[翻译]性别差异：对女性的误解(Differences between the sexes:The mismeasure of woman)

Aug 3rd 2006
From The Economist print edition

 

Men and women think differently. But not that differently

男性和女性有着不同的思维方式，但差异并没有那么大。

    IN THE 1970s there was a fad for giving dolls to baby boys and fire-engines to baby girls. The idea was that differences in behaviour between the sexes were solely the result of upbringing: culture turned women into ironers, knitters and chatterboxes, and men into hammerers, drillers and silent types. Switching toys would put an end to sexual sorting. Today, it is clear why it did not. When boys and girls are born, they are already different, and they favour different toys from the beginning.

    让男孩子玩洋娃娃，让女孩子玩消防车的做法在20世纪70年代曾经风行一时。这种想法的依据是两性行为上的差异完全是由抚养环境造成的：文化环境让女人成为烫衣工，纺织工并且喋喋不休，而让男人变成铁匠，木匠并且沉默寡言。在两者之间交换玩具将能够避免这种性别分化。但现在大家都知道为什么事实并非如此。男孩和女孩从他们出生那天起就已经不一样了，并且他们都开始偏好不同的玩具类型。

    That boys and girls—and men and women—are programmed by evolution to behave differently from one another is now widely accepted. Surely, no one today would think of doing what John Money, of Johns Hopkins University , did in 1967: amputating the genitalia of a boy who had suffered a botched circumcision, and advising the parents to bring him up as a girl. The experiment didn't work, and the consequences were tragic. But which of the differences between the sexes are “biological”, in the sense that they have been honed by evolution, and which are “cultural” or “environmental” and might more easily be altered by changed circumstances, is still fiercely debated.

    进化决定了男孩和女孩――男人和女人——之间会有着不同的行为，这是现在已经被广泛接受了的观点。当然，今天不会有人会去考虑做约翰霍普金斯大学的约翰曼尼在1967年做的那种事情了：他阉割了一个包皮环切术失败的男孩，并且建议他的父母把他当作一个女孩来抚养。这项试验并不成功，并且结局十分悲惨。但是性别差异的哪些方面是由生物属性决定的，即由长期的演化磨砺出来的，而哪些方面是由“文化”或“环境”决定并且不易被变化的环境所改变，这仍然处在激烈的争论中。

    The sensitivity of the question was shown last year by a furore at Harvard University . Larry Summers,    then Harvard's president, caused a storm when he suggested that innate ability could be an important reason why there were so few women in the top positions in mathematics, engineering and the physical sciences.

    这个问题的敏感性可以通过去年哈佛大学的那场风波窥见一斑。当时哈佛大学的校长Larry Summers把数学、工程和物理领域缺少顶尖的女性科学家的现象归结为是先天的能力问题，此言一出便引起各方一片哗然。

    Even as a proposition for discussion, this is unacceptable to some. But biological explanations of human behaviour are making a comeback as the generation of academics that feared them as a covert way of justifying eugenics, or of thwarting Marxist utopianism, is retiring. The success of neo-Darwinism has provided an intellectual underpinning for discussion about why some differences between the sexes might be innate. And new scanning techniques have enabled researchers to examine the brain's interior while it is working, showing that male and female brains do, at one level, operate differently. The results, however, do not always support past clichés about what the differences in question actually are.

    就算是作为讨论的论题，这也很难被一些人所接受。但是用生物学来解释人类行为的思潮正卷土重来，而那一代害怕这样做会暗中给优生学辩护或者阻挠马克思主义空想的学者已经退休了。新达尔文主义的成功为有关两性的先天性差异的讨论提供了理论依据。同时新的扫描技术也使研究人员可以对运作着的大脑进行内部的检查，并且发现在一定层面上，男人和女人的大脑运作的方式的确存在差异。然而，这个结果并不一定都支持过去那些关于性别差异的论调。

Baby blues and pinks

In the past, it was assumed that a female was simply a male with hormones, says Tracey Shors, a professor of neuroscience at Rutgers University . The truth is the exact opposite. Female is the default brain setting. Until the eighth week of gestation every human fetal brain looks female. The brain, like the rest of the human body, becomes male as a result of surges of testosterone—one during gestation and one shortly after birth.

      Rutgers大学的神经学教授Tracey Shors指出人们过去一直认为女性和男性的区别仅仅在于前者会受到激素的影响。但事实却恰恰相反。其实女性的大脑才是不受激素的影响的。在怀孕的前8个星期，每个胎儿的大脑都看起来想女性的。象人体其他部位一样，在睾丸激素的激发下大脑也开始凸显处男性特征－－这一过程会分别出现在妊娠期和紧接在出生之后的时期里。

    This wash of hormones creates an organ that generates typically boyish behaviour, such as rough-and-tumble play. Behavioural differences appear early. For example, a one-day-old girl will look for longer at a face than at a mechanical mobile; a boy will prefer the mobile. That it is testosterone exposure which causes such preferences is suggested by two sorts of research. Several studies have shown that girls with a genetic disorder which exposes them to abnormally high prenatal levels of testosterone often develop boyish patterns of play. As regards boys, Simon Baron-Cohen and Svetlana Lutchmaya, two researchers at Cambridge University , found that boys exposed to relatively high levels of testosterone in the womb looked less often at their mothers' faces, made eye contact less frequently and had smaller vocabularies than those exposed to lower levels—though this study has yet to be replicated successfully by other researchers. 

    激素的洗礼造就了一个器官，它将引起典型的男孩的行为方式，比如好打闹争斗。行为差异很早就出现了。刚出生一天的女孩会花更长时间盯着别人的脸而不是男孩喜欢的玩具车。 有两类实验指出是睾丸激素造成了这些差异。几项研究表明，如果女孩因为遗传缺陷而在出生前受到高水平的激素影响，那么往往会出现男孩似的举动。而对于男孩来说，剑桥大学的Simon Baron-Cohen和Svetlana Lutchmaya发现如果在母体子宫里受到高水平的睾丸激素影响，那么相对于那些受到低水平的激素影响的婴儿，他们会更少看母亲的脸，更少眼神交流和更小的词汇量。不过这个研究还有待其他研究者的重复。

    Within a year of birth, boys and girls also prefer different toys. Boys prefer cars, trucks, balls and guns. Girls prefer dolls and tea sets. Although evolution has clearly not had the opportunity to mould a preference for tea sets, there is evidence from another species which suggests that human infants might be predisposed to prefer toys that have particular adaptive significance to their sex. Several years ago, Melissa Hines, of City University in London , and Gerianne Alexander, of Texas A&M University , gave some vervet monkeys a selection of toys, including rag dolls, pans, balls and trucks. Male monkeys spent more time with the trucks and balls. Females played for longer with the dolls. 

    在出生之后的一年里，男孩和女孩会偏好不同的玩具。男孩喜欢轿车、卡车、球和枪。女孩则喜欢娃娃和茶具。尽管演化显然没有机会决定对茶具的偏好，来自对其他物种的研究的证据表明，人类幼儿倾向于选择对其性别有特定适应性意义的玩具。几年前，伦敦城市大学的Melissa Hines和德州农工大学的Gerianne Alexander让非洲猕猴选择玩具，包括布娃娃，平底锅，球和卡车。雄猴在卡车和球上花了很多时间，而雌性则用更多时间玩布娃娃。

    Obviously, cultural stereotyping is an improbable explanation for this. Nor could male monkeys have evolved a preference for fire engines. The theory put forward to explain what happened—and the similar innate preferences of human children—is that the toys preferred by young females are objects that offer opportunities for expressing nurturing behaviour, something that will be useful to them later in life. Young males, whether simian or human, prefer toys that can be used actively or propelled in space, and which afford greater opportunities for rough play.
显然文化影响不能解释这些。雄性猴子也不可能进化出对消防车的喜爱。用来解释这一现象及在人类儿童中的类似的先天偏好的理论是，女孩喜欢的玩具是那些能让她们展现出哺育行为的，也即是在她们后来的生活中需要的行为。年幼的雄性，不论人类还是猴子都喜欢那些有动力、能运动的玩具，而这些也给他们更多机会做粗犷的活动。


Just behave

仅仅是行为

    Differences in behaviour between the sexes must, in some way, be reflections of systematic differences between the brains of males and females. Such differences certainly exist, but drawing inferences from them is not as easy as it may appear.

    行为的性别差异某种程度上反映了他们大脑的系统性差别。这样的差别肯定存在，但从中做出推论却没有看上去那么简单。

    For a start, men's brains are about 9% larger than those of women. That used to be cited as evidence of men's supposedly greater intelligence. Actually, the difference is largely (and probably completely) explained by the fact that men are bigger than women. 

    首先男人的大脑比女人的大9%。这曾经被作为男性所谓的智能优势的证据。实际上这在很大程度上（甚至完全）可以用一个事实来解释，那就是男性个体要比女性大。

    In recent years, more detailed examination has refined the picture. Female brains have a higher percentage of grey matter (the manifestation, en bloc, of the central bodies of nerve cells), and thus a lower percentage of white matter (the manifestation of the long, thin filaments that connect nerve cells together), than male brains. That, plus the fact that in some regions of the female brain, nerve cells are packed more densely than in men, means that the number of nerve cells in male and female brains may be similar.

    这些年来的更详尽的研究让事实更加清晰。相对男性来说，女性大脑具有更多的灰质（就是神经细胞的细胞体的总体外观），因此就更少的白质（细长的神经细胞突起的总体外观）。再加上在有些区域女性大脑的神经细胞密度要大于男性，我们可以认为两性的脑神经细胞数量是相当的。

    Oddly, though, the main connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, which is known as the corpus callosum and is made of white matter, is proportionately smaller in men than women. This may explain why men use only one side of the brain to process some problems for which women employ both sides. 

    让人不解的是，连接大脑两个半球的白质——也叫胼胝体——在男性中成比例地小于女性。这可以解释为什么通常女性用两个大脑半球解决的问题男性只用一边大脑就行了。

    These differences in structure and wiring do not appear to have any influence on intelligence as measured by IQ tests. It does, however, seem that the sexes carry out these tests in different ways. In one example, where men and women perform equally well in a test that asks them to work out whether nonsense words rhyme, brain scanning shows that women use areas on both the right and the left sides of the brain to accomplish the task. Men, by contrast, use only areas on the left side. There is also a correlation between mathematical reasoning and temporal-lobe activity in men—but none in women. More generally, men seem to rely more on their grey matter for their IQ, whereas women rely more on their white matter. 

    这些结构和连接上的差别并没有展现在IQ测试考查的智商上。但在进行测试时男女却有不同的应对方式。在一项男女都擅长的测试中，受试者被要求辨别出无意义的字串是否押韵。大脑扫描显示女性同时使用左脑和右脑的区域来完成测试，而男性却只用左脑。在男性中数学推论能力和颞叶活动存在关联，而女性却没有。大体上说男性的IQ依靠灰质，而女性则更多依赖于白质。

    These examples show how tricky it is to find correlations between behaviour and differences in brain structure and brain activity. And even if a connection to brain structure is found, that does not mean it is innate. Most of these studies are done on adults, so it is not clear when differences start to arise. The brain is by no means immutable, even in adulthood. In the hippocampus, an area thought to be involved in spatial learning, new nerve cells can be born in an adult and hormones influence their birth and survival. Dr Shors says that her work has shown that the female brain, at least, is very plastic, changing dramatically during life in response to pregnancy and menopause as well as puberty. 

    这个例子可以说明要找到行为和大脑结构及活动特点之间的联系有多困难。而且就算找到这种联系也不能证明那是先天的。大多数这类研究都是在成人中进行的，所以还不清楚什么时候开始出现这些差异的。大脑绝对不是一成不变的，即便是成年之后。在海马体中——一个被认为是与空间感知有关的区域——在成年时仍可以产生神经细胞，而这些细胞的产生和存活受激素的影响。Shors博士说她的研究发现至少在女性中大脑是极具可塑性的，在怀孕、闭经和青春期都有显著变化。

    Dr Baron-Cohen suggests that innate preferences can be carried into adulthood, too. He studies autism and Asperger's syndrome, conditions that are far more common in boys than girls. His theory is that, from birth, female brains are hardwired for understanding emotions (empathising) and male brains for understanding and building systems (systemising). Hence the diverse preferences for toys. The notion is that autistic children—and autistic adults—have extremely male brains. In other words, they are especially good at systemising and especially bad at empathising. 

    Baron-Cohen博士认为先天的偏好也能够持续到成年。他研究自闭症和亚斯伯格症，这些病症在男孩中更普遍。他的理论是，自出生起，女孩的大脑天生就是用来感受情绪的（移情性），而男性的却是用来理解和构建系统的（系统性）。因而才有了对玩具的不同偏好。根据这个理论，自闭的儿童和成人具有最极端的男性大脑。也就是说他们在系统性上很卓越，但在移情上却很糟糕。

    Autism is, indeed, an extreme example. But there are thousands of studies on psychological differences between the sexes. They have looked at personality, social behaviour, memory and abilities in particular fields. For example, men are said to be more aggressive and better at mathematics, while women are more emotional and have better verbal skills. 

    自闭症实际上是极端的例子。但却有上千项关于两性心理差异的研究。这些研究涉及性格，社会行为，记忆和特定领域的才能。比如说人们认为男性数学能力更强而且更具侵略性，而女性更情绪化同时有更强的语言能力。

    There are a number of problems with these studies. One, according to Dr Hines, is science's bias towards reporting positive results, so that research which shows no differences is likely to get lost. Another is that because differences between the sexes are so often popularised and played up in the popular media, people tend to pay them disproportionate attention. 

    这些研究存在许多问题。按照Hines博士的说法，因为科学研究倾向于报道正面的结果，这使得那些没有发现性别差异的研究被忽略了。另一个问题是大众媒体传播并炒作关于性别差异的话题，过多地吸引人们的注意力。

    For example, although it is commonly held that there are reliable differences between the verbal abilities of males and females, Dr Hines suggests this is not exactly correct. She says that the results of hundreds of tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension show there is almost no gap between the sexes. Though teenage girls are better at spelling than teenage boys, the only aspect of verbal ability that is known to show a sex difference in adults is verbal fluency (the ability to produce words rapidly). For example, when asked to list as many words as possible that start with a particular letter, women usually come up with more than men. Furthermore, even when there are differences in ability between the sexes, research suggests that the scale of these differences is often smaller than people generally believe.

    一个例子是，尽管普遍认为男性与女性的语言能力有明显差异，Hines博士认为这并不完全正确。她指出上百项研究表明两性在词汇量和阅读理解上没有差别。尽管在青少年中女孩要比男孩有更强的拼写能力，但在成人中两性在语言能力上的唯一差别仅在于语言流畅性上（快速说出词汇的能力）。比如说当被要求说出尽可能多的以一个字母开头的词时，女性通常要比男性说的多。不仅如此，研究还发现就算是真实存在的性别差异也没有人们认为的那么大。


Storm in a d cup

d值旋风

    In comparing differences between the sexes, researchers use a statistical measure called d. This indicates how far apart the averages of two groups (in this case men and women) are, taking into account the range of values that contribute to each average. The value of d for adult height is around 2. There is no arguing that in any given population men, on average, are taller than women. For behavioural and psychological phenomena, a value of d greater than 0.8 is considered large, of 0.5, moderate, and of 0.2, small. Any d less than 0.2 is a negligible difference.

    为了比较两性差异，研究者实用一种叫d的统计学度量。d值可以表征两组间（这里是男性和女性）某一参数的平均值有多大差别，并且同时考虑到这一参数在各组中的域值。成年人身高的d值接近于2。不论在任何人群中男性的身高都要高于女性，这一点无可置疑。对于行为或心理现象，大于0.8的d值是显著的差异，等于0.5的是中等的差异，0.2是微弱的差异，而小于0.2的是可以忽略的差异。

    Equipped with this statistical tool, Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to investigate just how different men and women are. She collected all the important meta-analyses that have been conducted on differences between the sexes. (A meta-analysis combines many studies by treating the result of each as a single piece of data for statistical purposes.) Given that most of the meta-analyses she looked at addressed questions where differences were reputed to be reliable (mathematical performance, verbal ability and aggressive behaviour, in particular) she feels her results were surprising. Of the 124 effect-sizes she calculated, 30% had a value of d close to zero and in a further 48% of cases, d was small. In other words, only 22% of reported behavioural differences between the sexes are worth raising an eyebrow over. 

    有了这个统计工具，威斯康星——麦迪逊大学的Janet Hyde决定研究男人和女人到底有多大差别。她搜集了所有关于两性差别的重要的统合分析数据。（统合分析是整合了大量研究的结果，并把每一个结果当作一项数据用于统计。）她所观察的大部分统合分析数据都被认为是确实存在性别差异的（特别是数学成绩，语言能力和攻击行为），她为自己发现感到震惊。在她所计算的124的影响效果中，有30%的d值接近于0，另有48%的d值很小。换句话说，只有被报道的性别差异中只有22%是值得关注的。

    The largest gaps were, not surprisingly, in physical attributes such as throwing velocity (d=2.14) and throwing distance (d=1.98). These closely reflect the difference in height between men and women. Another area where she found large differences was in some areas of sexuality—for example, frequency of masturbation (d=0.96) and attitudes about sex in a casual relationship (d=0.81). However, men and women reported the same degree of sexual satisfaction. 

    最大的差别当然是体现在身体素质上，比如投掷速度（d=2.14）和投掷距离（d=1.98）。这集中体现了身高差距。另一个显著差别是在关于性的态度，比如自慰的频率（d=0.96）和对于随意的性关系的态度（d=0.81）。然而男性和女性表现出同样的性满意度。

    Not surprisingly, on average men were physically more aggressive (d=0.6). But in this case other work shows the danger of jumping too rapidly to a conclusion. A study done in 1994 hints that if women think nobody is watching and judging them, and there are no physical consequences, they might be more aggressive than men. 

    平均来说男性在身体上更具侵略性（d=0.6），这一点也不奇怪。不过关于这个问题，其他的研究的结论显得过于草率。1994年的一格研究显示，如果女性在没有人监视或者评判她们，也没有物质上的后果时，她们会比男性更具侵略性。

    In this study, participants played a video game in which they defended themselves from attackers, and the number of bombs they chose to drop was a measure of aggression. When participants thought they were known to the experimenter and were having their performance assessed, men dropped more bombs than women did. But when those same participants were given the impression that they were anonymous, women became the more enthusiastic bombers.

    这个研究需要受试者要玩一种电子游戏，游戏中他们需要保护自己不受攻击，而他们选择用来投掷的炸弹数量就是攻击性的表征。当受试者认为实验人员认识他们并且在评估他们的表现时，男性比女性投掷了更多炸弹。但同一批受试者在他们自以为是匿名的情况下，女性却成了狂热的投弹者。

    Violent or not, women have as many angry thoughts as men, if not more. In a study carried out in 2004, Robin Simon, of Florida State University , and Leda Nath, of the University of Wisconsin , found no difference between the sexes in the reported frequency of incidents of feeling angry over a period of time. However, women tended to report anger that was more intense and prolonged. 

    不论暴力与否，如果女性的愤怒情绪不比男性多的话那至少是一样多的。在2004年进行的一个研究中，佛罗里达州立大学的Robin Simon和威斯康星大学的Leda Nath发现两性在一段时期内报告的感到愤怒的频率是一样的。然而女性倾向于报告那些强烈和持久的愤怒情绪。

    A similar result on the greater intensity of female anger was reported earlier this year by Nicole Hess, of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin , and Edward Hagen, of the same city's Humboldt University . Dr Hess and Dr Hagen, however, took the matter one stage further by asking their participants what they wanted to do about it.

    今年早些时候，来自柏林的马克斯普朗克研究所的Nicole Hess和洪堡大学的Edward Hagen报道了女性具有更强烈的愤怒情绪的相似发现。不过Hess博士和Hagen博士向受试者更进一步提问他们在愤怒之后将怎么做。

    The researchers read the participants, who were undergraduate students, an “aggression-evoking scenario”. They were told they had just overheard a physically smaller classmate of the same sex making false and serious attacks on their reputation to a teacher. Once again, the women were angrier than the men. The real difference between the sexes, though, was in the way they proposed to retaliate. Women usually said that they would get their own back with gossip. Men were more evenly divided, with roughly half wanting to punch the slanderous classmate.

    研究者试图解读受试者的“激发攻击性的场景”，这些受试者都是本科生。研究者告诉受试者他们无意中听到班上一个同一性别的小个子同学向老师打他们的小报告中伤他们。同样地，女性比男性更愤怒。真正的不同是他们企图进行报复的方式。女性通常会说她们要靠谣言来回应。男性中却有一半人想揍这个诽谤他们的同学。

    One idea to explain this is that in animals such as humans, where there is a lot of maternal care, females find physical aggression less affordable. And just because a smear is not physical does not mean that it is less damaging than a punch. Indeed, research suggests that girls find such indirect or social aggression much more hurtful than boys do.

    对这个的一个解释是在人类这样需要有大量的母性关怀的动物中，女性认为身体上的攻击性是很难承担的。诽谤不是身体上的，但这并不意味着比拳头的破坏性小。实际上女孩比男孩更觉得这些间接的或社会性的攻击性能刺痛她们。


Does it add up?
综合效应？

    Another behavioural difference that has borne a huge amount of scrutiny is in mathematics, particularly since Dr Summers's comments. The problem with trying to argue that the male tendency to systemise suggested by Dr Baron-Cohen might lead to greater mathematical ability is that, in fact, girls and boys are equally good at maths prior to puberty. Until recently, it was believed that males outperformed females in mathematics at all ages. Today, that picture has changed, and it appears that males and females of any age are equally good at computation and at understanding mathematical concepts. However, after their mid-teens, men are better at problem solving than women are.

    另一项招来广泛关注的研究是两性的数学能力差异，特别是自Summer博士抛出他的言论之后。Baron-Cohen博士所提出的男性由于更具系统性而在数学能力上占优的观点有一个问题，即事实上在青春期前女孩和男孩在数学方面是一样出色的。直到最近人们还认为男性在各个年龄段上数学能力都优于女性。今天这一观念已被改变。各个年龄的男性和女性在计算和理解数学概念上是一样擅长的。但在大约15岁以后，男性要比女性有更强的解决问题的能力。

    Males also have better spatial abilities than females. If asked to imagine rotating a three-dimensional object, a skill useful in engineering, the difference is quite large (d=0.73 and 0.56 in different studies). In this case the limited evidence available suggests the difference is related to the post-birth testosterone surge in boys. Women who were exposed to high levels of testosterone in the womb do not do noticeably better in spatial-rotation tasks.

    男性同时有更强的解决空间问题的能力。如果要在想象中旋转一个三维物体——一个在工程上很实用的技巧，那么差别是相当大的（在不同的研究中d=0.73或0.56）。有限的证据表明这和出生后男孩的睾丸激素水平激增有关。怀孕时在母体子宫中受到高水平睾丸激素影响的女性并没有在空间旋转问题上有显著提高。

    Men do not excel in all spatial tasks, though. Again contrary to popular myth, men and women are equally good at navigating. But this is another example of a task in which the sexes take different paths to the same destination. Women tend to rely on remembering landmarks, whereas men rely on their geometric skills to work out direction and distance. 

    然而男性也并没有在所以空间问题上都比女性出色。与流行的观点相反的是，男性和女性的驾驶能力是一样好的。但这是两性以不同方式解决同一个问题的又一个例子。女性倾向于记住地标，而男性则依靠其几何学的技巧来确定方向和距离。

    Another proposal to explain the lack of women professors of maths and science is that even if there is little or no difference in average ability, there might be differences in the variation around this average, with more men found in the tails of the distribution curve and fewer in the middle. In other words, among males there are more idiots and more prodigies. One study of IQ, covering everyone born in Scotland in 1932, supports this idea. It showed that there were more women in the middle of the distribution, but more men at both of the extremes. 

    对于数学和自然科学方面缺乏女性教授的另一个解释是，尽管在平均水平是两性没有差别，但在平均值附近的变异却有差别，男性更多地分别在曲线的两端，而很少在中间。换句话说，在男性中有更多的白痴和天才。一项覆盖了1932 年出生在苏格兰的所有人的IQ研究支持这个看法。它显示更多女性分布在中间而更多男性在两端。

    The question raised by Dr Summers does get to the heart of the matter. Over the past 50 years, women have made huge progress into academia and within it. Slowly, they have worked their way into the higher echelons of discipline after discipline. But some parts of the ivory tower have proved harder to occupy than others. The question remains, to what degree is the absence of women in science, mathematics and engineering caused by innate, immutable ability? 

    Summers博士提出的问题并没有触及问题的关键。在过去的50年里，女性在学术领域有重大的进步。渐渐地她们已经加入了各个学科的最高一级的梯队里。但象牙塔的某些部分确实比之其他部分更难到达。还是那个问题，到底多大程度上女性在科学、数学领域的缺位是由先天的，不可改变的能力决定的？

    Innate it may well be. That does not mean it is immutable. Spatial ability is amenable to training in both sexes. And such training works. The difference between the trained and the untrained has a d value of 0.4, and one programme to teach spatial ability improved the retention rate of women in engineering courses from 47% to 77%. Biology may predispose, but even in the rugged world of metal bashing, it is not necessarily destiny.

    确实有先天因素。但这并不是说就不可改变。空间能力对两性来说都是可以通过训练来改变的。这种训练是有效果的，接受过训练和未接受训练的d值差异是0.4，而一项空间能力的培训使得女性在工程课程中的通过率由47%上升到77%。铁杵磨成针，生物性也许会让你具有某种倾向，但决不是命中注定的。