As previously discussed (see "Boys don't cry" 8/30/06), before puberty, boys are more likely to be depressed than girls. Interestingly, Broderick and Korteland (2004) found that the highest depression scores in their sample of 4th through 6th graders were in the most masculine and feminine groups, and lower in the more androgynous children. ( Read more... )

As mentioned in December, menstruation is a major cause of absenteeism in women, and some suspect it represents the main cause in the difference between men's and women's attendance in the workplace (in the absence of children). Whitehead et al (1986) suggests that women learn how to handle these symptoms from how their mothers model these ( Read more... )

Jiang et al (2006) tested the effect of "invisible" erotic pictures on the attention of gay/bisexual and heterosexual males and females. After comparing attraction/repulsion to male or female erotic stumuli, Jiang et al found that while gay men responded like heterosexual women to the suppressed images, gay/bisexual women responded in between this ( Read more... )

As early as John Corso (1959), it has been documented that women tend to have more sensitive hearing than men, and have less variability in hearing sensitivity than men do. McFadden (1998) notes that not only are women more sensitive to noise, but that they also have stronger evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAEs) (sounds produced by the inner ear, ( Read more... )

LaForest et al (2005) found that lower income, living in the country, and being female were all factors contributing to reduced quality of life during pollen season for people with seasonal allergies. Wieringa et al (1999) reported that as young children (ages 6-7) boys were more likely to be diagnosed with hay fever, but by the teen years (13-14 ( Read more... )

Anxiety about going to the dentist is very common, affecting as much as 7-10% of the population, according to Addex Pharmaceuticals, who are working on a new drug to control it. Liddell and Locker (1997) replicated previous findings that women and younger people had more anxiety about going to the dentist than men and older people. Their study ( Read more... )

Ichino and Moretti (2006) suggest that a substantial portion of the wage gap between men and women can be tied to menstrual cycles. Ichino and Moretti conclude that 11.8% of the earnings gap can be explained by absenteeism on a 28-day cycle. Slap's 2003 review suggests that 75% of adolescent girls suffer from problems associated with menstruation ( Read more... )

Susman et al (1985) found that high-for-age sex hormone levels were linked to poor psychosocial outcomes for both adolescent girls and boys. Most studies of hormone effects on social interactions focus on this age group. Kershbaum et al (2006) compared saliva-measured testosterone levels in a group of 42 adolescents, and asked them to fill out ( Read more... )

The menstrual cycle has many complicated and largely disregarded effects on a woman's life and behavior. Chen et al. (2005) used an auction-bidding game to compare how men and women took risks and maximized earnings. Interestingly, they found that women's bidding, while it differed from men's through most of the month, did not significantly ( Read more... )