Me and my dad were discussing men and masculinity and we had a little disagreement on whether different faculties of human brain show different capabilities in males and females. And if so, is it significant enough to affect their functioning in tasks like driving or academic performance in different subjects? Is it appropriate to say that one gender can perform certain mental tasks better than the other gender?
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Yes, off course…men and female brains have distinct differences!! You can google upon it, they are physiologically different e.g. womens are good in doing some tasks better than mens by default!!
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Give some references link supporting this
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This is seen in some cases around us!!
I dont think it is always like that and I’m not sure as well… 
But how can we really say that it is naturally like that only???
Why is there a difference and how is it taking place???
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@Bakul None of these speculations/rumours can be believed, unless discussed with evidence.
Gender may have some role in biology. We all know biology of male and female have difference, none is better or less better in any sense in comparision.
However psychological abilities are beyond biology, they also include social factors which affect biology, and biology changes based on social factors like upbringing,culture and so on. This theory of brain region based determination of behaviors is challenged/refuted to great extent, so sexual dimorphism is nothing to be inherently static as biology is prone to change.
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Very insightful sir!
Does it mean with time as the social factors (upbringing etc.) change, so does the psychological capabilities? Means that the notion (and experiments have proven) that men have better spatial cognitive abilities than women, as a result of which men are better at driving, might change with time and women start performing spatial tasks better than men?
There is no doubt that, certain regions of brain perform certain functions. Amygdyla is responsible for emotions, Cerebellum for balancing, Hypothallamus for Memory and so on. But brain is plastic and the connections in brain keep on changing, hence there is nothing region specific if one region interacts and responds with another based on exposure to social experience and practices.
hence these abilities are plastic, and flexible and change based on practice.
No clear distinction can be made that there are male biased abilities or female biased abilities.
Come on Women also drive, and many times many men dont drive. Driving is an operational learning, and nothing to do with inherent brain structure and brainyness…
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This reference doesnt show that better ability of identifying spatial orientation is only restricted to male and absent in female, nor does it say that it is determinied and fixed in males only and cannot be changed. It only pinpoints regions where neuronal connections are responsible for performing this ability
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Let’s just cut the clutter.Do you agree to the fact that men can visualize 3d images better than women (if practice and experience are same)? If yes, then can this fact change as the society changes (as you mentioned earlier). Sir!
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I think you misunderstood what i mean by social factors.
Social factors mean social influences which guide in learning and practices which train in these abilities.
Why dont you check on plasticity of neurons in brains and its role in learning abilities?
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Yea it makes sense. Thank you for staying patient with me sir. This discussion certainly gave some clarity. Insightful indeed!
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Except for the point already made that social factors like education and practice influence brain structure, you should also always keep in mind that these studies always speak about averages. I.e. men are on average better than women on spatial tasks, or a clearer example: men are on average bigger than women. But there is also a lot of variation within these two groups, which is often way more than the variation between the two groups. So it is for example not an exception to have a woman that is bigger than a man.
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The distribution of loading between the upper and lower limbs was biased heavily toward the former among prehistoric women, to a greater extent than among all living women, including semi-elite rowers (see Fig. 3). Thus, the intensification of agriculture was associated with very high levels of manual labor relative to terrestrial mobility for women, and changes in the female behavioral repertoire through time are less heavily characterized by declining terrestrial mobility than among contemporaneous men ( 9 , 10 ).
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Kindly go through the following link:
Soviet women in World War II - Wikipedia
Whenever given chance and whenever need arose, women have performed at par with men in roles traditionally thought to be domains of men only.
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If some one is different in doing some tasks better than others, how can we conclude from that the brains are different?
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