As a Virtual Assistant, I’m lucky to work with some amazing people and although I do work for some businesses, some of my clients employ me to look after their personal lives. When I thought about the people I was working with, something was quickly apparent so I decided to delve into my client base a little deeper:
All of my clients hold very senior positions within large successful companies
None of my clients have 9-5 jobs – they all work excessive hours and most take their work home with them too
All of my clients have very active social lives and like to have fun during weekends and holidays
All my clients love to travel
75% of my clients are women
Yup! 75% of my clients are women, which got me to thinking… why is that?
So, I took a little trip around Google to see what the scientists would say:
Processing
Male brains utilise nearly seven times more grey matter for activity while female brains utilise nearly ten times more white matter.
Grey matter areas of the brain are localised. They are information- and action-processing centres in specific splotches in a specific area of the brain. This can translate to a kind of tunnel vision when they are doing something. Once they are deeply engaged in a task or game, they may not demonstrate much sensitivity to other people or their surroundings.
White matter is the networking grid that connects the brain’s grey matter and other processing centres with one another. This profound brain-processing difference is probably one reason you may have noticed that females tend to transition quicker between tasks than males do. The grey-white matter difference may explain why, in adulthood, females are great multi-taskers, while men excel in highly task-focused projects.
Chemistry
Male and female brains process the same neurochemicals but to different degrees and through gender-specific body-brain connections. Some dominant neurochemicals are serotonin, which, among other things, helps us sit still; testosterone, our sex and aggression chemical; estrogen, a female growth and reproductive chemical; and oxytocin, a bonding-relationship chemical.
In part, because of differences in processing these chemicals, males on average tend to be less inclined to sit still for as long as females and tend to be more physically impulsive and aggressive. Additionally, males process less of the bonding chemical oxytocin than females. Overall, a major takeaway of chemistry differences is to realise that our boys at times need different strategies for stress release than our girls.
Structural Differences
A number of structural elements in the human brain differ between males and females. “Structural” refers to actual parts of the brain and the way they are built, including their size and/or mass.
Females often have a larger hippocampus, our human memory centre. Females also often have a higher density of neural connections into the hippocampus. As a result, they tend to input or absorb more sensorial and emotive information than males do.
The right and left hemispheres of the male and female brains are not set up exactly the same way: Females tend to have verbal centres on both sides of the brain, while males tend to have verbal centres on only the left hemisphere. This is a significant difference. Females tend to use more words when discussing or describing incidence, story, person, object, feeling, or place. Males not only have fewer verbal centres in general but also, often, have less connectivity between their word centres and their memories or feelings.
Blood Flow and Brain Activity
Another difference worth looking closely at is the activity difference between male and female brains. The female brain, in part thanks to far more natural blood flow throughout the brain at any given moment (more white matter processing), and because of a higher degree of blood flow in a concentration part of the brain called the cingulate gyrus, will often ruminate on and revisit emotional memories more than the male brain.
Males, in general, are designed a bit differently. Males tend, after reflecting more briefly on an emotive memory, to analyse it somewhat, then move onto the next task. During this process, they may also choose to change course and do something active and unrelated to feelings rather than analyse their feelings at all. Thus, observers may mistakenly believe that guys avoid feelings in comparison to gals or move to problem-solving too quickly.
Having read the four key scientific differences, I was hoping that this would give me a better insight as to why most of my clients are women but it didn’t.
The amazing women I work for all have high powered jobs in very male dominated businesses so why is it that they employ me to undertake tasks relating to their household, lifestyle, travel etc whilst their male counterparts don’t?
There may well be a simple solution… their male colleagues have wives and girlfriends who take care of this stuff for them!
Scientific Source: Gregory L. Jantz Ph.D.