Taking science seriously: conservative dogma about sex roles ignores inconvenient realities.

• Author: Young, Cathy
• Position: Columns - Critical Essay

THE FEMINIST DENIAL of biological differences between the sexes can be downright hilarious. Who could forget Gloria Steinem, interviewed by ABC's John Stossel in 1995, deriding research on sex differences in the human brain as "anti-American crazy thinking"? In some quarters it's still a dogma that all sex differences in social roles, behavior, and attitudes are the result of the "social construction of gender."

In the face of this "biodenial," as the scholars Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge dub the phenomenon, conservatives are supposed to be the voice of common sense defending the basic realities of human nature. It's a necessary job: A rigid orthodoxy of androgyny is likely to have adverse consequences, both personal and political (such as aggressive, coercive efforts to eliminate disparities that might be rooted in inherent male-female differences). Unfortunately, the conservative critique careens to the opposite extreme, as if there were nothing between Gloria Steinem and June Cleaver.

A case in point is Taking Sex Differences

Seriously (Encounter Books), a new book by Stephen E. Rhoads that bears blurbs from such conservative luminaries as Francis Fukuyama and Danielle Crittenden.

Rhoads, who teaches public policy at the University of Virginia, marshals scientific data in support of supposedly traditional wisdom about the sexes. Unfortunately, he mixes genuinely interesting information and analysis with dubious generalizations, slim or anecdotal evidence, and sometimes downright junk science. And his conclusions can be distilled to such hoary precepts--e.g., girls who are too smart or too ambitious will have trouble landing a husband--that one feels like making a beeline for the nearest chapter of the National Organization for Women. With friends like these, human nature needs no enemies.

There is indeed a growing amount of research pointing to innate psychological differences between men and women. But there are several caveats. For one thing, scientific knowledge in such areas as brain neurochemistry and the link between hormones and behavior is still in its relatively early stages; much remains unknown, inconclusive, or poorly understood. Brain organization and hormonal makeup, for instance, may be influenced by human activities and environment.

Perhaps more important, nearly all sex differences are characterized by vast overlap: Generally, a trait more typical of one sex will occur in the other sex 35 percent to 45 percent of the...