Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds by Gina Rippon
For decades if not centuries, science has backed up society's simple dictum that men and women are hardwired differently, that the world is divided by two different kinds of brains--male and female. However, new research in neuroimaging suggests that this is little more than "neurotrash."
In this powerfully argued work, acclaimed professor of cognitive neuroimaging Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that bombard us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mould our ideas of ourselves and even shape our brains. Taking us back through centuries of sexism, Gender and Our Brains reveals how science has been misinterpreted or misused to ask the wrong questions. Instead of challenging the status quo, we are still bound by outdated stereotypes and assumptions. However, by exploring new, cutting-edge neuroscience, Rippon urges us to move beyond a binary view of our brains and instead to see these complex organs as highly individualised, profoundly adaptable, and full of unbounded potential.
Rigorous, timely and liberating, Gender and Our Brains has huge repercussions for women and men, for parents and children, and for how we identify ourselves.
Pantheon, 2019.
ISBN: 9781524747022. 424 pp.
Hardcover. Near fine in a near fine jacket.