Middle-aged women are smarter if they live in gender-equal societies, a new study has found.
After noticing that scores on cognitive tests varied widely, with, for example, women in northern Europe outperforming men in memory tests and the opposite being true in the continent’s southern countries, researchers set out to discover why.
So the team, which included members from t h e N orw eg ian Institute of Public He alth and America’s prestigious Columbia University, analys ed the results of c ognitive tests of female particip ants bet ween the ages of 50 and 93 from surveys provided by a total of 27 countries.
To gauge attitudes towards gender roles, they also focused on participants’ agreement with the statement: ”When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women.”
Pu blis hing their findings i n Psychological Science, the au th ors suggested that women living in societie s with tr aditional attitudes about gender roles have less opportunities for educ ation and employment, which therefore affected their cognitive performance in later life.
S we den, whic h has le ss traditional attitudes towards gender, was the country where most women outperformed men, whereas men’s advantage in cognitive performance was highest in Ghana, a society which is less gender-equal, the team said.
As countries became more gender-equal over time, women’s cognitive performance improved relative to men’s, they added,
“These findings reinforce the need for policies aiming at reducing gender inequalities as we show that consequences go beyond the labour market and income inequalities,” they said. ”It also shows how important it is to consider seemingly intangible influences, such as cultural attitudes and values, when trying to understand cognitive ageing.”
They concluded the ageing of the global population raised the importance of understanding how gender affects old-age cognition and productivity.
They concluded that gender-role attitudes were an important factor for women’s outcomes in later life and called for a reduction in gender inequalities across the world.
