Sakhi Sanga: Gender Differences

Showing posts with label Gender Differences. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

CTW: Vedic Perspective on Gender Differences

Having understood in the previous sessions about gender differences at the physical and psychological level, we will attempt to understand through the philosophical world of the Vedas and the cultural world that is based upon it .At the end of this session we will be able to appreciate how the difference in the psycho-physical natures of men and women is thoroughly understood and acknowledged in the Vedic Culture. We will go through the following topics:

Taking into account the differences- the society is designed to engage men and women in their areas of strength in a manner in which they can complement each other.

Varnashrama - the culture of protection and inclusion for the growth of spiritual consciousness

Also, many times we have read in the Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita that "Women are less intelligent" at the same time we read several examples right from the Bhagavatam about how a "Good wife means Good intelligence" and she increases the family's engagement in devotional service.Understanding the points above will also help us reconcile these opposites.

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Strengths and Weaknesses for men and women

Even though all of us are feminine souls (prakriti) with a masculine mindset (purusha), and although we all try to enjoy in the world as the master and as the center (and therefore repeatedly take birth after birth), in general it can be said that the male body is an imitation of the purusha principle and the woman’s body is an imitation of the prakriti principle. Hence, the nature of their activities in the world is different.

They are naturally attracted to each other, like the purusha and prakriti. The man is attracted to the woman as a protector and a giver of shelter, and the woman is attracted to the man in the mood of love and service.

Intelligence of men and women

The most fundamental difference between a man’s body and a woman’s body is found in the structure of their intelligence and emotions. This fundamental difference (manifested in a different brain structure) is meant to enable their various roles in society.

Two sides of the brain- one side deals with emotions, the other deals with the analytical aspects. Men work with one side and the other - never both they may switch back and forth but its always on one side Women both sides constantly work - emotions and senses are always connected to one another. There may be more emphasis for one side or the other

This gives strengths and weaknesses to both parties.

Dealing with philosophy:

For the men their strength is if they look at something especially philosophical -they can look at it purely analytically without emotion -and say this is right this is wrong- reject the wrong.
Their weakness is if they are emotional they don't actually analyze the situation. they just see what is the emotion and they move in the realm of the mind and go that way.
Therefore they will do so many things- take an ism, take an issue and completely take it up without thinking what gain or loss may come or they become interested in sense gratification and absorb themselves without thinking of the consequences.

Nurturing Role:
- Whereas women, we see their strength is in the mood of a mother, means in the mood of mother- then the emotions are running at the same time one can analyze what is the best situation for dealing and helping others.
- A woman is emotionally wise and intuitive, and consequently she is very practical, soft, mentally strong, and can connect and reconcile contradictions.
- This gives her strength in developing nurturing relationships and creating a loving home for the children and husband.
- In the realm of emotions they can see what is the proper thing to do. Like we can see in the realm of the house they can decide the furniture is like this , the colors are like this put this here , there, etc - that is their expertise.
Dealing with Children:

Or we can see the child is crying-because of the emotions the natural affection is there at the same time women can analyse "oh the child is hungry, tired, something is bothering them."

Men cannot do that. Because of their emotions they feel they should do something for the child, but in that emotional state they cannot analyze what is wrong. If they try to analyze it then they would think- "what would I do with this anyway- its crying, its wet- like that" that is the strength of women .
The weakness for the women is then when trying to purely analyze a philosophical subject or a practical situation one gets caught between understanding the situation this is correct, this is the philosophy this is correct- but also the emotion "Oh but what about this, someone may say that, this one may feel this".

Dealing with the outside world:

For the man, the senses and emotions are separate, enabling him to cope with the harsh and competitive world outside without being harmed. His intelligence can analyze, separate, and differentiate more efficiently, because it is less emotionally involved.
Because of this connection between her emotions and her intelligence, sometimes it is not easy for her to separate them when necessary, especially in contact with the aggressive and rough world. Because of her physically weaker body, she tends to feel unprotected when not surrounded by a loving atmosphere (therefore, when women are forced to go out into this situation, they usually close up and toughen themselves, harming their soft feminine nature).

Dealing with Distress:

She needs compassion, someone to listen to her, and someone to share with, while he needs practical solutions (when he offers her his practical solutions while she is distressed, it only annoys her). The sequence of her conversation moves from one emotional point to another, she loves spending time in heart-to-heart conversations, and discussions about others and their emotional world fascinate her. The man, however, is interested in practical-intellectual discussions, and his conversation progresses in a logical sequence. She is sensitive to subtleties and responds to them, while he might not even notice them, etc…

Advantage of a woman's emotional nature in devotional service
- Prabhupada did say that women’s soft-heartedness is, indeed, an aid in their Krishna consciousness, and that men’s tendency toward hard-heartedness can be an impediment. While a male body gives an overall advantage to a soul seeking realization of Krishna, a female body has two advantages–the tendency to accept and follow authority, and soft-heartedness.
- “As soon as soft-hearted people such as women hear those transcendental pastimes of Lord Krsna, they immediately become attracted to Him. Soft-hearted women and girls are therefore very easily drawn to the Krsna consciousness movement. One who is thus drawn to the Krsna consciousness movement and tries to keep himself in constant touch with such consciousness certainly gets the supreme salvation, going back to Krsna in Goloka Vrndavana.” (krishna Book, chapter 90)
- Why are women considered less intelligent:

Dharma (or a mood of service, commitment, and sensitivity to others) is designed to bridge and regulate the relationship between these two separate worlds, and make the cooperation between them conducive to spiritual advancement, until they reach full freedom from self-centeredness, or from the bodily identification of “I am a man”, “I am a woman”, returning back to the eternal spiritual nature – the prakriti nature.

References:

Refer lecture and earlier part of the transcript here.

Dharma- The combination of matter and spirit

Comment by HG Urmila Devi Dasi for the article “Women are Less Intelligent?”

Examples from Shastra:

Sita Devi requesting Rama to give up weapons during their exile.

Kasyapa and Diti

Lord Siva and Sati

Thursday, October 24, 2013

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Emotions

Women are more likely to express their emotions

Men and women experience the same amount of emotion, but that women are more likely to express their emotions. When measured with an affect intensity measure, women reported greater intensity of both positive and negative affect than men. Women also reported a more intense and more frequent experience of affect, joy, and love but also experienced more embarrassment, guilt, shame, sadness, anger, fear, and distress.
Experiencing pride was more frequent and intense for men than for women.[128] In imagined frightening situations, such as being home alone and witnessing a stranger walking towards your house, women reported greater fear.
Anger and Fear: Women also reported more fear in situations that involved "a male's hostile and aggressive behavior" (281)[128] In anger-eliciting situations, women communicated more intense feelings of anger than men. Women also reported more intense feelings of anger in relation to terrifying situations, especially situations involving a male protagonist.[133] Emotional contagion refers to the phenomenon of a person’s emotions becoming similar to those of surrounding people. Women have been reported to be more responsive to this.[134]
Women were found to be more facially expressive than men when it came to both positive and negative emotions. These researchers concluded that men and women experience the same amount of emotion, but that women are more likely to express their emotions
Tear Glands: Women are known to have anatomically differently shaped tear glands than men as well as having more of the hormone prolactin, which is present in tear glands, as adults. While girls and boys cry at roughly the same amount at age 12, by age 18, women generally cry four times more than men, which could be explained by higher levels of prolactin.[73][139]
Facial expressions:

In a study where researchers wanted to concentrate on nonverbal expressions by just looking at the eyebrows, lips, and the eyes, participants read certain cue cards that were either negative or positive and recorded the responses.
In the results of this experiment it is shown that feminine emotions happen more frequently and have a higher intensity in women than men. In relation to the masculine emotions, such as anger, the results are flipped and the women’s frequency and intensity is lower than the men’s.
Studies that measure facial expression by the use of electromyography recordings show that women are more adequately able to manipulate their facial expressions than men. Men, however can inhibit their expressions better than females when cued to do so. In the observer ratings women’s facial expressions are easier to read as opposed to men’s except for the expression of anger

Amygdala :

Women show a significantly greater activity in the left amygdala when encoding and remembering emotionally arousing pictures (such as mutilated bodies.)
Men and women tend to use different neural pathways to encode stimuli into memory. While highly emotional pictures were remembered best by all participants in one study, as compared to emotionally neutral images, women remembered the pictures better than men. This study also found greater activation of the right amygdala in men and the left amygdala in women.
On average, women use more of the left cerebral hemisphere when shown emotionally arousing images, while men use more of their right hemisphere.
Women also show more consistency between individuals for the areas of the brain activated by emotionally disturbing images.[144] One study of 12 men and 12 women found that more areas in the brains of women were highly activated by emotional imagery, though the differences may have been due to the upbringing of the test participants.[146]

Past events and Pain:

When women are asked to think about past events that made them angry, they show activity in the septum in the limbic system; this activity is absent in males. In contrast, men's brains show more activity in the limbic system when asked to identify happy or sad male and female faces.
In women, the limbic system, which is involved in the processing of emotions, shows greater activity in response to pain. In men, cognitive areas of the brain, which are involved in analytical processing, show higher activity in response to pain.[148] This indicates a connection between pain-responsive brain regions and emotional regions in women.

Mental Health
Men and women do not differ on their overall rates of psychopathology, however, certain disorders are more prevalent in women, and vice versa. Women have higher rates of anxiety and depression (internalizing disorders) and men have higher rates of substance abuse and antisocial disorders (externalizing disorders). It is believed that divisions of power and the responsibilities set upon each sex are critical to this predisposition. Namely, women earn less money than men do, they tend to have jobs with less power and autonomy, and women are more responsive to problems of people in their social networks. These three differences can contribute to women's predisposition to anxiety and depression. It is believed that socializing practices that encourage high self-regard and mastery would benefit the mental health of both men and women

Menstrual Cycle and Mood

Researchers used MRI to study the brains of women who viewed a series of pictures and rated them as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. This test was repeated at different stages of the women's menstrual cycles.
In the early follicular stage of the menstrual cycle, no areas of the women's brains showed significantly increased activation while viewing the pictures. But during the midpoint of their menstrual cycle, when hormone levels were higher, the women had increased activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex and other areas of the brain involved in processing emotional information, the researchers found
Predicting where woman are in their menstrual cycle based on behavior alone

A very interesting study from the 1930’s by a physician and a psychologist puts it all into perspective. The physician monitored the hormone states of women while the psychologist observed their behaviors. What they found was that the psychologist could predict, with amazing accuracy, where the women were in their menstrual cycles, based on behavior alone.
They found that during the first half of the cycle, before ovulation, the women’s emotions and behaviors were more focused on the outside world—on creating and contributing outside of themselves. During ovulation the women were more content, relaxed, and allowed more help and care from others. After ovulation, during the premenstrual phase when estrogen was lowest and progesterone highest, the women were more focused internally, on their own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
This study illustrates what we women have sensed for years: We feel, think, and even behave differently in accordance with the dialogue of our menstrual cycles.
But this study also shows the wisdom of our female bodies. As author Christiane Northrup states, “I like to think of the first half of our cycles as the time when we are both biologically and psychologically preparing to give birth to someone or something outside of ourselves. In the second half of the cycles, we prepare to give birth to nothing less than ourselves”[4].
Sure, our menstrual cycles can make our moods feel a little complicated. But if we learn about our body and listen to its wisdom, we will not only have the power to take charge of our emotional well-being, but we will appreciate the incredible power our beautiful female bodies possess."
References : Emotions during Menstrual Cycle- womenshealth.about.com
Emotions during Menstrual Cycle- Dr Christina Hebbert

Reaction to stress sending emotions in a whirl:
Reference: Women more prone to emotional stress than men 'because of sensitivity to hormone'

Members of the fairer sex are more sensitive to a key stress hormone - with even small amounts sending their emotions into a whirl, research shows.
Men, in contrast, are relatively immune to even high amounts of the chemical.This perhaps explains why they often take a more laid-back view of potential crises - infuriating the women in their lives in the process.
Researchers say the U.S. study could help explain the differences in the way men and women control their emotions.Women have higher rates of depression,post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety problems than men. The study focused on a stress hormone called corticotropinreleasing factor (CRF) which helps control the body's reaction to stress.
CRF is known to play a role in human psychiatric conditions. Study leader Dr Rita Valentino, of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said: 'This is an animal study carried out on rats and we cannot say that the biological mechanism is the same in people. But researchers already know that CRF regulation is disrupted in stress-related psychiatric disorders, so this research may be relevant to the underlying human biology. This may help to explain why women are twice as vulnerable as men to stress-related disorders.
In the study, brain cells of female rats were excited by doses of CRF that were too low to affect cells in male rats, the journal Molecular Psychiatry reports. Experiments showed that the hormone bound more tightly to brain cell proteins of stressed-out female rats, making them more sensitive to its effects. The male rats, however, were able to reduce levels of the protein, stopping the hormone from binding and reducing its effects on the brain.

Memory
The results from research on sex differences in memory are mixed and inconsistent, with some studies showing no difference, and others showing a female or male advantage.[80] Most studies have found no sex differences in short term memory, the rate of memory decline due to aging, or memory of visual stimuli.[80] Females have been found to have an advantage in recalling auditory and olfactory stimuli, experiences, faces, names, and the location of objects in space.[11][80] However, males show an advantage in recalling "masculine" events.
Also for females their memory is tied to their emotions hence they are able to recall events better than men.

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Social Behavior and Abilities

Verbal Abilities

Women show higher performance levels on tests of verbal fluency. This may be because the female auditory cortex is more dense than that of the male. This difference and other sensory differences like it could be because of the sex hormones that impact the fetal brain during development

Mathematical attitudes and effects

Small difference , also could be due to difference on how the teachers percieve a boy vs a girl. Parents were, and sometimes still are, more likely to consider a son's mathematical achievement as being a natural skill while a daughter's mathematical achievement is more likely to be seen as something she studied hard for. This difference in attitude may contribute to girls and women being discouraged from further involvement in mathematics-related subjects and careers(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_psychology)

Influenceability and Conformity(Peer Pressure)

Woman conform more and may thus be more prone to peer pressure

Aggression

Males across race, culture, country , age

Small Group Behavior

Tasks that require task orineted behavior men performed better. Tasks that require social behavior for good performance women perform better. A women's interactive style helped increase group productivity. Men generated more solutions in same sex groups when working individually. General cultural sex roles are manifested in task group interaction as well- women were more socio emotional in their interaction whereas men where more engaged in active task behavior

Leadership Behavior

Women lead in a more democratic way and men do in a more autocratic way

Non verbal communication

Women more accurately interpret nonverbal, communication. In sum, based on a literature of hundreds of studies, it appears that women occupy a more nonverbally conscious, positive, and interpersonally engaged world than men do. women make greater effort to increase interpersonal comfort

Empathy

Understanding and tracking relationships and reading others' emotional states was particularly important for women for tasks such as caring for children and social networking.Women perform better than men in tests involving emotional interpretation, such as understanding facial expressions, and empathy.

Inter species empathy

An international survey of 12 Eurasian nations (n>4000) was conducted between 2007 to 2008. The initiator and principle investigator of the survey, Dr Jenia Meng, found that females on average have a higher level of empathy with nonhuman animals than males.

References:
Psychology of women: A Handbook of Issues and Theories
The Psychology of Women- Helene Deutsch
Sex Differences in Human Psychology
Sex Differences in Human Physiology
Emotions during Menstrual Cycle- womenshealth.about.com
Emotions during Menstrual Cycle- Dr Christina Hebbert

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences: Physiology

Size, weight and body shape:

Men weigh more and are taller on an average. Women have a larger hip section than men,for giving birth to infants with large skulls

Strength, power and muscle mass:

Females have less total muscle mass than males. Males are stronger than females.

Skeleton:

Males have denser, stronger bones, tendons, and ligaments.Male and female pelvises are shaped differently. The female pelvis features a wider pelvic cavity, which is necessary when giving birth.
The female pelvis is larger and broader than the male pelvis which is taller, narrower, and more compact. The female inlet is larger and oval in shape, while the male inlet is more heart-shaped.

Respiratory System :

Males typically have larger tracheae and branching bronchi, with about 56% greater lung volume per body mass.

Skin and Hair:

Male skin is thicker (more collagen) and oilier (more sebum) than female skin,[29] but females have a thicker layer of fat under the skin. Males also generally have darker skin than females. The lighter skin in females helps their bodies synthesize more Vitamin D from sunlight and absorb more calcium, which is needed during pregnancy and lactation. Men have more body hair than females

Sensory systems

Women are more sensitive to smell and have more pain receptors on their body.In addition to defined diseases and syndromes, many common “everyday” pains appear to overburden women rather than men. Therefore, studies consistently find that women report more severe pain, more frequent pain, longer-lasting pain, and wider-ranging pain than men.[94] For example, common painful conditions such as dysmenorrhea may predispose females to more widespread musculoskeletal pains.

Brain and Nervous System:

Human males, on average, have larger brains than females. According to a 1995 study, female brains are more compact than male brains in that, though smaller, they are more densely packed with neurons, particularly in the region responsible for language.
Intelligence: In studies concerning intelligence, it has been suggested that the ratio of brain weight to body weight (rather than actual brain weight) is more predictive of IQ levels. While men's brains are an average of 10-15% larger and heavier than women's brains, some researchers propose that the ratio of brain to body size does not differ between the sexes.However, some argue that since brain-to-body-size ratios tend to decrease as body size increases, a sex difference in brain-weight ratios still exists between men and women of the same size.
Auditory and Language Related Regions:

Studies using MRI scanning have shown that the auditory and language-related regions in the left hemisphere are proportionally expanded in females versus in males.
Conversely, the primary visual, and visuo-spatial association areas of the parietal lobes are proportionally larger in males.

Speech and Language: The corpus callous is located at the sagittal divide and is the primary commissure in the human brain. It connects the left

and right hemispheres of the cerebral cortex, which allows them to communicate with each other. With respect to language, males predominantly use their left hemisphere but females use both their right and left hemispheres. The right hemisphere controls emotion, so using the right hemisphere adds more prosody to speech.In males, the corpus callosum is larger than females.[71] However, the splenium and the isthmus subregions of the corpus callosum are larger in females. The genu subregion is larger in males. These subregions may serve as the basis for sex differences in language.

Memory Storage and Spatial Mapping:

The hippocampus has been proven by imaging to be larger in women than men. The hippocampus is crucial for memory storage and spatial mapping of the physical environment. This structural difference may be responsible for variations in behavior between the sexes.
Navigation: Studies show that women are more likely to navigate using landmarks, while men are more likely to estimate distance in space or orientation.
Chronic Stress Studies of rats show that males could learn better in the face of acute stress, while chronic stress is dealt with better by females. Sex hormones may influence female hippocampal cells to tolerate brain damage better than the same cells in men. The studies of the rats' influx and deflation of hippocampal cells can be translated to the difference in memory and spatial behaviors between the sexes

Amygdala:

The amygdala, which is the structure that responds to emotionally arousing information, respond to the environment and reacts with stress. The male amygdala is proportionally larger than that in women, causing sex to be a determining factor in reactions to stress. In studies of rats, there are more numerous interconnections seen in males in regard to this structure, suggesting the same pattern in humans. Katharina Braun and company (Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany) studied a litter of Degu puppies removed from their mother and determined that hearing their mother's call produced a higher concentration of serotonin in males' amygdala and a decreased concentration in females' amygdala. In this case, stress causes females' emotion regulation to drop, while males seem to keep more of an even keel. While this study was limited to rodents, it provides a possible explanation of why anxiety disorders occur more often among human females than males

CTW: Appreciating Gender Differences

Today we will go through various studies to understand and appreciate Gender Differences between men and women. Our Creator - Lord Sri Krishna is Supremely wonderful. Understanding Gender differences is a great way to appreciate His creation and the thought behind it as well.

Men and Women have been created differently right from their physiology, to how they process information, to how they experience and express emotions all perfectly created to suit the role of being a man for men and for being a woman for women.

We will go through the data present in these links below:

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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Thursday, October 24, 2013