It's long been known that girls develop superior language abilities earlier than boys, but until now, no one has any scientific proof.
Now, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Haifa got the biological proof:
... areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks.
"Our findings -- which suggest that language processing is more sensory in boys and more abstract in girls -- could have major implications for teaching children and even provide support for advocates of single sex classrooms," said Douglas D. Burman, research associate in Northwestern's Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Previously on Neatorama: Is Single-Sex Education Better Than Coeducation?
HERE'S A MORE COMPLEX version of that quote: ['Research' & 'In-depth' Studies always produce the exact results which meets their expectations.
So, the Hippies have once again produced a study which derives their own narrow conclusions.
Hey, you won't see me greeting my mother, anytime soon.
And I sure as hell would NEVER defend this country.
Anecdotally, one of my good friends is a bit of a tomboy, and did NOT want her daughter to be a "girly girl". She tried to engage her in more "boyish" activities and dressed her in jeans and t-shirts. However right from the start it failed. THe daughter wanted to play with dolls, wear dresses and have tea parties. Now obviously she must have learned about all that from her peers, but still she has the desire to be a "girly girl" with absolutely no influence from her parents. (I suppose you could argue that that is a form of rebellion, but that seems weak)
As a parent, I see that my own child has a definite personality, ands tend to like certain things without any input from me except for me to introduce them. He either takes to them or he doesn't. He loves math and reading, and doesn't like coloring and playing with blocks nearly as much. He doesn't play with the firehouse with fireman dolls we got him, but he does play with a calculator. He's 4, go figure.
I believe that our identities and abilities are influenced by biological factors. No one can argue that males are able to achieve upper body strength at a much higher rate than females. This then means of course that men will be better able to perform tasks that require a lot of heavy lifting.
It however is very dangerous to assume that all sex differences are dependant on biology, and proving this would prove to be impossible. This is because, as stated in my last comment, males and females are socialized differently. There is no way to separate nature/nurture.
A further example can be seen in how children are (generally) encouraged to play different sports based on their sex. Females are often put into cooperative/non-violent sports such as gymnastics and figure skating whereas males tend to be placed into competitive/violent sports such as hockey and football. It is logical then that these things would have an effect on the creation of a person’s demeanor!
As well I think that one only needs to look in a toy store/child’s toy box to see some of the may ways that children are socialized to act their sex. If one believes that these things exist in a vacuum without any lasting effects then they are being naïve.
Also my opinions are not as dated as you might believe, as a Sociology student these are reflective of some of the things that I am being currently taught!
However,to quote the New York Times article on same sex education: "Giedd suggests a thought experiment: Imagine trying to assign a population of students to the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms based solely on height. As boys tend to be taller than girls, one would assign the tallest 50 percent of the students to the boys’ locker room and the shortest 50 percent of the students to the girls’ locker room. What would happen? While you’d end up with a better-than-random sort, the results would be abysmal, with unacceptably large percentages of students in the wrong place."
Let's not make statistical significance into biological determinism.
They dressed him as a girl and treated him as a girl, and due to his adolescence, his classmates couldn't see any difference and so they did as well.
However, he was still male, despite hormone injections, and being raised as a girl, he began to walk like a man, was attracted to girls, liked rough sports etc.
I had hoped that having pretty definitive proof would kill the whole "Males and females are all the same" fallacy, but I guess not. I can't site anything, you can just not believe me, I won't mind. :)