The Science Of Feminism: 9 Studies Of Gender (In)Equality

Scientists often talk about "male brains" and "female brains" and the received wisdom is that men and women are generally better at different things, one of these being empathy.

Women, as the "emotionally intelligent" gender are supposed to be better at feeling empathy and, indeed, there are a lot of studies that have shown this to be true. However, these studies fail to take into account that their subjects are under the influence of societal condition, even as they take the test, and this could influence the outcome. The problem is that these tests rely on the subjects self-reporting and this can easily be influenced by gender bias.

In a study by the University of St Andrews, researchers sought to find out, not only whether women were really more empathetic than men, but whether the results could be skewed by the societal expectations they were meant to be studying.

The participants were split into two groups made up of equal amounts of men and women and were each given the same questionnaire. One of the groups were told that they were being assessed on their empathy levels, a traditionally female trait, whereas the other group were told that they were being assessed on their social abilities, a more male trait.

It was found that this greatly influenced the outcome of the questionnaire, and that women were much more likely to overreport empathy and men underreport it. However, when the participants thought that they were being tested on their social abilities, they scored much the same on the empathy scale.

The study challenges the reliability of self-reporting when measuring an already socially biased behaviour and perhaps opens the door to look at many of the other typically male/female traits that have been "proven" to be true.