Do Genetics Really Tell The Tale?

This is an interesting but odd book, with an awkward title that reflects its inner dissonance. It has two main themes that are little related except for their presumed genetic basis. Actually, it documents a number of paradoxes: That female brains have a more balanced structure leading to stability than do male brains, yet males rule the earth. That nowadays girls and women are more highly educated in the West than men, yet earn on average much less money. That on average boys are more fragile and more given to genetic disorders than girls, yet will grow up to have more power. That many females have extreme love for their infants, yet still opt for top jobs. that allow them to spend little time together. That some bright women train for positions in science, engineering and math, yet later drop out from the lucrative jobs they have been successfully holding down. It is this last paradox that is the major theme of this book, that the careers of high-flyer women in these non-traditional areas for women are often waylaid by their lack of a Y chromosome. The second theme that is dragged kicking into the same book involves discussions of “extreme men” with mental genetic problems: those with dyslexia, autism, aggression, and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Let’s start with the males and leave Pinker’s more problematic thesis about the females for later.

Pinker devotes a chapter to each of the extreme conditions mentioned above, which are much more pronounced and common in boys and men. Each has a genetic basis, often occurring somewhat more frequently in twins for example, but there is also an environmental component. We do not know what causes these conditions in some people rather than in others. She brings to each interesting chapter the overview of one ailment, discussions with people who suffer from it but who have made good despite this, and cutting-edge opinions of experts in the field.

The chapter “Dyslexic Boys Who Make Good” notes that about 8 percent of males have dyslexia (compared to 1 or 2 percent of females), meaning that they have trouble reading, writing and even speaking. MRI studies show that most language skills in males are localized in the left hemisphere of the brain while those of girls, who are better on average with language than boys, use both hemispheres. These brain areas in females have a higher cell density than those of males. Dyslexic boys, who often score well on tests of mathematics, science and motor skills, tend to become men who, through perseverance and grit, have successful full-time jobs in various trades and businesses. Researchers suggest that perhaps male deficits in the left brain hemispheres of dyslexics may be offset by cortical pathways in other non-language areas of the brain, giving some dyslexic men superior skills in invention, politics, artistic endeavour and entrepreneurial talent. Certainly my dyslexic son has amazing abilities to create art out of discarded metal and invent schemes to improve the functioning of the machinery he works with. Men in history who are thought to have been dyslexic include Hans Christian Andersen, Edison, Einstein, Rodin and Leonardo da Vinci. My son is in good company.

The chapter “Revenge of the Nerds” discusses Asperger syndrome, a form of autism; 90 percent of those afflicted are boys and men. They are by definition high functioning and sometimes brilliant leaders in their field, perhaps because of their unusual way of looking at things. If they have identical twin siblings, there is a 60 to 90 percent chance that their twin will also have the condition, so it is highly heritable. People with Asperger syndrome are uninterested in relationships with other people, have few social skills and focus instead on fact-driven knowledge. Some are epileptic (40 percent of children with autism also have epilepsy) and a few are savants: Daniel Tammer from Britain, for example, can recall and recite 22,514 decimal places of pi from memory. Most children with autistic disorders have abnormal brain growth from an early age, so that a five-year-old may have the head size of a 16-year-old.

In a chapter on aggression, Pinker reports that cementing status through competition has been “documented in males from an early age and in almost every culture.” By contrast, females may be competitive, but they are less overt about it and rarely physically aggressive. She relates these characteristics to the evolution of our species. In the past virtually all females had babies but this was not true of all men. Some are thought to have had many children and others none. She writes that “good-looking show-offs and risk-takers could garner more female attention, gathering a harem to themselves. More cautious men were the wallflowers left out of the fun. Ultimately there would be fewer of their genetic signatures around.” She feels that such an evolutionary phenomenon is correct, based on comparative data from fruit flies, dragon-flies, lizards, prairie chickens and baboons, among others, and that it holds true for contemporary as well as protohuman beings. However, many of us wonder if such evolutionary psychology really pertains to modern-day men and women who have large brains that enable them to decide rationally what is wanted in a spouse and whether or not to have children.

In the past there has been some question about whether ADHD is actually a valid physiological disorder; if so, one would expect there to be similar numbers of boys (again it occurs much more often in boys than in girls) with the problem in different areas of western culture. But this is not so. In the United States 18 times as many boys are treated for it as in the United Kingdom; Scotland has higher rates than England; Alabama has twice as many as Colorado; and rates also vary in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Iceland. It may be that some places are more tolerant than others of student restlessness, dreaminess and lack of self-control. ADHD was thought until recently to be caused by lax parenting, bad teaching, underfunded schools or poor diet, but now it seems evident that the condition has a biological basis: in males the presence of high levels of the sexual hormone testosterone is linked with aggression, as well as with lower levels of education and blue collar work. For identical twins, if one child has the disorder, then there is a 40 to 88 percent chance that his or her twin will have it also. (How do the parents of such twins manage? I was once holed up in a hospital research room for a day with six ADHD children tearing around us mothers, talking non-stop, climbing over chairs, bouncing off the walls. Unbearable.) However, Pinker describes some men with this disorder who have become immensely successful in business. Ron Wall became a marketing genius who invented the idea of linking freebies to plastic credit cards, now called loyalty cards, his company eventually generating $50 million a year. Paul Orfalea founded Kinko’s, the copying business that nets $2 billion annually.

In summary, in Pinker’s treatment of men with the above four inherited ailments, she notes that at one end of the spectrum there are those who are unable to fit into society and suffer accordingly. By contrast, at the other end there are highly successful individuals. Women may also have these ailments, but they do not exhibit such extreme characteristics as men. These observations are of interest, but they do not have much to do with the other major theme of her book.

This second theme deals with the minority of highly intelligent and successful women who have been dissatisfied with the lucrative jobs (as lawyers, scientists, engineers) they trained for and have therefore dropped out of them to choose less stressful, lower paying positions with more social contacts. Some choose not to work at all. In her chapter “Abandon Ship! Successful Women Who Opt Out of Science and Engineering Careers,” Pinker describes a number of women with advanced university degrees in this situation. They are 2.8 times more likely than men to leave science and engineering careers for other occupations, and 13 times more likely to exit the labour force entirely even when they do not have small children to raise. She lists the socially meaningful but much lower-paid job sectors that women often choose after they leave their high-pressure positions: philanthropic foundations, public service and social justice groups, areas where women meet other people face to face and can help them improve their lives. We learn that women are much more empathetic and nurturing than are men, and much more likely to stay home to look after children. All these facts are, of course, true. But often in relating human behaviour to genetics Pinker overlooks the importance of human culture. She gives information about the behaviour of various animals such as bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, rhesus monkeys, sheep and rats to show they have characteristics similar to those of people, but is this relevant? (Strangely, these species are deemed important enough to discuss because of behavioural similarities to human beings, but not important enough to be listed in the index.)

I would argue that in western society top women drop out of jobs they do not enjoy because they can; by contrast, women in similar top jobs in the developing world seldom leave them because they need the money—in the Philippines, Russia and Thailand about 30 percent to 35 percent of physicists are women. Western high-flying women have been earning large salaries and are usually married to professional men, so they do not have to worry about money; western men, by contrast, seldom leave the labour force because this, for them, is culturally problematic. It is not biology that drives these women’s choices, but rationality.

Pinker herself lists two main problems that turn women off top jobs: they require long workdays, which is difficult when a woman has children, and they often are highly stressful and demand frequent travel. Top jobs are well paid, which is why much is demanded of those who hold them. Western culture still sees such jobs as most suitable for men, with women the “odd man out” as it were. If women choose to leave the work force, this is not considered nearly as strange as if men did so.

Other turnoffs mentioned by Pinker include bullying bosses whose comments are more offensive to female than to male employees, employers who negotiate with men about their salaries but are more averse to doing this with women (who around the world make significantly less money than men) and foul language, which is apparently rife among top chefs in the restaurant industry. Universities are particularly problematic for women professors in math, science and engineering—there are few of them and so few role models for new hires; committees often need a woman for their composition, which means less time for her own research; students often go to women to request they be their mentors or to complain about discrimination, which sucks away their time; and maternity leaves may hurt a woman professor’s career, if indeed she feels she can have children at all. Why should a professional woman stay in a position that demands much more of her time and energy than she wants to give? Her family can probably afford a nanny and she can do work that she knows has value and that does not stress her out or undermine family life.

If Pinker is correct in her thesis based on evolutionary psychology, we should wonder why many women train for and stay in top stressful non-traditional jobs. What about women who work as top lawyers, entrepreneurs and professors for their entire lives? Pinker has little to say about them. She notes that some such professional women declare they have never faced sexual discrimination, but this is their own perception and is often known to be untrue.

Pinker believes that some women give up top jobs because of their biological imperative for social, empathetic work. How does that fit with the biological imperative to have babies? As far as nature is concerned, having babies is infinitely more important and what women are made for; remaining in or leaving a workplace is small potatoes. Yet fertility rates are plummeting. In Canada, there are far fewer babies being born than are needed to replace our current population. If women are servants of their genetic inheritance, surely they would be having more children before they worried about jobs.

Pinker asserts that people think male and female brains are the same. This idea is probably true for some people, but not for many of us. Any observant person knows that men and women tend to have very different interests—barbecue parties have always had men discussing sports while women chat about their friends and children. We read in the news that far from girls being discriminated against in education, it is boys now who are having trouble competing with girls at all levels from kindergarten to university. But we also know that individual men and women with talent can succeed at almost any job they are trained to do.

Pinker writes frequently about the “fragility” of men, noting that “these apparent opposites—fragile men, gifted women—provide an unusual lens on the gender debate.” This particular lens seems to me unprofitable. Some men are fragile, particularly if they have a genetic ailment such as those discussed above that renders them unable to cope with life. But many of the fragile boys she discusses succeed brilliantly as adults. They are highly gifted, just as many women are.

The central thesis of this book appears to be that some highly trained women leave their top jobs in response to a biological imperative—they feel a need to cater to their empathetic side that values human relationships more than money and prestige. But many women stay in lucrative jobs and savour their important positions. If biological imperatives were central to women’s lives, surely it would play out in their all having children, as women evolved to do. Yet most women nowadays in the West have few children, or none at all. Common sense dictates that if they do not need the money, professional women are sensible to leave stressful jobs that are exhausting, involve long hours and curtail family life.