ARE WOMEN RIGHT- OR LEFT-BRAIN DOMINATED?
by Caroline Lawrence

We all know about the division of the brain into right and left hemispheres, and of the attributes generally associated with each.

The right (or imaginative) hemisphere of the brain has often been dubbed 'feminine' and the left (or logical) side of the brain 'masculine'. For example, in her seminal book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards lists characteristics associated with the two hemispheres of the brain. Under the creative right-brain, she lists yin, unconscious, emotion and feminine. She places yang, conscious, reason and masculine with the academic left-brain.

When explaining left- and right-brain functions to my students, I often use an analogy from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I tell them that Deanna Troi, the empathic 'Betazoid' counsellor who deals with the subconscious and emotions, is like the intuitive right-brain. Data, on the other hand, is like the rational left-brain: good with logic, numbers and linear reasoning. Deanna, of course, is a woman and although Data is an android, he is a very masculine one.

I had always accepted this tidy classification quite happily until one of my students remarked, 'Of course, men must be right-brain dominated and women mainly left-brain dominated. After all, women talk more than men, and 99% of the greatest artists have been men.'

I thought about it. It made sense. As hunter/gatherers, primitive man had to develop acute visual-spatial skills in order to throw a spear with the right trajectory to hit a moving antelope. Meanwhile, back at the camp, women were raising the children and inventing agriculture, clothing and fire. They needed good communication skills.

On the other hand, at primary school, boys are usually better at maths and girls usually excel at reading and English. Both of those, we are told, are left-brain functions.

Probably the only conclusion we can come to is that the brain is far more complicated than our simple models and that we should therefore be wary of generalisations. The explanation for the artistic 'superiority' of men over women and for the loquaciousness of women may well be social rather than physiological.

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