Gina Rippon: "It makes no sense to ask if a brain is feminine or masculine"

Gina Rippon (Essex, United Kingdom, 70 years old) can't stand being told that men are from Mars and women from Venus. "Men and women are from planet Earth," replies this professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging that has caused an earthquake in the scientific community with her book The Gender and Our Brains , by the publishing house Galaxia Gutenberg. With an intelligent look, perpetual smile and polite and calm tone, Rippon shatters the "neurobasura" - the term coined by her - that has been misinterpreting partial scientific data for years to show that men and women are different. “It no longer makes sense to ask if a brain is feminine or masculine. If you look at all the information collected on thousands of brains, the conclusion is that most data of both genders overlap greatly, ”he defends.

Ask . Is the brain still being investigated from a prejudice?

“There are women who argue that they are more empathetic than they are. But being a woman does not guarantee you to be more empathetic ”

Answer That prejudice still exists. In my book I call it "the agenda of difference." That's how it all began. The difference was always taken for granted. He never wondered if men and women really had different brains. It was an apriorism. Since they had different positions within society, the scientists who began investigating the brain dedicated themselves to demonstrating where that difference came from. The status quo was not discussed. Women were inferior beings and it was about finding a way to show that their brains were also inferior.

P. Until it came to the "theory of complementarity," a little more presentable.

R. Exact. A way to reconfigure the extraordinarily hard descriptions that had been made during the 18th and 19th centuries. It was about describing the wonderful skills women had, which made them perfect wives or perfect mothers. We still find traces of that thought in the current scientific literature. The idea that women are prepared to perform certain tasks, as opposed to men, who have different abilities.

P. There are also women who think so, who present that difference as an advantage.

R. And that is one of the biggest brakes to what I defend in my book. Those women who argue that they are more empathetic, or that they are better at creating social bonds. And they try to convince all those "boring" and "unfeminine" companies that they need people with more empathy. But you know what? Being a woman does not necessarily guarantee you to be more empathetic.

P. And have you come to the conclusion that it may be more useful to defend equality from science than from politics?

R. It was not my initial goal. I was simply fascinated by all the new neuroimaging techniques. But at the same time I was disturbed to see how many of the new data were clearly misunderstood or misplaced. One of the ideas that I fought from the beginning was that, as a useful starting point, men and women were different within society. If you observe, for example, the pathologies of that same society, such as episodes of depression or eating disorders in young women or the suicide rate of young people, you understand that the universal stereotypes created do not work equally well for everyone. You stop wondering if there is a male and a female brain, and you focus on finding out what kind of impact society has on a developing brain. Because perhaps that is finally the reason for all the differences we assume.

P. "Biology is not destiny," you say. External experiences influence a brain more than the sex of its owner.

R. Boys and girls receive different toys, and that has been shown to have a great influence. We have been able to track it in time. Children who play with constructions such as Lego develop spatial skills that can lead them to science studies and professions related to it. When you discover sex differences in space skills, what you should ask yourself is what kind of training people have been watching in that field. If you focus on that, you discover that sex differences disappear. Our experiences have gender. I think, for example, that the toy industry in the 21st century is much more marked by gender than it was before.

P. And next to the experience, the attitude. The child's own and those around him.

R. Because the brain is permeable and malleable. The attitude is very important, and builds very powerful foundations. If you treat boys and girls differently from the beginning, the result is obvious. I define children as "fantastic gender detectives." They ask themselves what they are supposed to do if they are a boy or a girl. And they strive to belong to the group in which they have been assigned. If girls should be orderly and prudent, and the brightest and bravest boys, they will do their best to fit that description.

P. You speak of the "unconscious bias", which still exists in people who see themselves as equanimous. What if what makes someone defensive is an aggressive confrontation, a perception that deep down there is a struggle for power?

R. There is a great phrase, which I do not remember now who pronounced it, which says that if you have always lived a life of privileges, equality may seem oppressive. If you belong to the group that has always done well, which has always been promoted, it is difficult to begin to understand that you will have to give up some of that. I understand that the idea [of equality] bothers many and makes the debate aggressive, but it does not necessarily have to be a power struggle. There is another way to see it. You can aspire to a more diverse staff of employees, with higher levels of attention, with better results and more success. In the long run, it is beneficial for everyone.