Delusions of Gender controversy in the Guardian

Posted on 2010/09/11 , tagged as

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The Guardian reports today on the growing debate surrounding Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender, published earlier this month by Icon.

One of the targets of Fine’s criticism in her book is Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University. The article reports that:

‘Professor Simon Baron-Cohen says he is unwilling to comment until he has finished Fine’s book, but he is unlikely to agree with her. In his influential book, The Essential Difference, Baron-Cohen argued that “the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.”

‘Fine is unabashed. “There are sex differences in the brain. There are also large sex differences in who does what and who achieves what,” she says. “It would make sense if these facts were connected in some way, and perhaps they are. But when we follow the trail of contemporary science we discover a surprising number of gaps, assumptions, inconsistencies, poor methodologies and leaps of faith.”‘

Read the whole piece here and see more about the book here.