Law Department Management Blog
Women lawyers are neurologically very similar to men lawyers. Inside the brain, there are no sex differences in mirror neuron functioning; no intra-brain communication differences because of lateralization and the larger corpus callosum of women; and foetal levels of testosterone don’t determine our cerebral destiny. Society does, but not brain functioning. These debunking statements come from a book review in the Times Literary Supp., Jan. 28, 2011 at 13, by the eminent researcher of sex-based characteristics, Carol Tavris.
Women have risen in law departments and become general counsel in increasing numbers because out of the stew of their socialization, education, culture, ungendered personality, and experience they have shown superior talent, not because of hard-wired genetic or neurological differences. It is easy, dangerously easy, to fall prey to sex-based prejudices for and against women, but the extensive, credible scientific research to date – as reviewed carefully in the book Tavris summarizes – supports no in-built brain biases directing, advantaging or disadvantaging women.