DISSECTING MAN-MADE MYTH - APRIL 5 - 3.38PM - 2019
Gina Rippon - The Gendered Brain - Oxford Martin School - 2.00pm
Well, the Festival brochure summed up this event perfectly - ‘Neuroscientist Professor Gina Rippon demolishes the myth that there are differences between the male and female brain’.
And that was how it began, expanded, ran down and ended in a perfectly precise dissection of the centuries long bias against acknowledging the intellect of women (even Charles Darwin apparently was no great supporter of gender equality).
Utterly fascinating, Rippon’s perky, feisty and animated presentation was slick, sharp and assuredly merciless in its denunciation that men are from Mars and women, most definitely, from Venus (interestingly, she first wanted to call her latest book ‘The Gendered Brain’, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey Matter’ but was dissuaded from doing so by publishers).
Brilliant, shocking and laugh-out loud funny in equal parts.