Gina Rippon is professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. Rippon has also sat on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychophysiology. Her book, Gendered Brain: the new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain, maintains biology plays no core role in differentiating female brains from male brains. Rippon considers her findings a watershed in the history of science, and comparable to "the idea of the Earth circling around the sun". Rippon has faced criticism from other neuroscientists who say that male and female brains show distinct average differences.
Rippon is critical of what she sees as the misrepresentation and hijacking of neuroscience, what she calls 'neurotrash'. "The logic of their argument is that males and females are biologically different, men and women are behaviourally different, so their behavioural differences are biologically caused and cannot and, more importantly, should not be challenged or changed. I aim to... produce a guide to spotting such ‘neurononsense’." As an example she describes how a report examining new ways to look at the brain, considering pathways and connections, rather than structures, was used by the Daily Mail to imply that women and ethnic minorities are inferior. Books which Rippon cites as examples of neurotrash include:
Allan and Barbara Pease's "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps"
Anne Moir's and David Jessel's "Brain Sex: the Real Difference Between Men and Women"
She would like people to question research findings from neuroscientists in terms of effect size, she is critical of neuroscientists who describe slight statistical differences between the genders as significant differences in their findings. Rippon also says, if you are going to look at brain volume differences then you need to know how heavy and how tall those people are – a volume correction, otherwise the data is meaningless, and not all researchers, she says, do that. Another worry for Rippon is a publication bias, that publishers will only publish when a difference is found rather than publishing research proving there are no differences. Neurotrashers, she says, "extrapolate wildly" and such science can be used for "social engineering" to reinforce perceived male and female roles and status, an example of the kind argument she feels could be deployed is, "You are what your brain can do, and if your brain can’t do tricky things like running a country, designing a bridge, starting a war, you shouldn’t try and society shouldn’t let you." Rippon is also opposed to the "continued emphasis on 'essentialist', brain-based explanations in both public communication of, and research into, many forms of gender imbalance."
Reviews of Rippon's works
Rippon's book Gendered Brain has incurred some criticism. According to Simon Baron-Cohen, “most biologists and neuroscientists agree that prenatal biology and culture combine to explain average sex differences in the brain”. Critics argue that Rippon makes her case from an extremist position, denying biology any role in shaping the differences in the male and female brains, respectively. In response, she has said that critics are misrepresenting or misunderstanding her view: she is not denying the importance of biology, merely arguing that evidence of inevitable, biologically-driven effects are overstated, and that observed m/f brain differences may well reflect how different social experiences in education and occupation, for example, can drive changes in the brain.
Media appearances
Rippon has appeared on a number of media broadcasts within the UK discussing the neurosciences in terms of the male and female brain, such as the Horizon programme, Is your Brain Male or Female?BBC Radio 4's Today programme alongside professor Robert Winston, and No More Boys And Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free? for the BBC. She was interviewed on the podcast NOUS on the publication of her book The Gendered Brain, where she responded to her critics.
