Gender and Our Brains

How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds

By: Gina Rippon

Narrated by: Hannah Curtis

Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's Summary

A breakthrough work in neuroscience - and an incisive corrective to a long history of damaging pseudoscience - that finally debunks the myth that there is a hardwired distinction between male and female brains.

We live in a gendered world, where we are ceaselessly bombarded by messages about sex and gender. On a daily basis, we face deeply ingrained beliefs that sex determines our skills and preferences, from toys and colors to career choice and salaries. But what does this constant gendering mean for our thoughts, decisions, and behavior? And what does it mean for our brains?

Drawing on her work as a professor of cognitive neuroimaging, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that surround us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mold our ideas of ourselves and even shape our brains. By exploring new, cutting-edge neuroscience, Rippon urges us to move beyond a binary view of the brain and to see instead this complex organ as highly individualized, profoundly adaptable, and full of unbounded potential.

Rigorous, timely, and liberating, Gender and Our Brains has huge implications for women and men, for parents and children, and for how we identify ourselves.

©2019 Gina Rippon (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

"An authoritative debunking of the notion of a gendered brain.... Ultimately, her message is that a gendered world will produce a gendered brain. The result, unfortunately, is that boys and girls are shaped with different expectations and are often driven down career different paths. Well-crafted and thoroughly documented, this is a must-read for parents, teachers, and anyone of either sex who cares for children." (Kirkus starred review)

"It’s a highly accessible book. It’s also an important one.... It has the power...to do vastly more for gender equality than any number of feminist ‘manifestos.'" (Rachel Cooke, Observer)

"One of those books that should be essential reading before anyone is allowed to be a teacher, or buy a child a present, or comment on anything on Twitter, ever again.... All systemizing brains out there owe it to themselves to read this calm and logical collection of evidence and science, and all empathizers will understand its importance." (Katy Guest, The Guardian)

Point counterpoint

Interesting book. I wish the Dr Rippon wrote more about gender reassignment surgery. I suspect she believes that if societies weren’t engaged in sex stereotyping that these surgeries would not exist. This has ramifications for those who perform these surgeries.

Specious and Shallow

Rippon gets many details correct and makes decent points, before completely overstepping her bounds into other subjects she is less qualified in.