females are not necessarily feminine and the feminine is not inferior. Equally, males are not necessarily masculine and the masculine does not imply power. Biological sex does not imply automatically the gender and stereotype roles. We have to beware of the misuse of stereotype, including over-generalization of stereotype, prejudice discrimination, judging individuals in stereotyped groups especially the negative views of out-groups and possible inaccurate and negative stereotypes. Sabbatini ( [] ) stated, “It's easy to find women who are fantastic at math and physics and men who excel in language skills. Only when we look at very large populations and look for slight but significant trends, do we see the generalizations. There are plenty of exceptions, but there's also a grain of truth, revealed through the brain structure, that we think underlies some of the ways people characterize the sexes." We have to be open-minded to change perception in light of new information, individual differences and exceptions.
 * 6.1 Avoid the Misuse of Stereotype **

** 6.2 Feminist Movement **

Wikipedia ( [] ) describes, “Gender identity is the gender a person self-identifies as. One’s biological sex is directly tied to specific social roles and expectations…. Feminists challenge the dominant concerning gender roles and sex.” Equality rights for human should be pursued regardless of sex, which is especially true for developing countries in which even the basic human rights have not been attained. Friedan stated (1997:3), “The age-old definitionof womanin sexual relation to man – wife, mother, sex object, housewife – never as a person defining herself by her own actions in society, was, in fact, a paradigm shift.” The historical development of feminist movement has resulted in the paradigm shift. Friedan continued (1997:4-5), ”It was a paradigm shift when we began to challenge the rubrics of theory and practice that in every field had been developed only from male experience…It opened life, personal and political, family and professional, in complex new direction.“ Nowadays we still need striving for equal and open opportunities for women in family, education, employment, personal, political and every aspect of living. 6.3 Family, Education and Employment  Figure 8: A Woman in the Male Dominated Workplace

Nowadays there have been significant changes in the families and workplace. Women should have equal opportunities of education and they strive for higher level of education. We need to adjust the workplace policies for retention of women talents with caretaking role, such as day care centre and flexible work schedule. In the last two decades with economic downturn, some male management were laid off and were not able to find a job again. Their wives may become the sole breadwinner in the family and the men start to share the role of family caretaking. In education and employment, females should be given equal opportunities in the traditionally male dominated fields in tertiary education and occupations, and management position in workplace.

In summary, the society has to recognize the important roles of both women and men in family, employment, societal and political development. The roles, opportunities, attitudes and expectations have a significant effect on talent development, especially in our roles as teachers, parents, peers and self-actualizing beings. We can contribute to modify to actualize human potential.

7 Conclusion (by Amy)

It has been a long debate in the human history about the impact of biological variables on gender differences. Different research findings do not show consistent evidences which show both supporting and challenging views. Different researches use different subjects and different tasks for children and adults. It is always controversial about nature versus nurture. Surely the biological brain differences play a significant role in affecting gender identity. Men and women are developing differently at different rates in different stages.

The external social and environmental factors also reinforce and intensify the gender differences in a certain way. These external factors interact with biological variables and affect the formation of gender identity, social roles and expectation. The complexity of gender differences and human behaviors are affected by multiple interacting variables.H ines (2002) quoted, “ Human behavioral and sex differences are currently understood to result from a combination of social, cultural, cognitive, and biological mechanisms.” This complexity is best described by the Psychobiosocial Model below (Figure 8), including the interaction of innate biological variables (eg brain differences, genes, sex hormones) as well as external factors in human development.


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Differences between Males' and Females' Brains, How They Function [Video file]. Retrieved from

@http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKVwcwXc4Dk


 * __ Videos on Internet (continued) __**

David Reimer story - Short Form [Video file]. Retrieved from @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GazeE8KHIfE&feature=related

David Reimer story - Short Form [Video file]. Retrieved from @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GazeE8KHIfE&feature=related

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Malle and Female Brains are Different - fMRI

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The Difference Between Men And Women's Brains

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The Nature - Nurture Debate [Video file]. Retrieved from

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