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agta people at work in a field in luzon the philippines
An Agta man, woman and child at work in a field in Luzon, the Philippines: gender roles around the world are not always fixed. Photograph: Jacob Maentz/Getty Images
An Agta man, woman and child at work in a field in Luzon, the Philippines: gender roles around the world are not always fixed. Photograph: Jacob Maentz/Getty Images

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong by Angela Saini – review

This article is more than 6 years old

A new study suggests that science is rewriting the old theories that ‘explain’ why women are best suited to housework and men are natural philanderers

When Theresa May declared that there are “boy jobs and girl jobs” in her house, the backlash was immediate: “#everydaysexism from the top”, tweeted Sasha Scambler, a sociologist from King’s College, London.

While the suggestion that taking out the bins is the preserve of one sex is patently absurd, the furore prodded at something more profound – and controversial. With some people eager to label not only household chores, but toys, jobs, behaviour and desires as “pink” or “blue”, scientists have long been probing the question of how different men and women really are.

With Inferior, Angela Saini sets out to examine the research, looking at everything from whether little boys really do prefer playing with cars rather than dolls, to whether the structure of the female brain is different from the male, and even whether it was inevitable that humans would end up with a patriarchal society. “This doesn’t always make for comfortable reading,” she warns from the off, pointing out that not all studies overturn the stereotypes.

The stakes are high: claims of sex differences have fuelled the idea of “inferior woman”, leading not only to casual sexism but a host of practices including the termination of pregnancies based solely on the gender of the unborn child. Disturbing, too, is that Charles Darwin himself thought women were inferior, claiming not only that they were less intelligent than men but that they always would be.

But in charting research into sex differences from cradle to old age, Saini discovers that many of society’s traditional beliefs about women are built on shaky ground. Gender identity is very different between boys and girls, and there are also slight differences in toy preferences – with some evidence that biology might play a small role. But for everything from fine motor skills to vocabulary, colour preferences to aggression, the overlap between boys’ and girls’ behaviour is huge. Differences, if they exist at all, are tiny.

Sex differences in the brain, too, are a matter of hot debate. While some are adamant that large differences exist – not least in the wiring of the brain – others question not only the conclusions of such work, but the techniques upon which they are based. As Saini points out when it comes to brain scans, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has shown regions of activity in the brain of a dead salmon.

While parts of Inferior cover well-trodden ground – theories explaining the function of the menopause, for example – there is plenty here that needs to be noted. Saini’s scrutiny of the stereotype of men as hunters, leaving women to tend hearth and home, is eye-opening. Childcare may be women’s work in the Datoga community of Tanzania, but the men of the Hadza – also in Tanzania – have no qualms about looking after their young. Conversely, the women of the Nanadukan Agta community Luzon in the Philippines go out hunting, using their skills with knives, spears, and bows and arrows, as well as foraging for food.

The upshot, Saini writes, is clear: “There is no biological commandment that says women are natural homemakers and unnatural hunters, or that hands-on fathers are breaking some eternal code of the sexes.”

Likewise, the notion that females are the demure, chaste sex while men are naturally promiscuous gets short shrift. Besides evidence in nature and from various societies around the world, perhaps most compelling is the “obvious when you think of it” point – namely, that if females of species, including humans, were naturally coy, males wouldn’t need to police them. As Saini writes (alongside issues ranging from the attitudes of ancient Greece to the horrors of FGM ), by the Victorian era “female sexuality had been suppressed for so long that scientists didn’t even question whether this modesty and meekness might not be biological at all.”

But if reading Inferior isn’t always a comfortable experience, neither, it would seem, was writing it. While Saini admirably covers the research of experts from opposing camps, deftly fielding points and counter-points from each, she comes across as little short of hostile in her take-down of developmental psychopathologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his research into sex differences in the behaviour of babies. Not that some of the researchers themselves appear entirely disinterested, variously making accusations of misplaced feminism and outright misogyny as motivators for research and as a lens through which results are viewed.

But even as debates rage in the lab, there is no reason society shouldn’t embrace a citizen science experiment of its own and ditch the stereotypes, to offer men and women equal opportunities to live as they please. Who could argue with that?

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini is published by 4th Estate (£12.99). To order a copy for £11.04 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

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