Mapreaders & Multitaskers: Men, Women, Nature, Nurture

By Gavin Evans

In Mapreaders and Multitaskers, Gavin Evans argues that male and female minds are not inherently different, and that our emotional and intellectual capacities are moulded more by culture than biology.

A great many of the supposedly innate gender differences between men and women have been invented or exaggerated by evolutionary psychologists and self-help authors. Evans offers fresh insight on gender roles, proposing unconventionally wide and flexible definitions of what it is to be masculine and feminine, from a firm biological base.

This book challenges popular and widespread ideas, including the belief that ‘male brains’ are fundamentally different from ‘female brains’; that men have evolved to be inherently more promiscuous than women; that women have evolved to spend more time in front of the mirror; that there are more male geniuses and idiots, that maternal instinct is ‘hard-wired’, and that men are better at mapreading and women at multitasking.