Men are NOT from Mars after all: Scientist claims male and female brains are the same and it's gender stereotyping which makes us different

Utopian Creationist Equal Intelligent Design believer claims that millions of years of Evolution have not affected the wiring of human brains with regards to male and females. Shy claims that male and female brains are exactly equal at birth and that toys a child plays with affects the brian wiring.

Gina Rippon must certainly not have been playing with science kits when growing up because obviously her brain is not wired to understand science.

• Neuroscience expert Gina Rippon said there is no scientific evidence to prove male and female brains are wired differently[/*:m:2e1uw35t]
• Giving children gender-specific toys 'changes the way our brains are wired'[/*:m:2e1uw35t]
• She thinks women are better at multitasking as society requires them to be[/*:m:2e1uw35t][/list:u:2e1uw35t]

A neuroscientist has claimed the expression 'Men are from Mars and women are from Venus' has no scientific grounding, and that instead our brains are changed by the roles society forces us to play.

According to Gina Rippon, a professor at Ashton University in Birmingham, stereotypes - such as women's supposed inability to read maps, or the idea men are bad at multitasking - have no links to science.

Instead of being wired in different ways, Professor Rippon said that men and women are only dissimilar because the world we live in encourages gender role-playing.

Speaking earlier this week, she said the differences between men and women are caused by the 'drip, drip, drip' of gender stereotypes.

She said: 'You can't pick up a brain and say "that's a girl's brain, or that's a boy's brain" in the same way you can with the skeleton. They look the same.

'There is pretty compelling evidence that any differences are tiny and are the result of environment not biology.'

The Telegraph reported that Prof Rippon said that she disagreed with gender stereotypes instilled in children from a young age.

The fact that boys and girls are given different toys based on their sex is what creates gender differences within the brain, she said.

By playing with a Barbie rather than a train, for example, a girl's brain is programmed to become more feminine.

Professor Rippon also said that more emphasis should be placed on the fact that the brain is in fact a muscle - and can therefore be exercised according to what it is required to do.

So for example spending a long time mutitasking, would cause the relevant section of a woman's brain would to develop.

A woman's brain would therefore become wired to multitask because of the role that she is expected to play, she said.

Professor Rippon's comments clash with American studies completed in December last year which highlighted differences in the way the brains of men and women are wired.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of 1,000 men, women, boys and girls.

Through the analysis, experts found that the male brain is wired from front to back whereas the female brain is crisscrossed from left to right.

In a piece in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the researchers said that the differences in wiring could explain why men tend to be better at performing one task such as cycling whereas woman are more equipped for mutlitasking.

On International Women's Day today, Prof Rippon will be speaking at the Women of the World festival, held at the Southbank Centre in London.