‘Women make terrible scientists’ and other sexual stereotypes genetically encoded in our brains, Chinese study shows

Some sexual stereotypes are encoded in our genetic make-up despite having little or no factual basis, according to a new study on hundreds of pairs of twins by Chinese scientists.

According to this logic, if such genes are absent at birth, infants are less likely to develop such gender prejudices as they grow older.

The research team involved in this study zeroed in on the popular misconception that women are somehow inferior to men when it comes to mathematics or science to try and determine why this gender bias has such strong staying power.

Led by Professor Cai Huajian at the Institute of Phycology in Beijing, they challenged the assumption that people’s beliefs are purely shaped by their environment, and that in a sexist environment, this is all it takes to propagate the idea that men are more talented and interested in science, technology, engineering and math-related disciplines.

Quite to the contrary, they discovered that such sexual bias can be inherited genetically from one’s parents.

In fact, a person’s genes can account for nearly 40 per cent of the driving forces behind the formation of opinions, they wrote in a paper published in Social Psychology and Personality Science.