Ep#116 | The Gendered Brain
Meet our guest: Professor Gina Rippon. She is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. She is a past-President of the British Association of Cognitive Neuroscience and, in 2015, was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the British Science Association. Her research involves state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate developmental disorders such as dyslexia and autism. She has received funding from The Medical Research Council, The Wellcome Foundation, The Nuffield Foundation, Economic and Social Sciences Research Council, Biological and Behavioural Sciences Research Council,
She also investigates the use of neuroscience techniques to explore social processes including gender stereotyping and stereotype threat. She is an outspoken critic of ’neurotrash’, the populist (mis)use of neuroscience research to (mis)represent our understanding of the brain and, most particularly, to prop up outdated gender stereotypes. Her book on this topic ‘The Gendered Brain’, published by Bodley Head and Penguin Random House, came out in February 2019.
She is currently serving on the Fawcett Society Commission which will be reporting on the effect of gender stereotyping in the early years in 2020. She works with organisations such as WISE and Speakers4Schools and the European Union to address the issue of the under-representation of women in science.
Some great takeaways from Gina:
Knowing one's gender is not informative in terms of understanding what the size of that part of the brain it's going to be
Destinations, where people are being led to, is not positive for everybody
It isn’t about gender differences, it’s about how we are conditioned to be
Whatever you will put your focus on, will grow.
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Grab the book THE GENDERED BRAIN Gina talks about here!
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