Stop wimping out of boring jobs: men can multitask too

WE all know that men are from Mars and women are from Venus — the former apparently populated by colonies of guys who cannot multitask to save their lives.

But in a shocking twist, it turns out that such evaluations are, in the words of a leading neuroscientist, “trash”.

Traditional beliefs that women are hard-wired to juggle several things at once are a total “myth”, according to Professor Gina Rippon of Birmingham’s Aston University, and if they do appear to have an aptitude for it, this has arisen from societal expectations, not biology.

“I’d say to the scientific community: ‘Can we please stop talking about sex?’ ” she told audiences at the British Science Festival in Swansea this week. “Stop dividing your data into two categories; you are losing so much information.

“Not only are we feeding the ‘neuro-trash’ industry misunderstanding about what we do, but we are also feeding the inner wimp of people out there who believe they can or can’t do something based on whether they are male or female.”

As she explained, “the brain is a mosaic and every brain is different for every individual”.

This news may come as a withering blow to men who have been using their “preordained” incompetence to wriggle out of a lifetime of boring tasks. But Rippon’s NO MORE EXCUSES: Genderspecific skills are ‘trash’ assessment that “there is no such thing as a female brain” might, just maybe, force the tide to turn.

If women can phone the handyman while doing the dishes, men can too — half a world full of “inner wimps” have been fed for long enough.

The reality is that the gender divide we hear so much about is not down to any real differences between men and women, but perceived ones that we propagate. It is this that results in women being paid less, promoted less and becoming the heads of their professions far less frequently than their male peers.

Plus, if everyone thinks women are so brilliant at doing 10 things at once, shouldn’t that have propelled them to the top of every industry by now?

On the issue of multitasking, studies have thrown up frankly useless results; a 2013 paper from BMC Psychology found that both sexes struggled with priorities, but “men suffered more on average”. But research conducted in Sweden that same year surmised that men were actually more proficient at taskhandling than women. — © The