"The myth that women are more naturally empathetic than men" from BBC Future

I found this article fascinating--and hopeful, showing that empathy is innate and available to all.


"The myth that women are more naturally empathetic than men"
by Melissa Hogenboom* | BBC Future
February 15, 2026

Scientific research is up-ending age-old gender stereotypes about empathy – and revealing new ways of thinking about masculinity.

When women achieve great things, it was erroneously supposed that "they were not Women who did those Great Actions, but that they were Men in Petticoats!", the philosopher Mary Astell wrote in 1705. Even Queen Elizabeth I once famously said that she'd rule the country like a king, despite having the body of a "feeble woman" – as if ruling had to be a masculine path.

While these anecdotes are from the past, subtle gendered biases of what it means to be a successful, powerful individual still permeate.

Notably, we still typically describe traits like empathy as naturally feminine and traits like dominance and assertiveness as masculine. Even when displaying the same behaviour, men are seen as assertive and women as aggressive.

One particularly notable trait that is often gendered in this way is empathy. Women supposedly are natural empaths while men who show more empathy are typically seen as weak.

But why is that? Is it true that women are naturally more empathetic than men, or are we socialised to be?

Gender stereotypes like these have clear consequences on how we raise our children, workplace culture and leadership. But what's less visible is how early these biases start, and the fact that stereotypes reinforce our expectations – imposing significant constraints on how we expect others to behave.

The hormones behind empathy

Empathy involves both the ability to understand others' thoughts and feelings, allowing us to respond appropriately. It can also be thought of in terms of cognitive empathy – our ability to recognise emotions and take other perspectives – and affective or emotional empathy, where we have an emotional response to someone's thoughts and feelings.

Scientists use a variety of methods to empirically measure empathy, including questionnaires and experiential tasks.

And it's long been found that, on average, women tend to consistently score higher than men.

Simon Baron-Cohen, a clinical psychologist at Cambridge University, argues that it is because the female brain is "predominantly hard-wired for empathy", which makes women especially suited for caring roles, while the male brain is "predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems".

While social factors clearly influence empathy, says Baron-Cohen, his work suggests that hormone exposure in the womb plays a role in social development.

His 2006 study of over 200 children aged 6-9 found that testosterone levels in the amniotic fluid during pregnancy – which are higher in males than in females – are directly correlated with how the children performed on cognitive tests on systemising, defined as the ability to analyse rules or patterns. Indeed, testosterone exposure in the womb was a stronger predictor of a child's test scores than their sex alone.

A similar 2007 study also showed that foetal exposure to testosterone was inversely correlated with empathy test scores.

"What's clear is that something like empathy or systemising are a complex mix of biology and social factors," says Baron-Cohen.

Is empathy in the genes?

Many other researchers, such as neuroscientist Gina Rippon, find this hormonal theory problematic. "The idea that all women are naturally more empathic is part of the persistence of the so-called 'female brain myth'," she says. We also must remember, says Rippon, that young children's brains are "hugely responsive to outside influences".

In one seminal study that found gender differences in empathy tasks, the differences were not large: women were more empathetic in 36 of the 57 countries studied, but in 21 countries the scores were very similar, and the authors stated that they "cannot determine causation".

And though women do score slightly higher than average on empathy studies, the range of variation within genders is much greater than between them. "If you look at the spread of the empathy scores within the male and female populations, it's huge," says Rippon.

Girls and women are often said to be more attuned to the faces of others, an important skillset needed for empathy, but results are mixed, and recent research suggests this preference is not something they are born with. A meta-analysis published in 2025 examined 31 studies featuring 40 separate experiments on how one-month-old girls and boys observed others' faces, if they cried when others cried and how alert they were to those surrounding them. In all these measures, no matter the sex, the infants did not differ in their social awareness and keenness in understanding others' emotions.

Indeed, a 2018 large-scale genetic study of empathy involving over 46,000 participants who completed a questionnaire and submitted DNA samples, suggested that genes do play a role in how empathetic a person is. But none of these genes are associated with a person's sex.

Varun Warrier, an assistant professor of neurodevelopmental research at Cambridge University and author of the study, explained at the time that "since only a tenth of the variation in the degree of empathy between individuals is down to genetics, it is equally important to understand the non-genetic factors". This means that the environment in which someone grows up and lives must be playing a role.

The socialisation of empathy

Women tend to display empathetic traits more, not because they are innate, many scientists argue, but because girls and women are socialised to act on their emotions and to prioritise the needs of others from an extremely young age. Girls are also often presented with toys that emphasise softer, more nurturing skills, while boys are encouraged to play with toy tools and cars.

"Little girls are told to be nice and not to be unkind and rough, so it gradually becomes part of who they are," says Rippon.

Many studies have similarly shown that power distorts our empathy and inhibits people from feeling it. In my book Breadwinners, I outline the argument that, as men have historically had more power than women – and continue to do so in business and politics – they are therefore more likely to experience less empathy.


One study found that individuals who perceived themselves as having "lower subjective rank, lower income and belonging to cultural groups associated with the lower class" were better at reading the emotions of others, for instance. That women score higher on empathy could therefore stem from a need to be highly perceptive to those in power, coupled with their own relative lack of power.

Empathy is a malleable trait

Crucially, empathy can be learned, according to Nathan Spreng, a neurologist at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. "Once we understand this idea of a range of emotional experience, we can focus on it and learn what other people's emotions are, and improve our empathy," Spreng said on the BBC's The Documentary Podcast. "It's not static, it's a dynamic thing across the lifespan."

A 2023 neurological study clearly shows that both women's and men's brain waves respond in much the same way when shown images of painful or neutral facial expressions. But in the part of the experiment where participants completed empathy questionnaires rating how empathetic they felt, men scored lower than women did on average. That is, unless they were told beforehand that they'd score well.

In the group of men who were primed with information suggesting that men are also naturally "good at sharing and caring for the feelings of others", the gender differences in how empathetic they felt disappeared.

Not only do these findings suggest that self-reported empathy experiments are hard to untangle from a slew of personal and social biases, but they also further support the hypothesis that a person's expectations and motivations play a major role in their empathy.

Women "tend to come out as more empathic when they know their empathy levels are being assessed", says Rippon, of experiments like these. "It's a socially acceptable trait, so they want to score highly."

One study found that women only outperformed men on a task asking them to accurately infer someone else's feelings when they were first asked to reflect on how they felt. If they weren't nudged in this way, there was no observed gender gap. And when researchers offered participants money to infer others' feelings accurately, empathic accuracy improved for both genders. Participants easily learned to be empathetic because there was a reward for doing so.

Sara Hodges, a psychologist at the University of Oregon and co-author of this study, proposes that women may show improved empathic accuracy not due to an innate ability, but because they are more motivated to do so by societal expectations.

Rather than viewing empathy as a fixed trait we should see it as a process that draws upon multiple sources of information, including body language, speech, stereotypes, personal experiences and past interactions, according to Hodges. "When people are more motivated to know what someone is thinking or feeling, they recruit more sources for constructing that," says Hodges.

The dire consequences of the empathy bias

What is less talked about, says Hodges, is that empathy isn't just a soft skill used for good – it can also be used to manipulate others or exploit people. "For example, in negotiation, if you know the other person's bottom line, you're a better negotiator," says Hodges.

But ultimately, the consequences of expectations surrounding empathy and the like can contribute to inequality in society and have dire consequences for both women and men.

Women are judged as less likely to have leadership potential than men because we tend to see leaders as needing to be dominant and assertive, traits typically associated with masculinity.

But when it comes to loneliness, women are more likely to seek support from their social network than men. Social isolation, instead, is a known risk factor for attempting suicide, the rate of which is much higher among men.

Fortunately, the narrative about the importance of emotional skills among men and women is slowly changing, including the importance of empathy towards others and caring responsibilities, according to Niall Hanlon, a sociologist from Technological University Dublin, in Ireland.

"Broadly speaking, men and boys are socialised to not see care in the way that women and girls do, that it's not part of the trajectory of being a man," says Hanlon. "They do imagine themselves to be fathers, but they don't expect that they will be in a primary caring position."

But society is already shifting to pave the way for more men to embrace caring responsibilities and be more outwardly empathetic. Men are spending more time with children than in the past, and they state they want to spend more time with their family (though women still do the bulk of flexible working and childcare).

The work being done to reframe men as more caring and empathetic will open the door to a new type of masculinity that could help prevent loneliness, says Hanlon – one that emphasises interdependence and empathy rather than autonomous, power-focused individuals.

"There's a lot of research that shows this is much better," says Hanlon. "For men, women and children."

* Melissa Hogenboom is a BBC health correspondent and author of the Breadwinners (2025) and The Motherhood Complex.

Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260213-are-women-naturally-more-empathetic-than-men

BEAUTY: Clothing--Craig Green

Craig Green has been absent for several years, on purpose. Although he has not had a live show in a awhile, he has still been creating and showing collections via special presentations and lookbooks. So this season, Green returned to a catwalk show with a deeply personally collection at his own studio in Silvertown, an ex-industrial area far out in London’s docklands.

Green lost his father last year. "Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationships between sons and fathers and that kind of dual expectation you have. It’s kind of about that tension," he said. Now, Green's oeuvre for the last ten years has really been about exploring masculinity and the ways the current incarnation of masculinity limits and oppresses men (see previous posts here). But the way he translates his concepts, thoughts, and beliefs into shapes, colors, and textures is really an exercise in restraint. His early collections featured garments that had the sense of martial arts uniforms, but coming undone with yards and yards of tape strapping dangling and flapping from sleeves and hems. He began incorporating fantastical wearable sculptures that seemed like protective shields constructed of scrap wood, or box kite frames strapped to the models as though they were backpacks.

So for this Spring Summer '25 collection (which was not shown as part of the official London Fashion Week schedule) about fathers and sons, Green takes his usual minimalist approach but with some fascinating details. I quite like the stacking of men's traditional leather belts, the kind that "dads" wear, into a kind of reinforced corset. And the deconstruction, mixing, and blending of shooting patches, protective patches, and sports gear applied to the body of a motorcycle jacket is, as Green put it, based on "functions that are quite dark." All functions tinged with physical violence. But how to explain the shift into plaid bibs featuring simplified children's storybook versions of bulldozers, fire engines, and dump trucks? Followed by an unexpected range of sheer pieces that could be pajamas? The show closed with dress-like ponchos with long swinging fringe. This could all be the aforementioned tension between father and son. And perhaps Green is saying that masculinity would do well to remember a sense of innocence and child-like sweetness. I think the world would be quite thankful and relieved if that happened...

https://craig-green.com/

"Thumbs Up" by The Howl & The Hum

Here's another wonderful, touching song that addresses the problem of young men and depression and suicide, all stemming from a stifling, damaging, traditional masculinity (please do take a few minutes to hear and see Sam Fender's devastating song "Dead Boys" previously here.)

Singer-songwriter Sam Griffiths spoke about the song:

"'Thumbs Up' is the confession that us men don’t know how to talk to other men about important stuff...This song was written in the silence after suicides of friends, during depressive episodes, and over non-existent conversations about how we communicate our feelings: our highs, our lows, our loves and losses. It also references 80s movie icons Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a brief admittance of vulnerability in the face of what we call masculinity...It’s an odd one, isn’t it? But then I went to an all-boys school, where there’s so much silence and you only talk about objective truths, football, but not the emotional flow of feelings...It’s that masculinity; that thing of pride. But now we’re in age where masculinity can take a different guise and suffering is a huge part of that, and it feels such a shame that we can’t talk about it...Looking back, we may see our friends as being like superheroes at school, like my best mate at school, who killed himself a month after leaving. No-one, No-one had taught us how to talk to each other."

Lay by my side
We’ll watch all the films that you like
Silent all, silent all night
If that’s what you want

TV screen blue
We’ll sit and watch Predator 2
Cos it makes you feel silent & strong
Silent and strong

I think we should talk
I think we should talk

You give me a thumbs up
Just like the terminator did
When drowning in lava
Is it any wonder
Is it any wonder
I worry about you kid?

Open your mouth
The darkness can finally come out
As Bruce Willis cries
You realise
You could be alright

I think we should talk
I think we should talk

You give me a thumbs up
Just like the terminator did
When drowning in lava
Is it any wonder
Is it any wonder
I worry about you kid?

There’s a hole in my home town
All my friends seem to fall down
But never will float out
But you’re not alone now
You’re not alone now

Watching films with my brother
Wondering our place on this rock
And wondering what it’ll take now
To ever just stop

https://www.thehowlandthehum.com/

Coronavirus reveals just how deep macho stereotypes run through society by Stephen Burrell and Sandy Ruxton

Yet more proof of toxic masculinity...a fascinating article from The Conversation US.


Coronavirus reveals just how deep macho stereotypes run through society
April 9, 2020 6.59am EDT
by Stephen Burrell and Sandy Ruxton

Early indications suggest more men are dying from COVID-19 than women – although some countries, including the UK, are not publishing data on this.

Experts are unsure exactly why this might be. It may in part be due to differences in biology. Suggestions have been made, for example, that it might be because men and women have a different immune response, and that men’s immune systems may not activate in the same way as women’s to fight the virus. But lifestyle and behaviour are also likely to play a role.

For a start, men are more likely to have underlying health problems relevant to COVID-19 – such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and some chronic lung diseases. This is in part because men are more likely to engage in risky behaviour such as smoking, drinking and drug-taking.

Research also seems to indicate that some men may take personal hygiene – such as handwashing – less seriously than women. This could be due to the fact that cleanliness is often associated with femininity, domesticity and beautification.

However, the writer Caroline Criado-Perez has also pointed out that because most medical research focuses on male bodies, there is a lack of understanding about why women may be better able to fend off this virus.

Loneliness and social isolation
The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the different roles men and women are still expected to play in society – men are not only less likely to take care of themselves, but also less likely to be involved in caring for others.

It is striking how much women are depended on to deliver both low-paid and unpaid care work – whether for children, disabled people, older people, or those in ill health. Indeed, the pandemic is placing additional caring responsibilities on women.

COVID-19 is forcing people to reflect upon human fragility, mutuality and interdependence. But gender norms also require men to be invulnerable – always strong and self-sufficient.

Men, who also tend to socialise more in groups in public, may take social distancing less seriously than women. They may find it difficult to accept they need help, too – seeing it as “unmanly” to do so.

Older men in particular are more likely to experience loneliness and social isolation – and this could put them at increased risk of mental health problems.

Lockdown impacts
Gender norms also expect men to be powerful and in control. So while many men may relish the opportunity to be more involved at home, some have used it to assert more dominance and control over their partners and children.

For many women and children, the home is the most dangerous place to be. The UK’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline has seen a 25% increase in calls since lockdown began – which highlights how quarantine can compound domestic and sexual abuse.

Porn sites have also seen increased traffic and some are offering free access during lockdown. Campaigners have warned that this, along with an increased reliance on technology, could contribute to a rise in online harassment and sexual abuse.

Responses to COVID-19
Men’s voices are dominating government responses to COVID-19, and the approaches of many governments are increasingly shaped by masculinist politics.

The UK government and its nearly all male “war-cabinet”, for example, declared “war” on the coronavirus. This is a problematic analogy as what is mainly needed to tackle COVID-19 is care, social solidarity and community support – not fighting and violence.

Some world leaders on the other hand have been alarmingly dismissive of the pandemic, as if their countries were too tough to be affected by the disease.

These patriarchal discourses can have serious implications for government policy, such as encouraging overly militaristic, authoritarian approaches, and prioritising male-dominated sectors of the economy and society. For instance, women are more likely to be in temporary, informal or precarious work which falls outside the protection packages being established.

There is also a danger that, as with previous crises, government support will prioritise industries seen as “strongest for the economy” – and dominated by men – such as aviation, car production and construction. This could again result in vital sectors where women are more prominent being neglected: such as education, care and retail.

This is why there is an urgent need for gender analysis of government measures related to COVID-19, and the impact these have on different social groups. There must also be a dramatic increase in funding for services to help those at risk of domestic and sexual abuse.

But more broadly this crisis is a huge opportunity to reassess political priorities and gender relations. It offers the chance to overturn years of neglect by recognising the essential contribution of care to society. This will not only help to encourage men to play their part, but it will go some way towards shifting harmful gender norms in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Link to the original article:
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-reveals-just-how-deep-macho-stereotypes-run-through-society-134968

Toxic Masculinity Hurts Us All

A Better Way

Concise.

Thanks, Ryan.

Prince and Bowie: Other Ways To Live, Other Ways To Be A Man

Two thoughtful, spot-on essays about Prince and Bowie.


Mourning Prince and David Bowie, who showed there’s no one right way to be a man
By Alyssa Rosenberg April 21 at 3:47 PM for The Washington Post

When the news came this afternoon that Prince had died at 57 at his home in Minnesota, a chorus went up that it was the latest cruelty of 2016, a year that already feels merciless in those it’s claimed, four months along.

But if the deaths of Prince, and Bowie, and Chyna, and Harper Lee taken together feel like a moment of catastrophic generational turnover, the loss of Prince and Bowie represent a more specific calamity. We’re in a moment in American politics consumed by gender panic, from Donald Trump’s menstrual anxieties to the rise of and backlash to a movement for transgender rights. And now we’ve lost two men who had an expansive, almost luxuriant vision of what it meant to be a man and lived out that vision through decades when it was much less safe to do so.

Both Prince and Bowie often seemed more than merely human. Bowie was an ageless vampire in “The Hunger,” a human manifestation of an alien being as Ziggy Stardust, the rock star from “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” Prince left language behind to adopt what became known as the “Love Symbol” as his moniker; his death prompted many people to remark that mortality seemed like the only garment that didn’t fit him, that he had transubstantiated or ascended rather than truly died.

But if conventional notions of gender were only one of the things that didn’t constrain Bowie and Prince, their transcendence of this particular category is still a particularly significant part of their legacies. In the clothes they wore, the lean bodies they lived in, the way they positioned themselves in their music and art, their relationships to LGBT communities and in so many other ways, Prince and Bowie were living arguments that there is no one way, and no correct way for a man to dress, to move, to decide what he values, to choose who he loves or where he stands in relation to that person.

And that transcendence and transgression weren’t just about what Prince and Bowie did in their own lives; it was in what they made other people want to do to them. Mick Jagger may have had an affair with David Bowie, but everyone wanted to sleep with Prince, even when they didn’t want to want him.

The critic Hilton Als began his 2012 essay in Prince in Harper’s with a long recounting of a 2002 stand-up comedy special from Jamie Foxx that gets at the sexual panic Prince inspired. In the joke, Foxx talks about going backstage at a Prince show, looking in the Artist’s eyes, and trying to manage his own reaction: first, denying that what he felt for Prince made him gay, then insisting that if they had sex that Foxx would be the active partner.

Fourteen years ago, when Foxx aired that routine, marriage equality wasn’t yet the law in a single state, much less the settled law of the land. Foxx’s special was just three years removed from the trial of Aaron McKinney for the killing of Matthew Shepard, where McKinney’s lawyers tried to use a so-called “gay panic” defense. And Prince had been inspiring that sort of unease for decades.

There are wry notes of regret in Als’s essay, about the choices Prince made to become famous and when he became famous, about the sacrifice of “the girl Prince had been before he stopped being a girl: outrageous and demanding.” But even when Prince stepped onto larger, more mainstream stages, his presence could still be radical.

It’s true that in recent years, the Super Bowl halftime show has often been a showcase for women in the midst of a clash between men. Madonna, trying to make what was once seem daring relevant in a changing culture; Katy Perry’s schlocky self-coronation; Beyoncé’s transition from packaged pop as part of Destiny’s Child to militant excellence as a solo artist. But if these performances act as an argument that men and women can each be powerful in their own spheres and on their own terms, Prince’s appearance on the Super Bowl stage in 2007 was an argument, at this particular worship service dedicated to traditional masculinity, for a vastly huger range of possible ways for a man to command the nation.

What other person could take that very particular stage in a head wrap and end his performance with his guitar posed as a symbol of male sexual virility — which, of course it was — silhouetted on a giant scale and make it all feel like an effortless, coherent whole, without a hint of overcompensation? I adore Bruce Springsteen, but his crotch-first slide into a television camera two years later felt decidedly less vital.

57 is awfully early for anyone to die, but it feels especially so for Prince; he never reminded us that he was growing older by trying to seem young. Now he’s gone before we could possess him as fully as he always invited us to. But we’ll continue on into the weirder, more beautiful world he seemed to be living in decades before the rest of us arrived there.

Originally in The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2016/04/21/mourning-prince-and-david-bowie-who-showed-theres-no-one-right-way-to-be-a-man/


Prince and David Bowie showed us another way to live
By Nate Scott April 21, 2016 3:29 pm for USAToday

David Bowie and Prince are dead.

If feels unreal. The feeling of denial abounded on Thursday, after the death of Prince was confirmed: No. This can’t be real. This is all a bad dream.

I felt it as strongly as anyone. It couldn’t be real because both Prince and Bowie never really felt real. People that talented, that beautiful, that unique … they couldn’t be of this earth, and thus, they couldn’t die. They were otherworldly. As I wrote of Bowie when he died in January, he “never felt like a person who was born … he simply appeared, materialized from the ether, a magical embodiment of everything creative and cool in the universe.”

It also felt unreal because of what the two artists meant to so many people. For anyone who ever felt strange, or like a misfit, Bowie and Prince were more than people. They were gods. They were two musicians who meant more than their music; they were meaningful because of who they were.

They showed us that there was another way to live.

Many of us believe we are special flowers. We are not. Very few people on earth can resist the urge to latch onto a movement, whatever that movement may be. We define ourselves by the people we admire, by the things we like, but we define ourselves by others. There is nothing wrong with this. We all do it. We do this because it’s easy, and we do it because we are all very desperate to not be alone.

Prince and Bowie didn’t do that. They had no interest in it, really. They did their own thing. Prince wore purple blouses and changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and rode around in light-up roller skates because he thought it was beautiful and interesting and it all made him happy. David Bowie dyed his hair pink and bleached his skin and imagined himself an alien sent from outer space. They checked no boxes. They adhered to no existing ideas about identity, or masculinity. They created it as they went.

This is terrifying, if you think about it, and sort of insane. Think about how genius you have to be, think about how confident you have to be to decide that you will not adhere to what anyone else on earth thinks is acceptable or cool. You will define what is cool. That is nuts, a little bit. You may think you look good, but what if everyone else just thinks you look like a crazy person? If you’re the only person alive doing it, how would you ever even know?

There is bravery in the way Prince and Bowie lived, and foolishness, but for people who grew up feeling like they didn’t fit in, it was liberating. When I first saw Prince wailing away on that paisley Telecaster, or saw Bowie, snowy white, singing Starman, it blew my mind. They were cool. They were the coolest. I knew that inherently, even as a kid. And yet they were unlike anyone I knew who was cool. How was that possible?

The loss of these two artists feels especially tragic because of the year in which we lose them. We like to curse 2016 for taking these two men, as if a year can be responsible, but at a time when political movements are built on anger and the ostracizing of others, when laws are being passed out of fear of those that are different, we need more people like Prince and Bowie. People who can show us it’s OK. It’s OK to define yourself however you want to.

And because this is 2016, and this is the internet, there will be backlash. Bowie was rightfully criticized for his relationships with underage women. I’m sure Prince has moments that will haunt him. Sinead O’Connor says she and Prince once got in a fist fight over the song Nothing Compares 2 U. It’s details like these that can break the spell around these men, and remind us that indeed that’s what they were — men. Living souls who were imperfect, and who are now gone.

We all must make our peace with Bowie and Prince, and all the other artists we adore who are flawed. Some people can’t do it. Others can. What’s more important, I think, is that now, even in death, these two men will continue to show other people that originality is real, that art is alive, that cool is what we make it.

In small towns across America, around the world, there are kids who feel like they don’t belong. They haven’t been to New York City yet, or London or Tokyo or Johannesburg or Berlin, haven’t seen the weirdos and the freaks, and they don’t know that there is something else out there. And then one day they’ll stumble across Prince, or Bowie, or maybe both, and they’ll see that there’s more, and they won’t feel so alone.

Originally in FTW!Culture USAToday
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/04/prince-death-dead-david-bowie-music-originality-art