Women in countries with gender inequality have a thinner cerebral cortex

(Wikimedia Commons / https://bit.ly/3MfcFgJ)

Sexism is absolutely horrific.

An international team of scientists has found that in countries with a high level of gender inequality, women have a thinner cortex in some parts of the brain than men.

Where women and men are relatively equal, there is no such phenomenon, or even an inverse relationship is observed.

Gender inequality varies across countries and can be quantified across a set of parameters related to health care, political participation, access to education and the labor market.

Comprehensive assessments like these have helped identify the link between discrimination against women and poorer mental health outcomes and academic achievement.

Given that the brain develops under the influence of care, upbringing, and social environment, harsher conditions for women may lead to more pronounced inter-sex differences in brain structure than are caused by genetic and endocrine factors.

This, in turn, may contribute to the prevalence and severity of mental illness.

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THE STUDY
Now researchers from 18 countries have used 7876 magnetic resonance images of healthy adults (4078 women and 3798 men) from 139 collections made in 29 countries.

The median average age of participants was 24.19 years (range 18.83 to 31.69 years); 35.26% of them lived in low- and middle-income countries as classified by the World Bank.

Based on these images, the thickness and area of the hemispheric cortex and 68 separate areas of the brain, as well as the volume of the hippocampus, were determined.

These data were subjected to random effects meta-analysis, including a meta-regression in which gender disparity at the country level served as a causal variable for the structural differences found.

This parameter was assessed using the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index (GGI) and the United Nations Gender Inequality Index (GII).

The analysis revealed a significant association of the level of gender inequality in the country with the average thickness of the right hemisphere cortex (R2 = 4.34 percent), but not the left (R2 = 4.34 percent).

With significant inequality in women, the cortex turned out to be thinner than in men, and with an increase in gender equality, such differences were not observed.

This correlation persisted when adjusted for the logarithm of the country's gross domestic product per capita, i.e. it did not depend on the overall level of income.

The study of individual areas of the brain with correction for the average proportion of false deviations showed a similar relationship of discrimination against women with a thinner cortex for three of them:

• the caudal part of the right anterior cingulate cortex (involved in goal setting and operational decision making)
• the right orbitofrontal gyrus (involved in decision making)
• the left lateral occipital cortex (involved in face recognition)

With the introduction of a correction for the economic component, a significant correlation was retained only for the caudal part of the right anterior cingulate cortex.

No significant relationship of gender inequality with the surface area of the departments and hemispheres, the volume of the hippocampus and the total intracranial volume was found.

The results obtained point to the potential danger of the macrosocial environment for the biology of the female brain.

Sources:

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2218782120
• UnoTV: https://www.unotv.com/ciencia-y-tecnologia/cerebro-de-mujeres-cambia-en-paises-con-desigualdad-de-genero/

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