The Female Brain

It has been a frequent topic of conversation on the project that I am working on, the differences between the genders....it is also a topic I frequently read about and attempt to understand where science meets cultural perception. It is a particularly frustrating topic because of items like the below. There is so much "data" put out there in a pseudoscientific form that implies research and analysis, when in fact there is little of either. I think both genders "feel" that there are inherent differences between the genders, it seems like there must be...but then actual research puts that assumtion on fragile ground. It's not that I want the limitations of a "conclusive" scientific analysis, but it does "feel" like with current technology we should be closer to a more scientific understanding of our brains.

"Fact-checking 'The Female Brain'
Louann Brizendine's book 'The Female Brain,' which argues that there are strong neurological differences between the sexes, has been stirring up all kinds of controversy lately. But today in the Boston Globe, Mark Liberman, a trustee professor of phonetics at the University of Pennsylvania, fact-checks the book and finds that it comes up a few miles short.
Liberman starts by debunking a favorite saying among armchair psychologists and certain scholars: 'Women talk more than men.' This truism is often presented as scientific fact, and is used time and again to support a cultural perception of women as inherently communicative. But according to Liberman, measurements of how much men and women talk are all over the map -- it's possible to find claims of women's and men's daily word usage ranging anywhere from '50,000 vs. 25,000 down to 5,000 vs. 2,500.' Brizendine's 'The Female Brain' places the daily word differential at 20,000 for women vs. 7,000 for men. But Liberman is skeptical about Brizendine's source: a self-help book written by Allan Pease. In the past six years, Pease has cited widely different counts of men's and women's daily word usage, and is also the author of the assuredly fun reads 'Why Men Don't Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes' and 'Why Men Can Only Do One Thing at a Time and Women Never Stop Talking.' In his analysis, Liberman found that 'Pease and his coauthors never cite any specific studies as the source of these various numbers.' "