Simon Baron-Cohen’s The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain planted the seed for my We-mind vs. Me-Mind theory. It is a brave look at the scientific evidence behind the innate sex differences of the mind. I found it a riveting read, even if, after seven years of research, I came to disagree with Baron-Cohen that the essential difference is solely determined by sex/gender.
A distinguished expert on autism, Baron-Cohen’s point of departure was the given that men and women seem to think in entirely different ways, from conversation and communication to games and gadgets. Women are better at empathising, men at analysing systems, he claims. But are these differences created by society, he wondered, or do our minds come ready-wired one way or another, with female brains tending towards interaction and male towards organisation? After two decades of research he tentatively states the latter, which could mean that autism – rather than being a mental anomaly – is in fact simply an extreme male brain.
In You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, sociolinguist Deborah Tannen studies the difference in how women and men (girls and boys) are communicating. “Women and men live in different worlds…made of different words,” she claims.
Combining scientific insight and humorous writing, Tannen shows why women and men can walk away from the same conversation with completely different impressions of what was said. For me, this was another eye-opener, but again, I know for a fact that not all women and men fall into the patterns she discovered. Nevertheless, it’s a classic to better understand interpersonal relations.
Cognitive neurologist Gina Rippon wants us to move beyond a binary view of our brains and instead recognize these complex organs as highly individualised, profoundly adaptable, and full of unbounded potential. She wrote The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain. Like her — to say it crudely — I used to believe that women and men are the same, apart from our genitals. By now, I believe it’s demeaning women to assume that that we are essentially the same.
In We-Mind vs. Me-Mind: A New Viison for Success in Leadership and Life I argue that blaming it all on gender keeps women trapped in victimhood. Women have conquered their rightful place, and yet, they still feel unwelcome. The real problem is what we prioritise in life and leadership: connection and looking after each other (We-Mind), or ambition and self-assertion (Me-Mind). If we celebrate what makes us different, but above all, value both approaches eaqually, more people will feel welcome, happy and fulfilled.
The link between the individual impact of how we approach life and society I found in The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, by psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist. He reveals the profound difference between the two sides that result in two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world. The detail-oriented left hemisphere prefers mechanisms to living things and is inclined to self-interest, while the right hemisphere has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity.
Does that ring a bell?
Based on all his research, McGilchrist argues that, despite its inferior grasp of reality, the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in today’s world, and this can have disastrous consequences.
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