BRAIN  SEX

(The following is an excerpt from Megan Johntz’s presentation on the differences between men and women in the workplace and home. For more information on booking Megan for your organization, or for information on Executive Coaching Programs, contact Johntz Presentations.)

            I’m a female with a fairly male brain. No I won’t be visiting Oprah or Jerry Springer.   Did you know brains have genders? The sex of your brain may have more to do with your behavior than how mommy potty-trained you. Men don’t ask for directions and women can’t parallel park because their brains function differently.

            We all start out female, but at 6-7 weeks the developing fetus has a literally mind-altering process take place: a hormone bath drenches only little boy fetuses. When that testosterone hits the developing male’s brain, everything changes. Quite literally the male becomes brain damaged.

            The two hemispheres of our brains are connected by a bundle of nerves and other neat stuff, allowing one half to talk to the other. The male hormone bath destroys some of those connecting nerves, a.k.a. brain damage. Therefore the two halves don’t talk as much. You want him to express his feelings? Open up? Unfortunately his brain has a much more difficult time connecting the emotion center on one side with the language center on the other, so he becomes frustrated with your request. And you become frustrated with his “stubbornness” or “insensitivity”, because of course he enjoys intimate conversations about your relationship as much as you do. After all, you’ve never been male, so all you know is how females process the world. The frightening flip side is he believes you think like him! This brain difference is why men can compartmentalize so well. If a man’s in work mode, he usually doesn’t ponder possible anniversary gifts. Ladies, he’s not insensitive, he’s just compartmentalizing. 

            Female brains don’t get very much testosterone, so women aren’t brain damaged, just slightly schizophrenic. The female nerve bundle is left intact, allowing rapid flipping from one side of the brain to the other. But similar to schizophrenics, who take in huge amounts of information but don’t know which pieces are important, women absorb much more data from all five senses. This sometimes leads to overload. A woman having marriage difficulties brings it to work, because she’s flipping from the logical to the emotional hemisphere frequently.  Men, she’s not “flighty”, she’s just in many different modes at one time.

            Men read maps and women read character. For example, females often detect an office affair before it even commences. “Women’s intuition” may simply be the female’s heightened sensitivity to all kinds of verbal and non-verbal information. Women have such greater sensitivity to physical touch, the bell curves between men and women don’t even overlap when testing tactile sensitivity. Remember third grade when Jimmy thwapped you on the arm? When you complained, he struck himself with the same intensity, while saying, “Oh, that didn’t hurt.” The reason it didn’t hurt Jimmy is because his brain doesn’t register as much skin sensitivity.

Let’s take a look at some of the other differences between typical male and female brains:

            MALES

  • Less verbal (about 2000 words a day)

  • Work in a hierarchy, trying to establish their position

  • Better spatial ability

  • Better depth perception

  • More aggressive

  • Define themselves by ability to achieve results

  • Solve problems alone

  • Hear the facts

  • Better eye-hand coordination

  • More sensitive to shrill whistle sounds/voices

 

            FEMALES

  • More verbal (about 4000 words per day)

  • Work in groups and prefer building harmony

  • Make decisions by talking to others

  • More receptive on all five senses

  • Six times more likely to be able to sing on tune

  • Wider peripheral vision

  • Concentrate more on the needs of others

  • Greater resistance to long-term pain

  • See better in the dark

  • Judge character better

 

            The most discouraging aspect of sex differences is that some characteristics receive preferential treatment. Women sometimes attempt to force themselves into an unnatural mold in order to compete in a male environment. I wonder what would happen if we recognized that women are not men, and men are not women. And further, what if we realize the two genders compliment each other -- both bringing necessary skills at different times. When working with couples, I encourage each to find their strengths and stuck points. Then renegotiating the relationship is based on combining individual strengths to make a more complete whole.

Based on the work of:  Anne Moir and David Jessel.

 

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