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Scientists have declared that women are not stupider than men

 
, medical expert
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
 
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16 December 2015, 09:00

The widespread opinion that women are naturally dumber than men has been refuted by a group of American experts. According to the researchers, a person's intellectual abilities are not influenced by gender, but by the social environment in which they grew up.

The study was conducted at the University of Chicago Medicine, a group of neurologists found that the male and female brains are the same size or have minor differences, including the same hippocampus area. This area forms short-term and long-term memories, emotional responses to certain events in a person's life, helps to navigate in space, and the hippocampus is also considered an "information filter", since it determines which events remain in memory and which are simply erased.

For decades, scientists believed that the hippocampus in men was larger in size, which is why the stronger sex was considered more intellectually developed than the weaker sex.

But a team of neurologists led by Liz Elliott reviewed more than 70 scientific papers that included MRI data from more than 6,000 healthy patients.

After analysis, experts concluded that the hippocampus in the male and female brain is actually the same size.

The author of the project noted that the arguments in favor of the intellectual superiority of men over women are precisely the size of the brain, in addition, there are many studies that confirm the differences between the male and female brain, however, all studies were based on a small part of the available data, and Elliott's group analyzed a huge amount of information, after which they announced their conclusions.

As neurologists have stated, there are practically no differences between the brains of men and women, and the identified dissimilarities are insignificant. If you study the data more carefully, and do not limit yourself to certain conclusions of some scientific works, it will be clear that there are almost no differences between the female and male brains.

Lisa Elliott also noted that other works by scientists, which combined the results of several studies, also refuted well-known stereotypes about the differences between the male and female brain.

According to Professor S. Drobyshevsky from Moscow State University, the stereotype of the intellectual superiority of the stronger sex appeared because the male brain was considered larger, or more precisely the hypothalamus area, but this part of the brain is not responsible for intelligence. It is also believed that women are dumber, since their brain is on average 100g lighter. However, Professor Drobyshevsky emphasizes that women are on average shorter than men, and their body weight is also less, compared to the stronger sex. If we take into account the size of the brain relative to body weight, then the result will be that the mass of the male and female brain is equal. The complexity of the brain is associated with the activity of neurons, but not with its size.

It is worth noting that in practice it turns out that people with a large brain size have some deviations, in particular, manic disorders or suffer from epileptic seizures.

Scientists note that comparing brain size and intelligence can only be done between species, for example, a human would be smarter than an Australopithecus, but if we take different populations of people, this approach would be incorrect.

Intellectual development is largely influenced by the environment in which a person grew up, how he was brought up, and the hereditary factor is also important, otherwise there would be no need for education, people would already be born smart or stupid and no schools, universities, etc. would be able to influence human development.

The human brain can be filled with knowledge, or it can be left unfilled; a person can have a “smart” brain, but not use it at all, or “load” even a small brain to the maximum.

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