Latest / UK Column Radio / The Difference Between Men and Women – With Prof Gloria Moss (Part 2 of 3)

Transcript

The Difference Between Men and Women – With Prof Gloria Moss (Part 2 of 3) · UK Column Radio

0:06
Welcome to UK column. I'm Ben Rubin, and today I'm
0:10
delighted to be joined by Professor Gloria Moss, PhD, who
0:15
is a respected academic researcher and author of a
0:20
number of books, most notably Why Men Like Straight Lines and
0:25
Women Like Polka Dots, Gender Design and Marketing and The
0:30
Dark Side of Academia. Welcome to UK column, Gloria.
0:34
Hi, Ben. On the 16th of April this year,
0:37
2025, five judges of the UK Supreme Court unanimously agreed
0:44
that and I quote the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010
0:51
refer to a biological woman and biological sex.
0:56
They then went on to say that their shared biology leads to
1:00
shared disadvantage and discrimination.
1:06
Now in some quarters of society this was deemed to be a
1:11
controversial ruling. In most other quarters of
1:15
society this was deemed to be little more than common sense.
1:20
What's your take on this, Gloria?
1:22
Well, we've seen those same divisions in opinion for decades
1:27
now. So the, the, the, the, the very
1:30
different reactions come as no surprise.
1:34
And some of the earliest commentators on sex fuelled, I
1:40
would say this division. So we could talk about that
1:43
because the the roots of this division in opinion go back
1:49
several decades. Well, it was starting with
1:54
Simone de Beauvoir, for example, in France who really kick
1:59
started the feminist movement with the book The second Sex,
2:04
which had the very bold statement 1 is not born but
2:10
becomes a woman. So right from the get go his
2:16
prominent author questioning biological sex 1 is not born but
2:22
becomes a woman. And the author went on to say a
2:25
man is in the right in being a man, it is the woman who is in
2:31
the wrong. Hmm.
2:33
Well, you can see a photo of Simone, who was best mate, shall
2:39
we say, with Jean Paul Sartre in Paris.
2:43
They were both students at the Echo, Normal superior.
2:46
I believe they came in first and 2nd place.
2:50
And what do you think of this photo, then, of Simone de
2:54
Beauvoir towering over Jean Paul Sartre?
2:58
She's quite a striking individual.
3:00
Certainly striking and very tall, significantly taller than
3:05
Jean Paul Sartre and and well, you know, was some some might
3:12
question whether this was indeed a biologically born female.
3:17
And if if that was not the case, then you revisit her sentence 1
3:22
is not born that becomes a woman.
3:25
You look at that in an altogether different light.
3:28
But that's supposition. Who knows?
3:31
But this started a train of thought that questioned the
3:36
roots of femininity and biology. And if we Fast forward a few
3:41
decades, then we arrive in America with Judith Butler.
3:46
And I know you're interested in Judith Butler.
3:49
Bench was perhaps still is I. I need to check professor of
3:55
comparative literature at California University.
3:59
And here's what Judith Butler said.
4:02
If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this
4:08
construct called sex is as culturally constructed as
4:13
gender. And here she is arguing, as she
4:17
does in Gender Trouble, the book, that gender and sex are no
4:22
more than social constructs. Note, not biological constructs.
4:29
And very recently, in 2021, Judith Butler went on to state
4:34
that the category of woman can and does change, and we need it
4:39
to be that way. So this is very much at odds
4:43
with the ruling of the Supreme Court.
4:45
And this kind of view as propounded by Judith Butler,
4:50
Simone de Beauvoir has an enormous following because
4:57
they've, they've made a point of having a, a large following,
5:00
shall we say. And the system has encouraged
5:03
people to follow this line of thinking.
5:06
So not surprising, then, that the Supreme Court ruling, as you
5:11
say, Ben, had a mixed reaction. But of course, that's not the
5:18
whole story. And there are some proponents,
5:23
some powerful proponents outside of the Supreme Court for the
5:28
view that men and women are very much fashioned by their biology.
5:36
So we could talk about that a little bit, some of those voices
5:40
speaking out on the other side of the fence, if you like.
5:44
Absolutely. I think that would be a
5:46
fantastic direction for us to take.
5:49
I am particularly interested in Judith Butler, as you've
5:52
mentioned, because she seems to be exerting an extraordinary
5:55
amount of influence over the progressive liberal left in the
6:00
UK at the moment. As I understand it, she's
6:02
actually based in London right now.
6:04
She may still have an academic position in California, as you
6:07
mentioned, but I believe she's spending quite a bit of time
6:10
here in the UK and is doing a lot of podcast appearances and
6:14
interviews with various different media platforms.
6:18
And actually, this quote that you shared here is really quite
6:21
striking. If the immutable character of
6:23
sex is contested, well, then maybe it is socially
6:27
constructed. Well, who's contesting it?
6:29
You're contesting it. The people in your ideological
6:34
lineage are the ones contesting. It doesn't mean that it should
6:36
be contested. It just happens to be what
6:38
you've done. And this second quote that you
6:41
provided, the category of woman can and does change.
6:45
And we need it to be that way. What do we need it to be that
6:49
way For Judith Butler? That's a really, really striking
6:51
thing to say. But back to your your thoughts
6:54
on people speaking up on the other side of the debate.
6:57
On the other side of the fence, there's some very powerful
6:59
voices. For example, you can find a Ted
7:02
talk given by an academic from Brown University in the US.
7:09
That's Doctor Alison McGregor, MD.
7:13
She's got a bit of a sense of humour.
7:15
She says women are not just men with boobs and tubes.
7:20
And she actually talks about anatomical and physiological
7:25
differences that go way beyond immediately observable sex
7:30
related properties. It's well worth listening to her
7:34
talk because she actually elaborates on the view that
7:39
these differences are so profound that symptoms of
7:43
illness and indeed the treatment of those illnesses should be,
7:49
well, they manifest differently and should be treated in
7:52
different ways. Just a couple of quick examples.
7:56
She says that acute coronary syndrome presents differently in
8:00
males and females because the blood vessels around the heart
8:04
in females are smaller than in men.
8:07
The treatments will be different as as a consequence.
8:13
So that's a very powerful voice, I think.
8:17
And then an emerita professor of psychology, Diane Halpin, also
8:23
from the USI think she was sceptical originally about
8:30
wading into this debate on sex difference.
8:32
But in the end, she came round to seeing the power of
8:37
biological sex and she talked about the visuospatial, which
8:42
will be a feature, you know, very special feature of what we
8:46
talk about later today. She talks about variations in
8:51
the visuospatial abilities of males and females as amongst the
8:57
most robust and persistent of all the cognitive sex
9:02
differences. So just to repeat, she's a
9:06
highly decorated professor of psychology.
9:09
You can look her up on the web and she states that variations
9:15
in the visuospatial abilities of males and females, which will be
9:20
a focus of our discussion today. Ellen, Ellen myself that these
9:24
are amongst the most robust and persistent of all the cognitive
9:28
sex differences. Indeed, I've read it myself that
9:32
after height differences in the visuospatial skills of males and
9:39
females are the most robust of all the sex differences after
9:43
height, which I think few people would dispute that on balance,
9:47
men are taller than females. And then a third voice.
9:53
This is professor of psychology at Cambridge, Simon Baron Cohen,
9:59
author of a book 2007, The Essential Difference, and very
10:06
striking some of the research that he's undertaken that's
10:11
described in this book. He describes work that he did
10:16
with his team, looking at the perceptions of one day old
10:23
babies. These are babies in the world
10:26
for just a single day, and what he and his team documented was
10:32
the fact that one day old boy babies fixate much more on
10:37
things than they do on people. And conversely, the one day old
10:44
girl babies, he found that they respond more empathetically to
10:50
the distress of others than do boy babies.
10:55
This is what he found with one day old babies.
10:59
And in one of the books that you mentioned that I've written,
11:03
Gender Design and Marketing, which goes in depth into this
11:07
topic, I review some of the fascinating studies that were
11:12
conducted, comparing the drawings and paintings created
11:16
by very young children right up to adolescent children.
11:21
And there was one study conducted in Japan, IE Ijima,
11:27
that was the name, the surname of the researcher, with a couple
11:29
of other researchers where they compared the drawings of
11:33
kindergarten children. And here's one of their
11:38
findings, which I think correlates quite nicely with
11:42
Baron Curran's findings. What they found was that girls
11:45
were significantly more likely to feature human motifs in their
11:51
drawings and and also flowers. We'll come to that later.
11:56
And that the boys they found were significantly more likely
12:00
to draw moving objects such as cars, trains, rockets and
12:05
aircraft. So these are these are inanimate
12:09
objects, non living. And in fact that that finding
12:15
emerges from other studies comparing the drawings and
12:18
paintings of boys and girls. And then I've done my own
12:24
research over a span of about 20 years.
12:26
So we have these powerful voices.
12:28
We've got an MD, we've got a professor of psychology who's
12:34
much decorated, We have Professor Simon Baron Cohen.
12:39
And of course, I should also mention, I think Professor Geary
12:43
in America who, whose book on cognitive sex differences and
12:49
each chapter picks up on a different sense and documents
12:53
the extensive differences across each of the five senses.
12:57
That book written by Professor Geary was published by the
13:03
American Psychological Association.
13:06
So there's some powerful figures at powerful institutions arguing
13:11
that if you like cognitive sex difference is hard wired and not
13:17
just cognitive differences. As we saw from the doctor,
13:21
physiological differences and the way illness manifests, it
13:26
needs to be treated. And I can talk about my my
13:31
research on the visuospatial, which is the area I focused on
13:35
for about 20 years until the going got too rough.
13:41
And then I moved on to another topic, which the going proved to
13:45
be pretty rough there too. I talked about that with your
13:49
colleague last week when we were talking about universities, that
13:52
was the subject of best practise leadership.
13:55
And you might think that everybody would want to learn
13:58
about best practise leadership, but it it didn't seem that it
14:01
was flavour of the month in certain parts of the university
14:07
system. But that's another story for
14:09
another day. So we could talk about the
14:12
visual spatial, and I know that's the field in which you've
14:15
worked yourself. Indeed it is, yes.
14:18
I spent many years in the design industry and actually doing a
14:23
lot of research around, particularly looking at the way
14:27
that people interact with digital interfaces.
14:30
So we was doing a lot of work, particularly when the new mobile
14:35
phones were coming in, So the smartphones and actually
14:38
understanding how to collapse incredible amounts of
14:42
functionality into this tiny little piece of of screen that
14:45
we have that we interact with everything through these days.
14:47
So yeah, this is definitely an area of interest to me.
14:51
But the angle that you take on it, I think is particularly
14:53
interesting because it's more on the creative side of things,
14:56
which I really enjoy. And you just use the the the
14:58
moment, the phrase a moment ago that there are some powerful
15:01
voices who are making the case. I actually would say it's, it's
15:04
more than that. You've got some powerful voices
15:06
who are demonstrating beyond the shadow of a doubt that there are
15:09
differences between boys and girls, men and women.
15:12
I think that's abundantly clear, to be honest with you.
15:14
The one that really jumped out of me from the examples that you
15:17
just shared there was from Simon Baron Cohen.
15:20
And this idea that even at one day old newborn babies, boys are
15:26
more interested in looking at things, girls are more
15:29
interested in looking at other people.
15:31
Yeah. And this is one of the things
15:33
that Jordan Peterson not so long ago would talk about quite some
15:38
lengths, the idea that men are interested in things, women are
15:41
interested in people. Women are more social, they're
15:43
more caring, They're more empathetic.
15:45
Men are more interesting in building stuff out there in the
15:49
world. Right.
15:49
And these used to be things that we just understood as being
15:53
true, but apparently it now sounds like we have to provide
15:58
evidence for this through lab based testing.
16:01
And the lab based testing has proven it to be true too.
16:04
So this is fantastic. Let's get onto the visual
16:08
component, because this is obviously your area of
16:10
specialism and you've provided some examples of us that we can
16:14
look at of the differences between art and design as
16:23
created by men and women. That, that's absolutely right.
16:28
And I, I embarked on this study of about 20 years plus by going
16:37
into art colleges where there were foundation course students
16:42
because I, I wanted to compare the work of the men and the
16:47
women from students who hadn't had too much training.
16:52
I have a background in industry as a training and development
16:55
manager and I'm very conscious of, of the effects that
17:00
education and training can have and can even change natural
17:05
impulses. So This is why I started with
17:09
foundation course students because that's the the year that
17:13
people follow prior to to doing a a full degree at art college
17:20
or university. And I was looking for classes
17:25
where a single project was set for the students.
17:29
And then I could photograph and collect the responses of the
17:33
male and female students in the group.
17:35
And the first sample that came my way was responses to a
17:41
project brief to design A set of luxury chocolate boxes.
17:46
And you can see them there. There were 8 all together and
17:51
four were the work of the male students and four were the work
17:55
of female students in the group. And you might be looking at
17:58
those and asking yourself, I wonder who designed which?
18:02
And I did quite a an in depth study to examine the features in
18:10
these 8 chocolate boxes. And this is a bit like Blue
18:15
Peter where after a lot of work they just show you the end
18:17
product. So I'm going to show you the
18:19
graph that illustrates the findings from this study that I
18:24
undertook. And on this graph, you can see
18:29
that there are two different lines and the top line denotes
18:34
the characteristics that are present in the chocolate boxes
18:39
designed by the male students. And the the lower line denotes
18:46
the features that characterise the chocolate boxes designed by
18:51
the female students. And where you can see divergent
18:55
between those two lines is the areas is the area of greatest
19:01
disparity between the productions, the design
19:05
productions, creations of these of the men and the women.
19:10
And so then you just look to the bottom axis and you'll see the
19:14
features where these differences emerged most strongly.
19:20
And you can see that they they emerge in relation to the volume
19:24
of colour used in relation to the linearity.
19:28
In other words, the extent to which the shapes use straight
19:31
lines or round shapes. And yet indeed, those chocolate
19:35
boxes with rounded shapes were the creation of the female
19:41
foundation students. And then the third area of
19:44
disparity relates to the technicality of the drawings,
19:49
with the with the male designs deemed to have a far more
19:57
technical appearance than the female.
19:59
So just to recap, where colour is concerned, the female designs
20:08
come out as more colourful. Where linearity is concerned,
20:13
the male designs have more straight lines and the female
20:17
designs are more rounded in shape.
20:18
And where technical appearance is concerned, the male design
20:23
looks more technical and professional because that
20:28
technical look is what is often taught.
20:32
And incidentally, the differences were off the walls.
20:37
Statistically they were as high in statistical, high difference
20:41
in statistical terms as you could possibly imagine at the
20:46
.01 level of significance. And, and this work, work of this
20:50
kind had never been done before. This was a first, a first if you
20:56
like, and it was done with a, you know, fair degree, high
21:00
degree, I would say a rigour. I didn't impose these
21:04
categories. I went through an elaborate
21:06
first stage where I asked respondents to elicit the
21:13
categories that were most striking in terms of
21:18
differentiators between the male and female designs.
21:22
And then I asked a further group of students to rate the designs
21:27
according to those features. That's how we arrived at this
21:31
graph. And they say a picture says 1000
21:34
words. What we can do now is just look
21:39
at a couple of examples, but we haven't really got time today
21:42
for much more than that. I think of of real life
21:46
professional design, if you like and see what you think then of
21:51
of these designs. And I know when you looked at
21:53
these before, you were particularly struck by the
21:56
drinks cans, the images of the drinks cans.
21:59
So maybe let's look at those next.
22:02
And how did I find out about the design history of these cans?
22:07
Well, quite simply, I invited myself along to a design agency
22:15
in London and they're very kind. They organised a meeting with a
22:20
number of their designers who brought along their portfolios
22:23
and that enabled me to identify the gender and identity of those
22:29
who design these cans. So you can probably see that on
22:33
the left is a can for Strongbow. You've got a square shape in the
22:38
middle with a man with a bow. Looks like a man to me.
22:42
The size of the head, theme of violence if you like.
22:46
And on the right you've got cans of a very different nature,
22:49
fruit juices, much less 3 dimensional, more humorous, more
22:57
light hearted shall we say. And it's definitely more
23:00
colourful than the can on the left.
23:04
And notice the typeface as well the differences there.
23:07
How would you compare the typefaces?
23:09
Would you say 1 was more regular in appearance than the other?
23:14
The the ones on the right are certainly more playful Yes, I
23:17
think these ads are absolutely beautiful.
23:18
It it it also suggests to me that there's a there.
23:21
There could potentially be some cultural differences here as
23:24
well, because when I look at the cans on the right, I'm not
23:27
entirely familiar with this brand seltzer.
23:30
It looks more European to me. There's something about it that
23:34
reminds me of maybe being on holiday in the South of France
23:37
and having one of these nice drinks outside a cafe.
23:39
Whereas the Strongbow is, you know, that's a, it's a rather
23:42
different experience. Yeah, I don't know about the the
23:47
the brand, but both designers were working out of this design
23:50
agency in Marylebone, actually in in London and the designer on
23:57
the left, if we had to guess the gender is I'm.
24:01
Going to say a man. I think I'm thinking a man.
24:04
Yeah, and the the designer on the right was a was a female.
24:08
And let me just refer to one of those studies on paintings that
24:12
I referred to. This was an American study 1982
24:15
by Mcneef examined almost 2000 drawings by children aged 6 to
24:21
8. What they found was that
24:23
violence featured in 27% of the boys drawings and only wait for
24:29
this 0.3% of the girls drawings. So here we have an image of
24:36
violence. It's a bit of a coup.
24:38
We've got the regular typeface, the square.
24:41
There's a lot telling us there that this is the work of a male
24:46
designer. And in the workshops that I've
24:50
conducted, I show people innumerable images so that after
24:54
you've seen a large number of these, you pick up very quickly
24:59
the differences in in the designs created by males and
25:03
females. Well, that's creations.
25:08
The the next big question relates to preferences.
25:15
Nobody had ever done any studies asking themselves how would men
25:20
and women react to those cans? Would the men prefer the
25:25
Strongbow or would they be equally happy with the cans on
25:31
the right and similar questions would arise in respect to the
25:34
women? No, nobody's asked those
25:36
questions before. So I conducted a number of what
25:40
I call preference tests to to get an answer and I have an
25:45
answer. Drinks cans was one of the
25:47
stimulus on the stimuli that I showed to unsuspecting male and
25:54
female students from five countries.
25:58
So what we are seeing here are the preferences of students from
26:04
five countries and all of the results are highly significant,
26:11
Highly significant and I won't keep you.
26:14
I won't keep the answer from you any longer.
26:19
What I found was a very, very strong tendency for men to
26:26
prefer the designs created by men and for women to prefer the
26:33
designs created by the women. And this is beyond contest
26:38
because of the strength of the statistical effect.
26:41
I I did put in two other stimuli, some Christmas cards,
26:45
but we, we, but we haven't had time to discuss those today.
26:50
And so 2 findings emerged. Firstly, that the differences in
26:55
the creations, the design creations of males and females
27:00
are statistically very different and likewise for their
27:05
preferences with men preferring the designs created by men and
27:10
women or girls preferring the designs created by girls or
27:15
women. Well two questions might be
27:19
popping up in your mind then at this point. 1 is what are the
27:25
implications? And because of your background
27:29
you might be thinking, Oh my goodness, there are vast
27:31
implications for marketing. That was certainly my thoughts
27:36
after I achieved these findings. And then the second big question
27:40
is the why, what? What is steering these
27:43
differences? So should we look at these two
27:46
questions, the implications and the why?
27:50
Absolutely. The first thing that came to my
27:52
mind, Gloria, was how can we turn this to our competitive
27:55
advantage? Exactly because now we have, I
28:00
call it the science really of the visuospatial.
28:04
I think up until now when I look at commercial design, it's
28:10
potluck. People create, and very often I
28:13
think designs, designers create what they like.
28:17
Why would they have any reason not to do that?
28:20
And if they're men, they might think that their own preferences
28:22
are universal and carry across to women.
28:27
But my studies suggest very much otherwise.
28:31
And incidentally, I put all of this work through peer review
28:35
over a number of years. And so it's it's I don't know
28:41
how many peer review articles I've written on that.
28:44
I've written about 80 altogether, and maybe half of
28:47
that was on this topic. And then two books or three
28:53
books, because I've written a book on personality and my PhD
28:57
topic examined the effect of the personality, nationality and sex
29:06
of the designer on websites and their creation and the effect of
29:12
those three factors, personality, nationality and sex
29:18
on people's preferences. So it's robust, shall we say.
29:23
This work implications commercial advantage you
29:28
mentioned then. Now, a lot of people may not be
29:33
aware of proportion of purchases overall made by men and women.
29:43
If you had to hazard a guess, just sort of quietly think in
29:46
your mind, if you're viewing this, what proportion of
29:49
purchases overall are made by men and women?
29:53
And then I'll tell you what researchers have found.
29:56
What researchers have found is that something like 83% of all
30:01
purchases are made by women. Yeah, you heard right.
30:07
Women are the dominant purchasers.
30:10
So if you had to select an aesthetic in which to dress up
30:14
your kettle or your car or your retail interior, you would
30:21
select the female aesthetic, would you not?
30:25
And yet when I walk around and I, I have done some quite a
30:29
large number of consultancy projects for firms advising on
30:33
this, they're not factoring in the fact that there are at least
30:37
two aesthetics from which they can select and and model their
30:44
interior around all their products.
30:46
And so many firms are missing the opportunity of which you
30:51
speak, then the commercial advantage.
30:54
And if they understand this science of visual perception,
30:59
then they can cherry pick the features depending on their
31:02
target market and it becomes quite simple.
31:06
Well I say quite simple. I remember doing a workshop for
31:09
an all male web design team who were responsible for a website,
31:14
website called Bounty that served up new products or
31:19
products, sorry served up products for new mums.
31:22
And they asked me in that their website was predictably, as most
31:29
websites are AC 7% of website designers are men.
31:33
So it's not surprising they're very masculine.
31:36
Think of an Amazon website for example, very few colours, very
31:40
linear, that's prototypically male.
31:46
So, so it was with this website and I, I, I explained as I am
31:50
now, but in much more detail, the features of this new
31:54
science. And then they showed me the
31:57
website that they created after the workshop and I would say it
32:01
was perfectly configured for that market of new mums.
32:06
But when I looked again at the website about six months later,
32:11
can you guess what I saw then with that website?
32:14
They changed it back I would imagine.
32:17
Exactly in conformity with their own personal preference, which
32:23
you can understand. So it's all about I think
32:27
understanding these differences. This is diversity at its best
32:32
really. It's understanding and using in
32:37
the case of commerce for business advantage.
32:39
And if you like putting on the spectacles of the other gender
32:44
and asking yourself what would appeal to them.
32:47
This is to adopt what is known in the trade as the outside in
32:52
perspective. And we were talking about this
32:55
on the phone, weren't we, Ben? And I was saying in my
32:59
experience, very few organisations are configured,
33:04
set up to deliver an outside in perspective.
33:09
They're very inward leaning in my experience and your it seems
33:13
your experience was not dissimilar to my own.
33:16
No, there was. It was very similar and large
33:21
organisations in particular. I think this is true of people
33:24
in general and the organisations are made up of people, right?
33:27
But they had a tendency to ship their org charts, how we used to
33:32
describe it. So if you were looking at them
33:34
from the outside and you could go across the different pieces
33:38
of what they were supposed to be delivering to you as a customer,
33:41
you could actually see the gaps between the marketing team and
33:45
the customer service team and the people who designing and
33:49
delivering the products. And part of the job for us was
33:54
helping to reflect that back into the business and provide
33:57
some external perspective backed up with evidence through use,
34:03
doing user, user research and analytics so that they could
34:07
address those issues. But without that, it was
34:10
actually very difficult for them, potentially I would say
34:14
even impossible for them to to gain the level of self awareness
34:20
to be able to address those issues.
34:22
And then my my experience is completely aligned with what
34:24
you're talking about. Yeah.
34:26
And I, I, I was shocked on a couple of occasions when I was
34:30
asked to run workshops for some very large companies.
34:37
When I asked the obvious starting question, which is can
34:40
you describe your market to me in terms of its demographics, I
34:45
was met with blank stares. And they, these large companies,
34:51
one was in the pharmaceutical field and the other one was in
34:55
the automotive field. They didn't have a handle at all
34:59
on their market. And the case of the automotive
35:04
they had no awareness of the fact that more than 50% of new
35:08
cars in America are actually purchased by women, and that
35:14
women influence up to 80% of all CART purchases.
35:19
Spending Well, the time I did this work, more than $200
35:23
billion on new cars. So no surprises then that this
35:28
firm's website was thoroughly masculine in its orientation.
35:34
It it's what the web design team liked.
35:37
I imagine they didn't know who their market was and they had no
35:40
reason to do anything different. And if we're talking automated,
35:46
my goodness, there are opportunities or improvement.
35:50
Anybody listening to this from the world of cars or any other
35:56
mechanical device, Hoovers, kettles, I, I had a female
36:01
designer who went on subsequently to work for Habitat
36:04
designed me up some kettles and you've never seen kettles of the
36:11
kind that she designed for me. They would have massive appeal
36:15
to females. And so it would be with cars.
36:17
I mean, I, I, I did quite a lot of research looking into the
36:21
issue of car design and found only one car that had ever gone
36:26
in, one car designed by a female designer that had ever been gone
36:35
into commercial production, only one single car.
36:39
And you can guess amongst the cars that you can see on that
36:45
slide, which is the single car that was designed by the female
36:51
designer, Julianne Blasey. And yes, it's the one on the top
36:56
left, the BMWZ for little lovely looking sports car.
37:02
Well, to my eyes anyway. I don't know about N size.
37:06
So we we have this phrase, beauty is in the eye of the
37:09
beholder, don't we? And and the same applies in the
37:12
world of marketing and commercial firms just need to
37:18
identify their market demographically.
37:20
I would say sex is a really important variable and we can go
37:24
and talk about some of the biological factors behind these
37:27
differences that make it, you know, make it a powerful
37:32
variable that it is of course, other variables very equally
37:36
important. Nationality, how you market to a
37:40
French audience would be very different from how you'd market
37:44
to a British one, for example. And I know you've done some work
37:47
in that area as well. I think then.
37:50
Yeah, I've, I've been in France a few times on business.
37:54
I think the the thing that always struck me and it
37:56
completely aligns with what you're talking about here is
37:59
that when we went to talk to them as designers, the French
38:05
would always interpret design as aesthetics and the English would
38:10
always interpret designers, mechanics and engineering.
38:15
And those are very distinct things.
38:17
But it's completely aligned with what we're talking about.
38:20
Oh, that's very interesting because the field of industrial
38:23
design, and I believe there's a Museum of industrial design near
38:27
Tower Bridge that's so different.
38:31
That's a very engineering based design, just as you say.
38:38
And the aesthetic component seems very much an afterthought.
38:42
Now people might might disagree with what I've said there and
38:47
it'd be interesting to hear people's thoughts, but that's
38:49
absolutely in line with what you're saying there.
38:52
And they say that if you had to simplify things, men will follow
38:58
function and women will prioritise style.
39:03
And if you're comparing national cultures, then you'll find that
39:08
France is is deemed to be a more feminine society than the Anglo
39:15
countries. So maybe this is one reason why
39:18
they prioritise aesthetics more highly than than Anglo people
39:24
do? Who knows?
39:27
But should we talk about some of the why of this before perhaps
39:32
looking at some further implications beyond the world of
39:35
business? Yes, let's do that because
39:39
you've actually looked into the, the, the, the, the differences
39:44
in perception between men and women, which I think is
39:48
particularly interesting. And a lot of that, I believe, is
39:51
to do with the traditional roles that we would have played in
39:54
society. Oh well, yes.
39:57
And when we say traditionally play, I've read that for 99% of
40:02
human history, men and women were respectively hunters and
40:07
gatherers. We weren't sitting at desks like
40:11
we are today. That's a very recent origin.
40:16
So yes, for a very, very long span of human history, 1.7
40:21
million BC right through to 10,000 BC, men and women were
40:30
hunters and gatherers respectively.
40:33
And that spans the Lower Palaeolithic and the end of the
40:37
Pleistocene epochs. And it seems that men and
40:44
women's visuospatial skills have developed in response to their
40:52
lives as hunters and gatherers respectively.
40:55
So if you like, this is sociology in the long term.
40:59
Sociologists look at immediate social influences on human
41:04
behaviour. Some what they call evolutionary
41:07
psychologists are predisposed to look at the long term influence
41:13
of society, of social activity on psychological elements and
41:19
that includes cognitive elements.
41:21
And so if you if you trawl through the psychology
41:24
literature, my goodness, what you discover is fascinating.
41:28
This is a peer review literature, not a peer review is
41:32
always, is always right, as I was discussing with Diane just
41:37
last week. And I think the we, we need to
41:42
be very mindful of that. But some, some very, very
41:45
consistent findings emerge from the psychology literature.
41:51
What, what do we find? We find that on average, would
41:56
you believe it, men's eyes are spaced 5 millimetres further
42:00
apart than women's. Take out temp, take measures if
42:03
you want at your next party and draw your own conclusions.
42:08
But one of the effects of eyes being further apart is is to
42:13
provide greater stereoscopic vision, which of course is very
42:16
useful if you're a hunter. Women have more P cells for
42:21
identifying objects, which is really helpful if you're
42:24
gatherer. Garrett Gathering buries that
42:28
men have more cells for tracking objects.
42:31
Of course, that's a hunter skill, isn't it?
42:33
And when we come to colour vision, that's fascinating
42:37
because you probably know that there's a much higher incidence
42:41
of colour blindness in men than in women.
42:45
It's about 8% in men and half percent in women.
42:50
And did you know that being colour blind gives you an
42:55
advantage? You may not feel like that a lot
42:57
of the time, but it allows you to see through camouflage.
43:02
So if you're a hunter, of course, that's tremendously
43:05
helpful. And I discovered that the army
43:09
goes out of its way to recruit colour blind people for that
43:13
very reason. You can see through camouflage
43:16
and colour blindness manifests on the X chromosome, and it's
43:23
much more likely to manifest in men with their single X
43:25
chromosome than in women with their 2X chromosomes.
43:30
It's a greater chance that one of them won't have the colour
43:32
blind gene and final difference. Last but by no means least, we
43:41
have colour pigments in our eyes, men and women both.
43:45
No man has more than three colour pigments, and some
43:48
American researchers wrote a very language article suggesting
43:53
that up to 50% of women have a fourth colour pigment.
43:58
Now that may not sound a big deal, having one additional
44:02
colour pigment, but my goodness, it makes a difference.
44:05
It means having that extra colour pigment that you go from
44:09
seeing millions of colours, that's the men, to seeing
44:14
hundreds of millions of colours and that's the women.
44:18
And why would that have helped women?
44:21
Because in that 99 foot percent of human history time, women
44:27
spent their time as gatherers and they needed to discern the
44:31
right from the on right barriers.
44:33
They were the managers of the day.
44:36
They were managing base camp. They were building putting to
44:40
anthropologists the buildings, and they were designing the
44:45
accoutrements that go inside the building.
44:47
And they were the managers. They had to discern whether
44:51
people's cheeks were flaring up, they're about to go into an
44:56
incendiary row. And and likewise with the
44:59
children, whether they were, whether they had a temperature
45:03
or not. So colour served women very well
45:06
in this world with a division of labour as between hunters and
45:11
gatherers. So it served us well then the
45:15
vision. Now the advantage this these
45:20
different advantages, I would say they're lost because if we
45:25
go back to your point about commerce, Ben and commercial
45:28
advantage, senior people in design and marketing tend to be
45:34
men and they often serve up design.
45:38
That's Hunter. If we like in style, that's
45:41
informed by the male Hunter vision.
45:45
And yet the customers, as we've said, are in the majority 83%
45:52
female. And So what we really need is a
45:56
gatherer style served up to those purchases different for
45:59
some products, you know, those that are where the where the
46:03
where the customers are predominantly men.
46:05
Petrol is an example, for example, then you'd want that
46:08
male aesthetic, but it really doesn't have much of A place if
46:14
the purchaser is female and often the the female is the
46:18
purchaser of products for men. I, I was talking to the, the
46:24
head of menswear at Marks and Pencil on one occasion, I think
46:28
it when I was doing my inaugural lecture and he said that the
46:32
main purchases of men's menswear was actually women.
46:38
Here we have it, we have hunter and we have gatherer vision.
46:42
And is there any way that these, these innate differences can
46:50
possibly be changed? And they can be changed, you
46:55
know, people's responses, their behaviours can perhaps be
46:58
changed by training. I think we need a lot of repeat
47:01
training. As I said earlier, we can, we
47:04
can try and change the behaviour, but can we actually
47:07
change the perception? I doubt it very much because
47:10
it's so hard wired. I think we've sought a little
47:14
bit of time left. We could talk about the
47:16
implications beyond business, if you like, for history, for fine
47:21
art. Absolutely, I think we should
47:23
do. I think we should also just add,
47:25
Gloria, that many men who have been the subject of provision
47:33
and criticism at home for not being able to find things in the
47:37
kitchen cupboards or wherever else it might be now have
47:40
conclusive scientific proof that it's because they have been.
47:43
They are not biologically predisposed for doing such
47:47
things. I think that's and probably the
47:49
most important thing that's happened in our conversation
47:51
this afternoon. Yeah, men's object location
47:54
memory is definitely poorer than that of women.
47:59
But, you know, I think this is, it's my view is let's celebrate
48:04
these differences. They're both wonderful.
48:07
We need both of these skills, the hunter and the gatherer.
48:12
You know, the world would be so much the poorer without it.
48:16
And if we deny the existence of these differences, then we deny
48:24
history. I think we can look at that in a
48:26
bit. And we can also cause
48:29
discrimination as, as you, when you read out the Supreme Court
48:33
ruling, there was a reference there to the discrimination that
48:38
can follow from biological difference.
48:42
Should we have a quick look at some of the implications for
48:45
history and fine art? Historically, the first
48:50
paintings as we know, emerged in cave art, and this was, oh, way
48:57
back in the period, 30,023 thousand BC, way back.
49:04
And it's very interesting if you read commentators and art
49:09
historians, how they describe the original cave artists.
49:13
Here's Paul Johnson in his book Art a New History, he says, and
49:21
I quote that The Cave artists were great men who gave
49:24
themselves airs. And then there's a Frenchman,
49:29
Jean Claude, There's a cave named after The Cave that he
49:33
discovered in France. And he described the artist of
49:37
that cave as the Leonardo da Vinci of the Ice Age.
49:42
So I reckon he considered that the artist was a man.
49:46
And then Gombridge, famous for his book, The History of Art, He
49:50
just wrote Man is a great Miracle.
49:53
When he wrote of The Cave artist, well, how did they know
49:57
that the artist was a man? I think what we have to do is
50:01
reverse engineer what remains of their art and using the science
50:07
that we're learning about today, kind of ask ourselves, do these
50:13
features typify the work of males or do they typify the work
50:18
of females? So let's look at some of the
50:22
themes. Now probably you've seen images
50:25
of figurines from these caves. Can you conjure up images of
50:32
less than slim women? Lots and lots of curbs.
50:37
A very famous example is the Venus of Willendorf.
50:41
And what we notice is the portrayal of the female figure.
50:45
A lot of round shapes and a lot of detailing on the head.
50:49
And because we haven't had too much time today, I haven't had
50:53
the opportunity to explain that the use of a lot of detail is
50:57
something that very much typifies the female as against
51:01
the male aesthetic. Men, if you think of industrial
51:05
gadgets for the kitchen that there's, they're free of detail.
51:10
Philips, for example, prides itself on having producing
51:16
products that are free of detail and, well, something else.
51:24
If you're sitting with a pen and paper, you might like to just
51:29
scribble a figure. Not looking for a Rembrandt,
51:33
just scribble a match figure and give that figure a name.
51:38
I'll give you a few seconds to do that.
51:42
Doesn't have to be a Leonardo da Vinci at all, just a stick
51:46
figure and put a name against it.
51:49
And you might have done that by now.
51:51
And if you haven't, pause and then continue.
51:55
In numerous studies involving sometimes very, very extensive
52:04
sample sizes, what's been found is that people tend to depict
52:09
people of their own gender. In other words, people are.
52:15
Well, one interpretation is that people are depicting themselves
52:19
in one way or another, and that would be a subject for another
52:21
talk. Very fascinating.
52:23
It links to art therapy projective drawings.
52:27
No time for that today, but nine times out of 10, people will
52:31
depict somebody of their own gender.
52:33
So when we see figurines emerging from caves that depict
52:38
females, there's a fair chance that the creators of those
52:43
figurines were actually women rather than men.
52:49
And well, there are four other factors to consider.
52:53
Squiz through these, and I should just add as a footnote
52:56
what I've just said, that there are hundreds of these Venus
53:00
figurines, hardly any figurines depicting men.
53:05
So on to the next point. There are more expressions of
53:09
life than there are of violence in The Cave paintings.
53:14
And do you remember what we we talked about when we were
53:17
looking at the drinks cans That violence is, according to
53:23
Macneif's study in America 1982, the drawings of children aged 6
53:29
to 8. We found that they found that
53:32
violence was depicted in 27% of the boys drawings and in less
53:39
than 1% of the girls drawings. So the fact that there are very
53:43
few portrayals of violence in the paintings and the caves
53:47
might again suggest a female provenance and then they're
53:54
depictions of pregnant animals. Could it be that women who give
53:58
birth at the moment are more likely to depict pregnant
54:02
animals than men? And there are depiction of
54:07
depictions of dangerous adversaries, for example, cave
54:11
bears, lions, but they're shown in a piece.
54:16
They're not shown in any other way than that.
54:20
And then if we look at the shapes, a lot of the shapes, and
54:25
we could look at a, a slide lasso, you'll see the curved
54:29
forms in that. And on the same image you'll see
54:34
on the in Lasso cave, lots of handprints were left on The
54:38
Cave. And ask yourself, looking at the
54:40
size of those handprints, whether there's other handprints
54:45
of men or women or perhaps children, Many people would
54:49
suggest that they're much more likely to be the handprints of
54:53
women or children than than of men, given their size.
54:57
Now this is very interesting because if women were the
54:59
artists, it meant that they had very high status at that time.
55:03
And why do I say that? Because to, to paint this art
55:08
was no easy matter. They would have needed to have
55:13
light in the caves and to supply that, that light they would have
55:17
had to burn animal fat, precious animal fat.
55:22
Scaffolding was needed. I mean, at La Bastid in the
55:27
Pyrenees, there's an immense horse that towers 14 foot above
55:34
floor level. So clearly scaffolding would
55:37
have been needed. And in fact, at L'asseau,
55:41
they've actually found evidence of sockets cut into the walls to
55:44
support the scaffolding. And in Lasso, same cave in the
55:51
so called picture gallery, there's a gallery that's more
55:54
than 100 feet long and 35 feet wide.
55:58
So you wouldn't need, I think a lot of assistance to help And
56:05
well, roofing yak caves there even longer.
56:08
They they ran for six miles into the mountain and some of the
56:12
collections of drawings were more than 7 feet long.
56:16
Certainly, you know, the painter needed help.
56:19
They would have been high status.
56:21
And finally, the paints would need to have been mixed on a
56:25
regular basis since some some of the paints used dried very
56:29
quickly and had to be replaced very quickly.
56:32
It looks as though from the evidence we there is a good case
56:36
for saying that the artists were very likely to have been women
56:41
and we shouldn't be surprised if they were high status because
56:46
from what I've read the matriarchal period of society
56:51
ran right up to about 1570 BC in Egypt.
56:57
Things changed when the Mesopotamians came into Egypt
57:01
and they brought with them the concept of kingship and a male
57:04
deity, and we could talk a bit more about patriarchy later on.
57:10
So we can reverse engineer what we see in paintings, perhaps to
57:17
learn about history and perhaps understanding the differences
57:23
between the male and female design aesthetic helps us
57:27
understand what we find in fine art in the world of fine art.
57:33
So we just quickly make a foray into fine art.
57:38
If you've got your pen and paper, jot down the percentage
57:45
of art in the National Gallery in London that you think is the
57:50
work of men and that you think is the work of females.
57:56
It's a shame I can't talk to you at the moment, but I think Ben
58:00
knows already so I can't ask him the question.
58:04
Well, I counted up all the paintings on the online
58:08
catalogue of the National Gallery and here's what I found.
58:14
Oh, .5% of all the paintings in the National Gallery, Yes, you
58:20
heard that right, are the work of women.
58:22
So 99.5% of the work on display in the National Gallery is the
58:28
work of men. Now, you might think this was a
58:32
bit of an oddity, the National Gallery, but if you go to the
58:35
Museum of Modern Art in New York, it's a slightly higher
58:38
figure. It's 5%.
58:41
What do you think is happening here, Ben?
58:44
Why? Why is so little female work on
58:48
display when in reality it's not that women haven't been painting
58:52
over centuries, they have. There's a whole Museum of Women
58:56
in the Arts in Washington jam packed full of women's art.
59:01
So given that there's an awful lot of female painting, why is
59:05
there so little in art banners? What could the reasons be?
59:10
It's a very good question. The two things that spring to
59:12
mind are is I'd like to know exactly how many male artists
59:16
make up that 99.5% figure, because actually I'd imagine
59:20
it's a relatively small number of artists, but I might be
59:24
wrong. But then the other reason could
59:26
perhaps be that the people who are making the selections about
59:30
what goes into the Canon are are predominantly men and this
59:34
becomes a self perpetuating issue.
59:36
Very interesting. So are you suggesting that they
59:41
will they will follow their natural preferences?
59:45
Which is entirely a human thing to do, isn't it?
59:49
Unless you've been taught otherwise And, and, and over
59:52
time, collectors have predominantly been men.
59:58
The people with the disposable income have been men, and so
1:00:02
they've tended to buy the work works of women.
1:00:05
So I think what you're suggesting is very plausible.
1:00:10
And then of course, fine artists taught us of discipline, isn't
1:00:14
it? And books are written and the
1:00:18
Canon comes into being and. There are casualties, which
1:00:24
seems to be half of the human race there.
1:00:29
There was an art exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2016 called
1:00:35
Painting the Modern Garden. There were at least 24 male
1:00:39
painters exhibited there and no more than two female artists.
1:00:45
And I went to that exhibition because a friend asked me along
1:00:49
and I recall one painting by the French female Impressionist
1:00:55
sister in Tragic, tragic life in a way.
1:01:23
Dora Carrington immense talent at the Slade School of Art.
1:01:28
Her life was cut short when her partner Nishan Straishi died of
1:01:33
stomach cancer and she killed herself with a bullet very short
1:01:39
while after that. Now interestingly I read this
1:01:44
about Dora Carrington. Her dates were 1892 to 1932.
1:01:51
Her passionate interest in art was deeply intertwined with a
1:01:55
suspicion of the forces that make up traditional Canon.
1:02:01
So she could have joined us, couldn't she, Ben?
1:02:03
Perhaps on this discussion where she not to have met that tragic
1:02:09
end And, you know, you could think of so many other artists.
1:02:13
Winifred Nicholson, wife of Ben Nicholson, Vanessa Bell and bear
1:02:20
in mind that one of these studies of girls and boys
1:02:23
paintings by McCarty 1924 that examined vast sample of drawings
1:02:30
31,000 of children produced by children aged 4 to 8 and they
1:02:37
found guess what, that 58% fewer of the boys than the girls
1:02:42
drawings included flowers. So if you were running an
1:02:47
exhibition of gardens and flowers, and some of the
1:02:51
paintings on the display in that in that exhibition displayed
1:02:56
simply flowers, why would you not home in on the painterly
1:03:04
creations of women? It must be for the reasons that
1:03:08
you suggest, although I recall that one of the curators was
1:03:12
female of that exhibition. Are we now living in extreme
1:03:17
patriarchy? I know this is a subject that
1:03:20
interests you because we talked about it yesterday.
1:03:23
We, we're living at a time when much of society is intent on, as
1:03:29
you said right at the beginning, denying that biology is what
1:03:35
makes women women. And in that denial, we're
1:03:38
denying that they perceive the world in any way different from
1:03:41
men. And what does that denial do?
1:03:45
It blocks female talent because it says there's no difference.
1:03:49
We don't, and women don't find an outlet for their different
1:03:54
talents, which I've talked about how I've discovered those
1:03:57
differences in the course of 20 years of research.
1:04:00
To deny biology is to deny nature.
1:04:07
And if we deny nature, my goodness, what follows from
1:04:11
that? Any thoughts then?
1:04:14
I think it was a wonderful summary, Gloria.
1:04:16
Thank you. And that point that you've
1:04:19
landed on at the end there is an extremely profound one, because
1:04:23
the people who are promoting this idea of there being no
1:04:28
intrinsic differences between the sexes are also the ones that
1:04:33
are making a lot of noise about their dislike of the patriarchy.
1:04:37
And yet what you're saying is that actually their position is
1:04:43
manifestation of the patriarchy. It's in fact extreme patriarchy,
1:04:47
which would be rather ironic actually in the context of
1:04:50
everything that's happening. And the denial of nature can
1:04:56
segue very easily into the transhumanist agenda.
1:05:01
And many voices would say that's a place we don't want to go.
1:05:08
And I, I think UK does a fantastic job in putting out
1:05:14
information and it's just so it's so good to have an
1:05:21
opportunity to share some of this information about the
1:05:25
reality of sex and biology, because knowledge is power, is
1:05:31
it not? And to deny biology is to deny
1:05:37
nature and to make way for the transhumanist, which is
1:05:41
somewhere we don't necessarily want to go.
1:05:43
In fact, I'll be having a a discussion with Diane about that
1:05:48
in a short while. I must say that while I was
1:05:50
doing this research over this 20 year period, it felt quite a
1:05:55
lonely journey because there were probably only two, at most
1:05:59
three of us in Britain who were doing anything different from
1:06:03
agreeing that you could swap your sex.
1:06:11
And the going was tough, very tough at times.
1:06:20
If you're sort of a group of one or at most two, it's, it's
1:06:24
difficult. But I'm, I'm, I'm, I've no
1:06:28
regrets about doing this work because I think it's just so
1:06:34
important to find the truth and critical thinking is the tool
1:06:39
that will get us there evidence based critical thinking.
1:06:43
And people may not want to listen, but the truth is the
1:06:46
truth. And courtesy of UK column, which
1:06:51
I'm very grateful. I I wrote an article called
1:06:54
first of three three part series on post truth.
1:06:59
And you can see there how at times of totalitarianism, truth
1:07:06
is very often a casualty, which is why the work of UK columnists
1:07:11
so putting out truth. Indeed it is.
1:07:16
And thank you, Gloria, for standing up for truth as well.
1:07:19
There's been a wonderful discussion, fantastic
1:07:21
information. We've covered a huge number of
1:07:23
different bases there and it was wonderfully delivered.
1:07:26
So thank you for that. And I feel much more rooted in
1:07:32
an understanding of the biological, physiological,
1:07:35
psychological, visuospatial differences between the sexes.
1:07:40
And I hope you all at home do too.
1:07:42
Thanks for watching, Take care.