Who are smarter – men or women?

Reference

Cohen, Yi Hsin. (2010, October 16). Who are smarter – men or women? About intelligence. Retrieved April 12, 2011 from http://www.aboutintelligence.co.uk/who-smarter-men-women.html

Summary
In the article, the author talked about men and women, and who was smarter than the other. He mentioned that the psychologists agreed with no gender differences in intelligence; however, the research offers that men have mental advantages. Then he said one study showed that the men have larger brain with a 100g difference, but it was impossible to reach a conclusion about how intelligence itself was defined and measured because the size was not significant about intelligence. Then he talked about the women and men throughout the history, and he said that the women were underrepresented while the men were achieving distinction of mental ability, and this was returned to the poor educational opportunities women have had in the past. Moreover, although most top position required sacrifice of time, women tended to families more than career or achievements. He said that our society tended to value scientific achievement, and the people who are involved in science must be intelligent. Then he explained that there might be other reasons that women do not end up in the sciences. Then the author mentioned that IQ tests showed the average of women and men IQ to be equal. However, evidence showed that the women were able to achieve more than the men at the same IQ level. Then he said the IQ tests were still widely debated. Therefore, the tests could be said to measure a number of mental abilities. Finally, the author said that we could not forget that the men have more brain tissue, and they got higher IQ scores when we asked who are smarter. In fact, female students tended to get better grades in schools, and most people did not care about IQ scores on actual jobs.

Reaction
I enjoyed reading this article because it is interesting and after all of that research, the researchers could not define intelligence, and they could not find who is smarter, even with the evidence that they found. In this article, I do not agree with the author about some points; for example, when he said that women are under-represented in areas of achievement throughout past history, and many women choose to direct their energies towards family rather than career or other outside achievements. I think he talked about one society, but as I know, there were a lot of smart and successful women in Islamic culture who have shown up after prophet Mohamed showed up, and there were a lot of Islamic books that talked about them, and what they did in the education field and other fields. The second thing is about women when they take care about their families. That does not mean they are not intelligent. When the women take care of their home and children, and provide a good atmosphere in their home, that means they are smart, because the men cannot do that. Also, when the men find all this care in his house, they will feel comfortable and perform better in their job. Therefore, I can consider the women are smart when they do all these things which are providing good atmosphere, raising their children, and making their homework in better way. I think the men and children will be smart and successful when they find all of these, and these are related to the smart women.



BJ