The changing face of cognitive gender differences in Europe

Abstract

Cognitive gender differences and the reasons for their origins have fascinated researchers for decades. Using nationally representative data to investigate gender differences in cognitive performance in middle-aged and older populations across Europe, we show that the magnitude of these differences varies systematically across cognitive tasks, birth cohorts, and regions, but also that the living conditions and educational opportunities individuals are exposed to during their formative years are related to their later cognitive performance. Specifically, we demonstrate that improved living conditions and less gender-restricted educational opportunities are associated with increased gender differences favoring women in some cognitive functions (i.e., episodic memory) and decreases (i.e., numeracy) or elimination of differences in other cognitive abilities (i.e., category fluency). Our results suggest that these changes take place due to a general increase in women's cognitive performance over time, associated with societal improvements in living conditions and educational opportunities.cognitive aging | gender inequality | sex differences | cross-cultural research T he magnitude, pattern, and explanation of cognitive gender differences is a topic that continues to engender considerable scientific and political debate. Here we investigate the extent to which improvements in living conditions and education, taking place over time, are associated with gender differences in cognitive functions among middle-aged and older adults in Europe.During the 20th century, there have been substantial increases in cognitive performance in many nations (1). These increases have been attributed to changes in living conditions [e.g., gross domestic product (GDP), family size, health] (2, 3) and increased exposure to cognitive stimulation (e.g., education) (4, 5). Despite these societal improvements, cognitive gender differences are still reported, typically with a life-long advantage for men in tasks assessing visuospatial (6) and mathematical (7,8) abilities, whereas women are often found to outperform men in tasks assessing episodic memory (9, 10) and reading literacy (11). In other cognitive tasks, such as category fluency and vocabulary, gender differences are typically not observed (12, 13). Although biologically based explanations for these differences have been proposed (14,15), there are also studies indicating that societal factors influence cognitive gender differences.Some studies investigating math performance in adolescents have found that gender differences favoring boys are smaller in more gender-equal societies (16,17), suggesting that gender equity positively affects girls' math performance. Others, however, have failed to find an effect of gender equity on mathematics in adolescents (11, 18) or on visuospatial performance in adults (19). These inconsistencies may reflect differences in the gender equity indicators used (20), or in sample representativeness (19), but they also point to the necessity of using indicat...

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