Differences have been found in a variety of fields such as mental health, cognitive abilities, personality, emotion, sexuality, friendship,[1] and tendency towards aggression.
Specifically, researchers and theorists take different perspectives on how much of gender is due to biological, neurochemical, and evolutionary factors (nature), or is the result of culture and socialization (nurture).
Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, by John Money was published in 1972, reporting findings of research done with intersex subjects.
The majority of Money's theories regarding the importance of socialization in the determination of gender have come under intense criticism, especially in connection with the inaccurate reporting of success in the infant sex reassignment of David Reimer.
They also proposed that children have much power over what gender role they grow into, whether by choosing which parent to imitate, or doing activities such as playing with action figures or dolls.
Individuals who score high on this dimension are emotionally cool; this allows them to detach from others as well as values, and act egoistically rather than driven by affect, empathy or morality.
[22] A 2014 meta-analysis by researchers Rebecca Friesdorf and Paul Conway found that men score significantly higher on narcissism than women and this finding is robust across past literature.
Women also reported a more intense and more frequent experience of affect, joy, and love but also experienced more embarrassment, guilt, shame, sadness, anger, fear, and distress.
[26][page needed] In imagined frightening situations, such as being home alone and witnessing a stranger walking towards your house, women reported greater fear.
[33] Further analysis of brain tools such as event related potentials found that females who saw human suffering had higher ERP waveforms than males.
[33] Another investigation with similar brain tools such as N400 amplitudes found higher N400 in females in response to social situations which positively correlated with self-reported empathy.
[33] The researchers found that the stability of these sex differences in development are unlikely to be explained by any environment influences but rather might have some roots in human evolution and inheritance.
[33] An evolutionary explanation for the difference is that understanding and tracking relationships and reading others' emotional states was particularly important for women in prehistoric societies for tasks such as caring for children and social networking.
[8] Throughout prehistory, females nurtured and were the primary caretakers of children so this might have led to an evolved neurological adaptation for women to be more aware and responsive to non-verbal expressions.
The relationship between testosterone and aggression is highly debated in the scientific community, and evidence for a causal link between the two has resulted in conflicting conclusions.
[62] Sex-related differences of cognitive functioning is questioned in research done on the areas of perception, attention, reasoning, thinking, problem solving, memory, learning, language and emotion.
For example, researchers have found that three- and four-year-old boys were better at targeting and at mentally rotating figures within a clock face than girls of the same age.
In the studies conclusion, to form an accurate summary, both the variability in sex differences and in the central tendencies must be examined to generalize the cognitive variances of males and females.
[75] One female advantage is in verbal fluency where they have been found to perform better in vocabulary, reading comprehension, speech production and essay writing.
[84] A 2014 review found that in humans, women discount more steeply than men,[clarification needed] but sex differences on measures of impulsive action depend on tasks and subject samples.
[87] Hines and Kaufman hypothesized that girls with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia who are exposed to high androgen levels during pregnancy might be more physically forceful and rougher like boys are observed to be when they play.
It predicts that gender differences in sexuality can change over time as a function of changing social norms, and also that a societal double standard in punishing women more severely than men (who may in fact be rewarded) for engaging in promiscuous or casual sex will lead to significant gender differences in attitudes and behaviors regarding sexuality.
[91] The ovulatory shift hypothesis is the contested theory that female behaviour and preferences relating to mate selection changes throughout the ovulation cycle.
[96] Additionally, a 2016 paper suggested that any possible changes in preferences during ovulation would be moderated by the relationship quality itself, even to the point of inversion in favor of the female's current partner.
[107] It has been suggested that sexually dimorphic brain anatomy, the differential effects of estrogens and androgens, and the heavy exposure of male adolescents to alcohol and other toxic substances can lead to this earlier onset in men.
Another theory argues that the gender differentiation in schizophrenia onset is due to excessive pruning of synaptic nerves during male adolescence.
Globally, data isn't available for every individual country, but a worldwide review of epidemiological surveys, found a median of 62 out of 10,000 people have ASD.
If a Y chromosome with an SRY gene is present, growth is along male lines; it results in the production of testes, which in turn produce testosterone.
In addition to physical effects, this prenatal testosterone increases the likeliness of certain "male" patterns of behavior after birth, though the exact impact and mechanism are not well understood.
[131][page needed] Donald Symons has argued that fundamental sex differences in genetics, hormones and brain structure and function may manifest as distal cultural phenomena (e.g., males as primary combatants in warfare, the primarily female readership of romance novels, etc.).