Six women are at a party. The chip bowl runs dry. All six of the women get up, go to the kitchen and refill the chip bowl together, chatting all the while.

Six men are at a party. The chip bowl runs dry.

“Hey man, the chip bowl’s getting low.”

No one moves.

“I bought the chips.”

“It’s my bowl.”

“I ate the chips.”

“What did you do?”

“I… I watched TV.’

Defeated, TV man goes to the kitchen – alone – and refills the chip bowl.

The moral of the story? Women co-operate. Men negotiate.

Rob Becker’s long-running play, Defending the Caveman, is not merely a comedy about the battle of the sexes – it is all true. Science is proving that men and women really do think differently. Medical technology has advanced to the point that we can now map those differences.

Mary Ovenstone is an executive coach and psychotherapist who is doing her thesis for an MPhil in Management Coaching, on the neurological differences between the male and female brain and how those distinctions affect the world of work.

On a rainy summer’s afternoon in Cape Town, she talks about how understanding these differences can improve the bottom line of
a business.

While over 92% of our brains is the same, the differences are significant. It is really only been in the last 10 years that scientists have begun to understand the extent of these differences.

Until now, most scientific research on the brain has been done on men because of the difficulties posed by the female menstrual cycle, which changes women’s physiology from month to month. Scientists extrapolated the workings of the brain from these male studies.

With the advent of functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography) scans in the 1990s, live brains could be scanned. Long-held beliefs about the human brain were overturned. For example, it was thought that there was only one language centre in the brain. In fact, there are six found on both sides of the brain. The male brain uses one language centre in the left hemisphere; the female brain uses all six.

The well-known adage that men are left-brained and logical while women are right-brained, creative and emotional, has been proved false. While most men are left-brained, women are, in fact, both-brained, although they, too, may favour the left hemisphere to some degree. The female brain receives input simultaneously from both left and right hemispheres. Women have a larger corpus callosum, the bundle of nerves between the right and the left hemisphere. This acts as a complete connection for the female brain.

Ovenstone explains that feminine intuition is not a myth, but scientific fact. Women have a larger insula, which means they are more in touch with their gut feelings. Women have a larger hippocampus, so they remember sensual and emotional experiences better than men. Women produce more oxytocin, the chemical responsible for empathy, attachment and intimacy. The prefrontal cortex – that part of the brain responsible for judgement and organising the rest of the brain, including putting a brake on our impulses – is larger and matures earlier in women. In essence, women can handle complex emotive processes, can multitask and process all that mental complexity – and do it verbally.

In the male brain, the right and left hemispheres are more separate. While both sexes have access to both hemispheres all the time, the male brain focuses primarily on the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere in the male focuses on his superior spatial awareness and on abstract thinking. The male brain is more alert to threat and is driven toward fix-it-fast solutions and to take action. The medial preoptic area, which is responsible for sexual pursuit, is 2.5 times larger in the male. That is the average male brain.

Men usually have very short attention spans when you try to get them to use the right hemisphere for feelings. Talk to them about your feelings, and you will lose them after 10 minutes. They will start to tap or drum their fingers. Women think they are being rude or are bored. They are not – they have simply reached the end of their emotive attention span and are doing something physical to refocus their brains.

Men have simpler decision-making processes. The male brain is designed to make quick, expedient decisions – a vital skill developed back when survival depended on it. There was not time to process emotions using words. A man will have an emotion, take it to the left hemisphere, and want to solve it like it is a problem.

Becker’s premise in Defending the Caveman, that men are hardwired to be hunters and women to be gatherers, is supported by the latest scientific research. While the men were off hunting, fighting or farming, women were managing people and processes in their homesteads. Women are biologically predisposed to be good managers and educators. Everything in their brains is so well connected because they have been managing complex processes for so long.

“Sex differences are genetically determined,” says Ovenstone. “We are born with our brain differences. The average brain falls somewhere between the two extremes of a completely female or a completely male brain. Although 10% to 15% of men and women have a ‘bridge brain’, enabling them to think more like the opposite sex, we all still have other elements that contribute to our sex distinctions. Genetics, hormones, biochemistry – all those different layers work together to create our sex identity.”

She points out: “We have cultural gender definitions that have emerged from hundreds of thousands of years of gender role separation. In the 21st century, we need to define our gender roles in terms of the sex differences of the body/brain rather than in terms of cultural usage.

“Neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to change and develop over our lifetime according to the decisions we make – doesn’t change men into women or women into men, but it certainly broadens our gender roles and definitions. We need to understand each other better now and begin to learn how to work together.”

A 19-year study of 215 Fortune 500 companies, conducted by Roy Adler of Pepperdine University in the United States, showed that the 25 firms with the best record of promoting women to high positions were between 18% and 69% more profitable than the median Fortune 500 firms in their industries.

In South Africa, according to Grant Thornton’s annual International Business Report (2011), 27% of senior managerial positions are held by women. However, these statistics have declined from 29% in 2007 – the global average is 20%. South Africa ranks 15th out of the 27 countries surveyed. Ovenstone warns, however, that if black economic empowerment employment continues to be more important than developing gender understanding and engagement, we will not necessarily get the most from our workforce.

Her advice to men in the corporate world is: “Men need to realise the value of the female, what an excellent manager she can be. Most men admit that if you want to get a job done, give it to the women because they are so good at managing things. But they don’t really want to compete with women. That’s where they get threatened.

“The drive to compete needs to be transformed into the urge to co-create the best outcome. Men do have a territorial imperative. That’s because of the vasopressin and the testosterone in the male brain – it makes men more competitive, more territorial.

“They are hugely driven by status. But status for men is not just about the kind of car they drive; it’s about finding their place in the pecking order. Men have always had to jockey for the position of alpha male; it’s a natural thing. Women have to stop criticising men for their competitive natures. However, men shouldn’t turn around and impose their pecking order on women in the corporate world because women don’t usually think that way,” adds Ovenstone.

“For women, status is about being heard, being acknowledged. Women want to have arrived at the point where people listen to them and value their judgement. Once women get over their tendency to take everything personally and to take everything on, and begin to know their own strength and feel confident about themselves, they are absolutely dynamite in business.”

Her advice to women in the corporate world is: “Think with the complexity of a woman, but learn how to talk to men after you have separated your feelings from your thoughts. To solve a problem, first interrogate your feelings and verbalise them until you can say, ‘This is what I feel about this topic.’ Then examine your thoughts: ‘This is what I think.’ Finally, ‘This is the action that I suggest we take.’ Now tell him. This approach will ensure women’s voices are heard and heeded by their male colleagues in the workplace.”

According to 2009 statistics compiled by the international organisation of parliaments, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, South Africa ranks fourth in the world in terms of female representation in national parliaments. Ovenstone cautions, however, that while the government has led the way, it may take longer for business to follow suit. “You have to develop and include more women in decision-making positions, who can make money for shareholders, the primary focus of the corporate world.”

She admits she is encouraged that the global economic meltdown could become the driver for change. For instance, “there have to be reasons other than shareholder dividends for businesses to exist – like providing good jobs and the provision of quality goods and services while safeguarding the environment”, she says.

Women have always been concerned about people, processes, and all the collateral elements, as well as the end result. Such information is readily absorbed and processed by the female brain. Women, therefore, have an important contribution to make in collaborative business decision-making. Couple that with the male ability to problem-solve and design solutions, and “we’ve only just begun to explore what men and women can do together in the 21st century workplace.”

Laurianne Claase

Suggested reading:

“Leadership and the Sexes: Using gender science to create success in business” (2008) by Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis

“The Female Brain” (2006) by Louanne Brizendine (MD)

“The Male Brain” (2010) by Louanne Brizendine (MD)