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Nevertheless, like any area of science, pseudoscience has set up shop in the study of gender, bolstered by media’s intense desire to seize on anything that has the patina of advanced, hi-tech science even when the results come from flawed research.ĭelusions of Gender is a thorough debunking by Cordelia Fine of scientific studies and scientific posturing regarding what we know about the biological (and particularly, neurological) differences between sexes. In some cases, such as the pink/blue divide, you might already be aware of the history of the phenomenon, including the fact that the colour assignments used to be reversed.

Cordelia Fine, 'a cognitive neuroscientist with a sharp sense of humour and an intelligent sense of reality' (The Times) reveals the mind's remarkable plasticity, shows how profoundly culture influences the way we think about ourselves and, ultimately, exposes just how much of what we consider 'hardwired' is actually malleable.Pink is for girls and blue is for boys, and that’s just the way it is, right? Girls like nurturing toys and boys like toys that involve motion or action, and don’t even bother trying to change those habits-they’re ingrained at birth, yeah? Doubtless you’ve heard these and other stereotypes and claims about the biological origins of sex differences.

Drawing on the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, Delusions of Gender powerfully rebuts these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, are helping perpetuate the sexist status quo. That's the reason, we're told, that there are so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room - different brains are just better suited to different things. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. A vehement attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes.