Can She?

There is this question that which gender is smarter, capable, easy going and what not. We live in this progressed world, in a country where its politics has a reservation of 33% to the women of the country in both the lower and the upper house of the parliament. But we find the percentage of women decreasing term by term. We find women in professions like teaching, nursing, social servicing, etc, but a few in leadership and STEM jobs. The question is; are women incapable or is it that they aren’t able to sweep over the barriers of the society or their own biological reasons.

Hormones play a major role in how we are and who we are. Hormones are chemical substances produced in the body that controls and regulates the activity of certain cells and organisms. Testosterone is an important male sex hormone that enables men to have manly characters like built body, deep voice etc, and some amount of testosterone is also produced in women playing a major role in more than 200 functions. And this testosterone is a factor that helps in taking risks. And thus men are quite capable of taking risks than women as their testosterone levels are low. This could be one of the reasons why we have more men in politics as well as STEM jobs. This fact doesn’t mean that women should take testosterone supplements to increase their risk taking character rather people should understand that they are built in that way.

The socio-ethical values that women holds, the role that she’ll have to play, to be a mother, to be a daughter-in-law and what not in a society. Society is built in a way where the responsibility of the house, taking care of children and to portray themselves as ideal all lies to the women of the house. But if you are in politics or in any field having a post quite higher than your husband, the society mocks at you. No matter your capable of managing the both, there is a knock at the door every evening to ridicule your profession. Yet, women have this fear where their time doesn’t fall short for their children and family while busy in work. This fear and stress a man can bear but not a woman.

Math anxiety, a problem experienced by both men and women while doing math problems. According to studies, conducted in 2017 by a team of psychologists from the University of Glasgow and the Universities of California have reported that girls were more anxious about mathematics in more than 80% of the countries surveyed. The reason behind women being anxious about mathematics is their perception that they are not in the subject. Though the girls in schools and colleges did well in the subject during their class hours but when it came to examinations they were anxious. And they assume that men are better than them in this field.

The stereotype that exists that scientists are meant to spend the entire time of their work life alone in a laboratory without social interactions makes women disinterested in the field. But in reality STEM jobs aren’t anti-social.According to study conducted by the University of Zurich in 2017, women have the tendency to be prosocial than men. Scientists report that the dopaminergic reward system is more to be shared in women than selfish rewards, but in case of men it is opposite.

Have you wondered the anatomy of brain being the same or different in both men and women? And how would the anatomy affect the way we think and how we think? The answer to these questions is there are differences in the anatomy of men’s and women’s brain which will in fact show differences in behaviour of both the genders. The left side of the human brain is responsible for analytical thought and logic while the right is responsible for holistic thinking, creativity and intuition. In simple words, the left region of the brain deals what we know whereas the right region deals with the exploration of what is unknown. Research published by The Royal Society explains that in the experiment conducted, scientists observed that women’s left and right brains showed more signs of connectivity than men’s brains while men’s brains showed more activity and connections on the left side. According to the observation, in males there is an increased structural connectivity related to the motor, sensory and executive function sub networks, whereas in women there was a high connectivity of sub networks associated with social motivation, attention and memory tasks. From the above experiment, the scientists concluded that men seem to be problem-solvers, while women tend to be solution-seekers. The main difference between these two operating modes is that in problem-solving, the bigger picture is less taken into account. And a second deduction is that women seem to have a lack of focus, when in fact they are looking at wider horizons.