Gender difference of unconscious attentional bias in high trait anxiety individuals

By combining binocular suppression technique and a probe detection paradigm, we investigated attentional bias to invisible stimuli and its gender difference in both high trait anxiety (HTA) and low trait anxiety (LTA) individuals. As an attentional cue, happy or fearful face pictures were presented to HTAs and LTAs for 800 ms either consciously or unconsciously (through binocular suppression). Participants were asked to judge the orientation of a gabor patch following the face pictures. Their performance was used to measure attentional effect induced by the cue. We found gender differences of attentional effect only in the unconscious condition with HTAs. Female HTAs exhibited difficulty in disengaging attention from the location where fearful faces were presented, while male HTAs showed attentional avoidance of it. Our results suggested that the failure to find attentional avoidance of threatening stimuli in many previous studies might be attributed to consciously presented stimuli and data analysis regardless of participants' gender. These findings also contributed to our understanding of gender difference in anxiety disorder.     

Countries with Higher Levels of Gender Equality Show Larger National Sex Differences in Mathematics Anxiety and Relatively Lower Parental Mathematics Valuation for Girls

Despite international advancements in gender equality across a variety of societal domains, the underrepresentation of girls and women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) related fields persists. In this study, we explored the possibility that the sex difference in mathematics anxiety contributes to this disparity. More specifically, we tested a number of predictions from the prominent gender stratification model, which is the leading psychological theory of cross-national patterns of sex differences in mathematics anxiety and performance. To this end, we analyzed data from 761,655 15-year old students across 68 nations who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Most importantly and contra predictions, we showed that economically developed and more gender equal countries have a lower overall level of mathematics anxiety, and yet a larger national sex difference in mathematics anxiety relative to less developed countries. Further, although relatively more mothers work in STEM fields in more developed countries, these parents valued, on average, mathematical competence more in their sons than their daughters. The proportion of mothers working in STEM was unrelated to sex differences in mathematics anxiety or performance. We propose that the gender stratification model fails to account for these national patterns and that an alternative model is needed. In the discussion, we suggest how an interaction between socio-cultural values and sex-specific psychological traits can better explain these patterns. We also discuss implications for policies aiming to increase girls’ STEM participation.     

Survival Analysis of Faculty Retention and Promotion in the Social Sciences by Gender

Background

Recruitment and retention of talent is central to the research performance of universities. Existing research shows that, while men are more likely than women to be promoted at the different stages of the academic career, no such difference is found when it comes to faculty retention rates. Current research on faculty retention, however, focuses on careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We extend this line of inquiry to the social sciences.

Methods

We follow 2,218 tenure-track assistant professors hired since 1990 in seven social science disciplines at nineteen U.S. universities from time of hire to time of departure. We also track their time to promotion to associate and full professor. Using survival analysis, we examine gender differences in time to departure and time to promotion. Our methods account for censoring and unobserved heterogeneity, as well as effect heterogeneity across disciplines and cohorts.

Results

We find no statistically significant differences between genders in faculty retention. However, we do find that men are more likely to be granted tenure than women. When it comes to promotion to full professor, the results are less conclusive, as the effect of gender is sensitive to model specification.

Conclusions

The results corroborate previous findings about gender patterns in faculty retention and promotion. They suggest that advances have been made when it comes to gender equality in retention and promotion, but important differences still persist.     

Focus: Sex and Gender Health: Gender-related Differences in Inhibitory Control and Sustained Attention among Adolescents with Prenatal Cocaine Exposure

Adolescence and prenatal cocaine exposure can impact risk-taking. In this study, we evaluated risk-taking and gender-related differences in adolescents with prenatal cocaine exposure in terms of electrophysiological correlates of inhibitory control and sustained attention. No differences related to gender were found within measures of risk-taking, or electrophysiological response relating to risk-taking. Greater responses during inhibition versus attention trials support previous studies, with boys showing the largest responses. Gender-related differences were found when comparing the trials before and after frustration was induced, with greater initial attention indices for girls in both trial types and greater sustained attention for both genders during inhibition trials and for boys during attention trials. These data suggest neural correlates of response inhibition show important gender-related differences in this population. Considering these relationships allows us to further understand underlying processes among adolescents who, as a group, tend to be more inclined toward greater risk behaviors.     

The Geography of Gender Inequality

Reducing gender inequality is a major policy concern worldwide, and one of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, our understanding of the magnitude and spatial distribution of gender inequality results either from limited-scale case studies or from national-level statistics. Here, we produce the first high resolution map of gender inequality by analyzing over 689,000 households in 47 countries. Across these countries, we find that male-headed households have, on average, 13% more asset wealth and 303% more land for agriculture than do female-headed households. However, this aggregate global result masks a high degree of spatial heterogeneity, with bands of both high inequality and high equality apparent in countries and regions of the world. Further, areas where inequality is highest when measured by land ownership generally are not the same areas that have high inequality as measured by asset wealth. Our metrics of gender inequality in land and wealth are not strongly correlated with existing metrics of poverty, development, and income inequality, and therefore provide new information to increase the understanding of one critical dimension of poverty across the globe.     

Individual and Gender Differences in Subjective and Objective Indices of Pain: Gender,Fear of Pain,Pain Catastrophizing and Cardiovascular Reactivity

According to fear-avoidance models of pain perception, heightened fear of pain may increase disruptive effects of pain; however, the extent to which this affects self-reported pain severity versus physiological indices of pain is not well delineated. The current study examined self-report measures and physiological indices of pain during a cold pressor (CP) task. Individual differences in fear of pain and pain catastrophizing were also assessed via questionnaire. The primary aim of the current study was to examine the extent to which individual differences associated with fear and catastrophizing in response to pain influences subjective and physiological measures of pain. A secondary aim was to examine gender differences associated with response to pain. Average subjective pain ratings were higher for females than males. In contrast, males exhibited higher systolic and diastolic reactivity in response to the CP task relative to females, as well as failure to fully recover to baseline levels. Follow-up correlational analyses revealed that subjective pain ratings were positively associated with fear of pain in both sexes, but were not associated with cardiovascular indices. These results suggest that fear of pain and pain catastrophizing do not influence cardiovascular responses to induced pain. Further research is necessary in order to determine whether these gender differences in blood pressure and heart rate response profiles are due to biological or psychosocial influences. Results support the notion that fear of pain increases subjective pain ratings, but does not influence cardiovascular responses during CP pain-induction.     

Gender differences in presentation, management, and in-hospital outcomes for patients with AMI in a lower-middle income country: evidence from Egypt

Background

Many studies in high-income countries have investigated gender differences in the care and outcomes of patients hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). However, little evidence exists on gender differences among patients with AMI in lower-middle-income countries, where the proportion deaths stemming from cardiovascular disease is projected to increase dramatically. This study examines gender differences in patients in the lower-middle-income country of Egypt to determine if female patients with AMI have a different presentation, management, or outcome compared with men.

Methods and Findings

Using registry data collected over 18 months from 5 Egyptian hospitals, we considered 1204 patients (253 females, 951 males) with a confirmed diagnosis of AMI. We examined gender differences in initial presentation, clinical management, and in-hospital outcomes using t-tests and χ² tests. Additionally, we explored gender differences in in-hospital death using multivariate logistic regression to adjust for age and other differences in initial presentation.We found that women were older than men, had higher BMI, and were more likely to have hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation. Women were less likely to receive aspirin upon admission (p<0.01) or aspirin or statins at discharge (p = 0.001 and p<0.05, respectively), although the magnitude of these differences was small. While unadjusted in-hospital mortality was significantly higher for women (OR: 2.10; 95% CI: 1.54 to 2.87), this difference did not persist in the fully adjusted model (OR: 1.18; 95% CI: 0.55 to 2.55).

Conclusions

We found that female patients had a different profile than men at the time of presentation. Clinical management of men and women with AMI was similar, though there are small but significant differences in some areas. These gender differences did not translate into differences in in-hospital outcome, but highlight differences in quality of care and represent important opportunities for improvement.     

Risk Factors for Men’s Lifetime Perpetration of Physical Violence against Intimate Partners: Results from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) in Eight Countries

This paper examines men’s lifetime physical intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration across eight low- and middle-income countries to better understand key risk factors that interventions can target in order to promote gender equality and reduce IPV. We use data from men (n = 7806) that were collected as part of the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), India, Mexico, and Rwanda. Results show that there is wide variation across countries for lifetime self-reported physical violence perpetration (range: 17% in Mexico to 45% in DRC), men’s support for equal roles for men and women, and acceptability of violence against women. Across the sample, 31% of men report having perpetrated physical violence against a partner in their lifetime. In multivariate analyses examining risk factors for men ever perpetrating physical violence against a partner, witnessing parental violence was the strongest risk factor, reinforcing previous research suggesting the inter-generational transmission of violence. Additionally, having been involved in fights not specifically with an intimate partner, permissive attitudes towards violence against women, having inequitable gender attitudes, and older age were associated with a higher likelihood of ever perpetrating physical IPV. In separate analyses for each country, we found different patterns of risk factors in countries with high perpetration compared to countries with low perpetration. Findings are interpreted to identify key knowledge gaps and directions for future research, public policies, evaluation, and programming.     

Gender affects sympathetic neurovascular control during postural stress

Sympathetic outflow increases during head-up tilt (HUT) to stabilize blood pressure in the presence of decreases in venous return and stroke volume (SV). Otherwise, orthostatic hypotension would develop. Gender differences in orthostatic tolerance have been noted but the mechanisms are still uncertain. More recently, Waters et al. reported in a limited sample, greater susceptibility of women to demonstrate orthostatic intolerance following space flight. Therefore, it is important to understand gender differences in reflex blood pressure regulation. Recently, we reported smaller increments in muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) in healthy women during graded HUT and a non-baroreflex cold pressor test. The purpose of this report is to examine the hypothesis that gender differences in blood pressure control during HUT are related to important variations in MSNA discharge patterns.     

Gender Gap in the ERASMUS Mobility Program

Studying abroad has become very popular among students. The ERASMUS mobility program is one of the largest international student exchange programs in the world, which has supported already more than three million participants since 1987. We analyzed the mobility pattern within this program in 2011-12 and found a gender gap across countries and subject areas. Namely, for almost all participating countries, female students are over-represented in the ERASMUS program when compared to the entire population of tertiary students. The same tendency is observed across different subject areas. We also found a gender asymmetry in the geographical distribution of hosting institutions, with a bias of male students in Scandinavian countries. However, a detailed analysis reveals that this latter asymmetry is rather driven by subject and consistent with the distribution of gender ratios among subject areas.     

Gender differences in leucine, but not lysine, kinetics.

There is a controversy in the literature as to the effects of gender on leucine kinetics. Two research groups found that men oxidize more leucine during exercise, whereas another group showed no gender effects. The purpose of our study was to examine the effects of gender on leucine and, for comparison purposes, lysine kinetics. Our subjects (n = 14) were seven matched pairs of men and women selected for their exercise habits and age. After 1 wk of a standardized diet, they exercised at 50% of maximal O(2) uptake for 1 h. There was an effect of exercise in both genders: an increased leucine oxidation and an attenuation in nonoxidative leucine disposal compared with rest (P < 0.05). Furthermore, our study confirms that there are gender differences in leucine, but not lysine, kinetics. Men had a higher rate of leucine oxidation and a lower rate of nonoxidative leucine disposal during exercise (P < 0.05). For women, a larger proportion of their exercise energy needs came from fat; for men, a greater fraction came from carbohydrate (P < 0.05). We conclude that female exercisers rely to a greater extent on fat as an energy source, thereby using less carbohydrate, amino acid, and protein as a fuel source.     

Sex Differences in Mathematics and Reading Achievement Are Inversely Related: Within- and Across-Nation Assessment of 10 Years of PISA Data

We analyzed one decade of data collected by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), including the mathematics and reading performance of nearly 1.5 million 15 year olds in 75 countries. Across nations, boys scored higher than girls in mathematics, but lower than girls in reading. The sex difference in reading was three times as large as in mathematics. There was considerable variation in the extent of the sex differences between nations. There are countries without a sex difference in mathematics performance, and in some countries girls scored higher than boys. Boys scored lower in reading in all nations in all four PISA assessments (2000, 2003, 2006, 2009). Contrary to several previous studies, we found no evidence that the sex differences were related to nations’ gender equality indicators. Further, paradoxically, sex differences in mathematics were consistently and strongly inversely correlated with sex differences in reading: Countries with a smaller sex difference in mathematics had a larger sex difference in reading and vice versa. We demonstrate that this was not merely a between-nation, but also a within-nation effect. This effect is related to relative changes in these sex differences across the performance continuum: We did not find a sex difference in mathematics among the lowest performing students, but this is where the sex difference in reading was largest. In contrast, the sex difference in mathematics was largest among the higher performing students, and this is where the sex difference in reading was smallest. The implication is that if policy makers decide that changes in these sex differences are desired, different approaches will be needed to achieve this for reading and mathematics. Interventions that focus on high-achieving girls in mathematics and on low achieving boys in reading are likely to yield the strongest educational benefits.     

Gender Differences in Cooperation: Experimental Evidence on High School Students

The emergence of cooperation among unrelated human subjects is a long-standing conundrum that has been amply studied both theoretically and experimentally. Within the question, a less explored issue relates to the gender dependence of cooperation, which can be traced back to Darwin, who stated that "women are less selfish but men are more competitive". Indeed, gender has been shown to be relevant in several game theoretical paradigms of social cooperativeness, including prisoner''s dilemma, snowdrift and ultimatum/dictator games, but there is no consensus as to which gender is more cooperative. We here contribute to this literature by analyzing the role of gender in a repeated Prisoners'' Dilemma played by Spanish high-school students in both a square lattice and a heterogeneous network. While the experiment was conducted to shed light on the influence of networks on the emergence of cooperation, we benefit from the availability of a large dataset of more 1200 participants. We applied different standard econometric techniques to this dataset, including Ordinary Least Squares and Linear Probability models including random effects. All our analyses indicate that being male is negatively associated with the level of cooperation, this association being statistically significant at standard levels. We also obtain a gender difference in the level of cooperation when we control for the unobserved heterogeneity of individuals, which indicates that the gender gap in cooperation favoring female students is present after netting out this effect from other socio-demographics factors not controlled for in the experiment, and from gender differences in risk, social and competitive preferences.     

Attentional Modulation of Emotional Conflict Processing with Flanker Tasks

Emotion processing has been shown to acquire priority by biasing allocation of attentional resources. Aversive images or fearful expressions are processed quickly and automatically. Many existing findings suggested that processing of emotional information was pre-attentive, largely immune from attentional control. Other studies argued that attention gated the processing of emotion. To tackle this controversy, the current study examined whether and to what degrees attention modulated processing of emotion using a stimulus-response-compatibility (SRC) paradigm. We conducted two flanker experiments using color scale faces in neutral expressions or gray scale faces in emotional expressions. We found SRC effects for all three dimensions (color, gender, and emotion) and SRC effects were larger when the conflicts were task relevant than when they were task irrelevant, suggesting that conflict processing of emotion was modulated by attention, similar to those of color and face identity (gender). However, task modulation on color SRC effect was significantly greater than that on gender or emotion SRC effect, indicating that processing of salient information was modulated by attention to a lesser degree than processing of non-emotional stimuli. We proposed that emotion processing can be influenced by attentional control, but at the same time salience of emotional information may bias toward bottom-up processing, rendering less top-down modulation than that on non-emotional stimuli.     

Gender variation in the identification of Mexican children's psychiatric symptoms

We test empirically how caregiver reports of DSM-IV symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) vary by child's gender in a sample of 206 middle-class Mexican children, ages 6-12 years. Objective measures of children's hyperactive and inattentive behavior, derived from ethological observation and activity monitoring, are used as a control in regression analyses. When these objective measures of behavioral differences are taken into account, teachers ascribe more inattention symptoms to boys than girls. Parents, by contrast, do not display a significant gender difference in identification of children's ADHD symptoms. This study provides an empirical demonstration that children's ADHD symptoms can be, but need not always be, reported differently based on cultural models expecting behavioral differences. In this case, child's gender influences the way psychiatric symptoms are ascribed to them by some, but not all, groups of involved social actors.     

Gender differences in inflammatory proteins and pathways in seasonal allergic rhinitis

In model organisms, thousands of genes differ in expression between females and males. It is not known if differences on a similar scale are found in humans nor how this relates to disease. However, in allergic disease gender differences in the levels of both inflammatory cells and proteins have been shown. In this study, we found lower nasal fluid allergen-specific IgE in women than men with seasonal allergic rhinitis (SAR). This led to genome-wide analyses of gene expression in allergen-challenged CD4⁺ cells from patients with SAR before and after treatment with cortisone. Before treatment, 975 genes differed in expression between women and men: 337 were higher in women. After treatment only 428 genes and one pathway differed in expression. The genes that differed in expression between women and men were over-represented in 10 pathways. Five of the pathways regulated chemotaxis. All five were less active in women. One of the pathways was induced by the eosinophilic chemokine CCL4. Analysis of nasal fluid CCL4 protein confirmed lower levels in women with seasonal allergic rhinitis, before and during the pollen season. By contrast, nasal fluid CCL3 levels did not differ between the genders. In summary, this study shows gender differences in specific inflammatory pathways and proteins in patients with seasonal allergic rhinitis. Further studies are warranted to examine if such differences have diagnostic and therapeutic implications in allergic diseases.     

Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study

We examine gender differences among the six PhD student cohorts 2004–2009 at the California Institute of Technology using a new dataset that includes information on trainees and their advisors and enables us to construct detailed measures of teams at the advisor level. We focus on the relationship between graduate student publications and: (1) their gender; (2) the gender of the advisor, (3) the gender pairing between the advisor and the student and (4) the gender composition of the team. We find that female graduate students co-author on average 8.5% fewer papers than men; that students writing with female advisors publish 7.7% more. Of particular note is that gender pairing matters: male students working with female advisors publish 10.0% more than male students working with male advisors; women students working with male advisors publish 8.5% less. There is no difference between the publishing patterns of male students working with male advisors and female students working with female advisors. The results persist and are magnified when we focus on the quality of the published articles, as measured by average Impact Factor, instead of number of articles. We find no evidence that the number of publications relates to the gender composition of the team. Although the gender effects are reasonably modest, past research on processes of positive feedback and cumulative advantage suggest that the difference will grow, not shrink, over the careers of these recent cohorts.     

Valkyries: Was gender equality high in the Scandinavian periphery since Viking times? Evidence from enamel hypoplasia and height ratios

Scandinavian countries currently have very high values of female autonomy. Was this already the case in Viking Times? In this study, we trace the roots of gender equality in the Scandinavian periphery over the past two millennia. We evaluate and recommend a new measure of early gender equality: relative enamel hypoplasia values of males and females. This new indicator allows us to trace relative health and nutritional equality, using archaeological evidence. We find that Scandinavian women in the rural periphery already had relatively good health and nutritional values during the Viking era and the medieval period thereafter. The corresponding value is 0.8 equality advantage for Scandinavian women, whereas in the rest of Europe most values fall in a band around 1.2 ratio units. This suggests that the currently high gender equality had a precedence during the Middle Ages.     

Gender difference in ICER Igamma transgenic diabetic mouse

Few studies have been done to examine gender differences in diabetic mouse models. Here we examined a gender difference in Inducible cAMP Early Repressor (ICER) transgenic (Tg) mice, a diabetic mouse model. Longitudinal changes in diabetes and nephropathy were investigated in male and female Tg mice. Both male and female Tg mice developed severe diabetes early in life due to severely impaired insulin synthesis and decreased beta-cell numbers, but only female Tg mice became less hyperglycemic later in life, and most female Tg mice did not develop diabetic nephropathy. Even some female Tg mice that remained hyperglycemic showed less renal expansion than age-matched male Tg mice. Thus the gender difference in the severity of diabetes and diabetic nephropathy was evident with age in this model. This study indicates that sex hormones may play a role in glucose metabolism in diabetic conditions.