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Women and the Mismeasure Of Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Judith Genova
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Abstract

Recent attempts by the neurological and psychological communities to articulate thought differences between women and men continue to mismeasure thought, especially women's thought. To challenge the claims of hemispheric specialization and lateralization studies, I argue three points: 1) given more sophisticated biological models, brain researchers cannot assume that differences, should they exist, between women and men are purely a result of innate structures; 2) the distinction currently being drawn between verbal/spatial thinking abilities is fraught with ideological commitments that undermine the intelligibility of the distinction; 3) the model of thinking as information processing which underlies all this research confuses thinking with internal processing strategies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 3 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Feminism and Science, Part 2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 101 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Hypatia, Inc.

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