The Natural Superiority of Women (22 page)

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Authors: Ashley Montagu

Tags: #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Women's Studies, #test

BOOK: The Natural Superiority of Women
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for constitutionally, women are stronger than men, and men are constitutionally weaker than women, in part because of their burden of muscularity. Furthermore, the female possesses a more efficient and powerful immunological system than the male, thus affording her greater immunity against infection and endowing her with a faster recovery rate. The male pays heavily for his larger body build and muscular power. Because his expenditure of energy is greater than that of the female, he burns himself out more rapidly and hence dies at an earlier age. The metabolic rate of the male, as I have already stated, is some 6 to 7 percent higher than that of the female.
Where, now, are the much-vaunted advantages of the male's larger size and muscular power? Are males biologically fitter in
any
way? Are these physical traits socially advantageous any longer? The answer is that whatever benefits men may have derived from larger size and muscular power in the past, they have in our own time outlived them. Today the advantages are mostly with the smaller bodied, less muscularly powerful female.
During the last century and the early part of the twentieth, one of the great standbys of men in arguing the inferiority of women was the lesser absolute size and weight of the male brain. Among Europeans, the average weight of the male brain is about 1,385 grams and the female brain about 1,265 grams; that is to say, the male brain weighs, on the average, slightly over three pounds, and the female brain, on the average, about four ounces less. Yet on the basis of this small difference of less than four ounces an elaborate mythology has been erected. The actual amountfour ounceshas been forgotten, if it ever was widely known, and the difference in magnitude has been bruited as a substantial, but unstated, quantity. The smaller brain of woman has always been dealt as the trump card that effectively put an end to any doubt as to who had more "brains." And since more brain was believed to be the equivalent of greater intelligence, there could be no further argument that the male was more intelligent than the female. It mattered not how often this canard was demolished by scientists. Despite the evidence, repeated again and again in edition after edition of Havelock Ellis's widely circulated book
Man and Woman
and in Amram Scheinfeld's more recent
Women and Men,
the myth seems to be as strongly entrenched as ever.

 

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Scientific investigations on the relation between brain size and intelligence have been fairly numerous, and the general conclusion drawn from them is that there is no relation whatever between brain size and intelligence. The biggest human brain on record was that of an idiot; one of the smallest was that of the gifted French writer Anatole France. The idiot's brain weighed over 2,850 grams or five and a quarter pounds; the brain of Anatole France weighed only 1,100 grams or two pounds, six ounces. Within the limits of the normal range of variation of human brain weight, human beings with big brains are not characterized by intelligence greater than those with "small" brains.
The widespread and erroneous belief that a larger or heavier brain constitutes a criterion of higher mental faculties is understandable enough, but it happens to be false. Many prehistoric humans had larger brains than contemporary humans, for example: The Neandertals had an average brain volume of 1,550 cubic centimeters, while prehistoric humans of modern type, the Boskop of south Africa, had an average brain volume of about 1,600 cubic centimeters, compared with the modern European average of about 1,400 cubic centimeters.

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There is no reason to believe that the bigger brained prehistoric men were any more intelligent than contemporary humans. The elephant and the whale have larger and heavier brains than we do, but no one has yet suggested that they are more intelligent.

An important point to understand is that a heavier or larger brain does not in itself constitute evidence of more gray matter. As is well known, the surface area of the brain is increased by being thrown into a number of convolutions or folds, thus enabling it to occupy a smaller volume of space than would otherwise be possible. The amount of gray matter, therefore, depends upon the number and complexity of the half dozen or more cellular layers of which the convoluted gray matter is composed. There is no known relationship between size of brain and number and complexity of convolutions, or between size or brain and complexity of cellular organization.
Finally, in relation to total body size the female brain is at least as large as, and in general larger than, that of the male. The heavier, larger male would be expected to have a slightly heavier, larger brain because all organs of the body are influenced and controlled by a general size factor and because each of the

 

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sexes possesses a brain that is proportionate to body size. However, when allowance has been made for general size, the female emerges with a slight advantage in brain size. The complete facts have been available for more than a century, ever since Professor T. L. W. Bischoff, the great German anatomist, published his study on the brain weight of man,
Das Hirngewicht des Menschen,
Bonn, 1880. Since then many other scientists have independently confirmed the findings of Bischoff. As I have already mentioned, in 1894 the facts were set out in detail by Havelock Ellis in
Man and Woman,
a book that by 1934 had reached its eighth edition. But as far as many members of the reading public of the Western world are concerned (not to mention the nonreading public) it would seem as if these studies and books have never been published. I have never met anyone outside, and few in, scientific circles who did not believe that women had smaller brains and therefore less intelligence than men. I shall spare the reader the spectacle of nineteenth-century scientists making fools of themselves in this connection by refraining from showing how they permitted their prejudices to become involved in their scientific speculations. As Havelock Ellis wrote:
The history of opinion regarding the cerebral sexual difference forms a painful page in scientific annals. It is full of prejudices, assumptions, fallacies, overhasty generalizations. The unscientific have had a predilection for this subject; and men of science seem to have lost the scientific spirit when they approached the study of its seat. Many a reputation has been lost in these soft sinuous convolutions.

5

Lest anyone who reads these words jump to the rash conclusion that there have not been scientists within the relatively recent period to whom this comment could be applied, let me hasten to disabuse them of so generous a judgment, for there have been many. Literary men have, on the whole, not improved much, if we are to judge from what may perhaps represent an extreme case, that of the well-known German writer Max Funke, who, in his book
Are Women Human?,
stated that woman, with her small brain, must be considered a sort of "missing link," halfway between man and the anthropoid ape, and should be labeled "semihuman."
What are the facts? Bischoff, and later others, showed that the brain weight of the female in relation to the male's brain

 

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weight is as 90:100, whereas her body weight is to the male's only as 83:100. If we then were to raise the female's body weight to the equivalent proportion of the male, namely, 100 units, then one would have to add 17 units to the existing 90 for the female proportion of the brain to that of the male, yielding a figure of 107 for the female as compared with 100 for the male. That is the proportion that most investigators have found when allowance has been made for body size. When one eliminates body fat from the weight of both sexes, the difference in brain weight in favor of the female is further increased.
Let us illustrate these facts in a simpler manner. As stated previously, we find that among Europeans the average brain weight of men is 1,385 grams, or 3 pounds and 1 ounce, while that of women is 1,265 grams, or 2 pounds and 12 ounces. Now, if the weight of the brain is considered in relation to the weight of the body, it will be found that women possess the relatively heavier brain. The average body weight of man is about 143 pounds, while that of woman is about 121 pounds; thus the average body weight of the male is about 22 pounds greater than that of the average female. Upon calculation it will be found that while man has 1 ounce of brain weight for every 47 ounces of body weight, woman has 1 ounce of brain weight for every 43 ounces of body weight. Roughly speaking, then, the brain weight of woman constitutes about 2 percent of the weight of the body, while the brain weight of a man is only 1 percent of his body weight.
How the mighty have fallen! But only from the rickety structure men have rather disingenuously erected to create a case for their own superior brain weight. As far as intelligence is concerned, it must be reiterated, the facts about brain weight prove that if there were any relation (within the normal range of variation of brain weights) between these two factors, the advantage would be with women; but since there is no such relation, the case against women on the basis of brain weight is completely demolished, as could be the case that might be argued against the intelligence of the male on the same grounds. So much, then, for the myth of brain weight and intelligence. Should anyone, however, for a moment think that this disposes of the brain boosters, let them prepare themselves for a shock: The brain boosters have other arguments.
Granting that the female has a slight relative superiority of brain size or brain weight, what about the size, shape, and

 

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form of the supposed seat of intelligence, the frontal lobes? We can dispose of this question rapidly: The frontal lobes are larger and more globular in the female than they are in the male. The great nineteenth-century French neurosurgeon and physical anthropologist Paul Broca, who was by no means an ardent feminist, was the first to show that if one took the cerebral hemisphere to represent 1,000, then the proportion of the frontal lobe to the hemisphere in the male is 427, whereas in the female it is 431. These findings have since been confirmed by other investigators. So much, then, for brain size and brain forms.
The absurd lengths to which some alleged male scientists would go in the attempt to keep women in their proper place is exemplified by Austrian writer Dr. M. Benedikt. Since women tend to have higher foreheads than men, and since it was (erroneously) believed that a high forehead constituted evidence of high mental capacity, Dr. Benedikt maintained that in women it constituted an indication of "convulsive degeneration." It is for this reason, he argued, women "instinctively" attempt to conceal a high forehead by lowering their hair over it!

6

It has been known for years that in women the cerebellum is much larger than it is in males; hence nothing of this part of the brain has been heard of in discussions concerning the relative intelligence of male and female. In recent years it has been found that the
splenium,
the hind part of the great commisure (the
corpus callosum)
through which it has been calculated almost two hundred million fibers pass to and from the hemispheres of the gray matter of the brain (the
cortex),
is larger in females, and on the whole contains more neurons. This suggests a probable advantage. There remain other parts of the brain which have been more or less frequently cited. One is the intermediate region on the side of the brain known as the parietal area. Most investigators appear to agree that this occupies a larger area in the male than in the female. This should not be surprising, for this is the general area of sensorimotor representation, and one would expect the more muscularly active organism to have a larger parietal area. The occipital lobe (the back part of the brain), most investigators find, is of equal size in both sexes. As for the convolutions, no one has ever found any kind of significant sex-based difference either in their pattern or in their complexity; nor has anyone ever found any difference of a sexual nature in the microscopic structure of

 

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