Rebecca M. Jordan-Young

A painstaking look at the current state of brain science, and particularly brain organization theory, which states basically that our brains are organized to make us "female" or "male", and that women are so different from men they are unable to perform the same sorts of tasks - or, once cognitive testing showed that to be wrong, that women simply aren't interested in performing the same sorts of work, because of hormones. She traces the evolution of brain organization theory, and details show more the various forms it takes, demonstrating that even the proponents of this idea cannot agree with each other on what changes are caused by what hormone, or even on what it means to be masculine or feminine. The research is extensive, the writing is accessible, and the subject matter important. It is a must read for anyone who thinks that we can pigeonhole the sexes. Think you know what it means to be male or female? This book will challenge you to rethink that. show less

This is a very dense read (there are multiple citations after every sentence in some sections)! Even so, it contains very valuable overview of the glaring flaws in methodology, citation (citing papers that do not support or that even contradict the statement due to different definitions), media interpretation and several examples of unintentional statistical errors that are endemic to gender studies cases. This should be required reading for anyone in these fields. If you are familiar with show more statistical and experimental design flaws, you may already suspect many of the flaws presented here, but the actual presence of them in the most cited papers in these fields may be surprising. show less

I couldn't get into this. The language was just too opaque. I haven't given a rating because I was trying to read the German, and have no idea how much of this was the authors and how much the translator.

Very interesting, but very academic language for a popular science book. More on my thoughts here.