The most recommended books about the differences between sexes

Olsen’s landmark book (1994) sheds light on how the writings and creativity of marginalized women and working-class people are often disenfranchised and the circumstances and forces that seek to silence them. I discovered her seminal ideas while in the midst of writing my Ph.D. dissertation at Gonzaga University on Helga Estby that emerged later as Bold Spirit. I was trying to figure out why her family burned hundreds of the pages Helga secretly wrote of her audacious journey across America. This evolved into my closing chapter in Bold Spirit on “the silencing of family stories,” which prompts readers to consider their own family silences. She raises important questions, especially for writers, on what nurtures creativity. 

We assume people have always recognized two sexes, male and female. But did they? In the past, people believed men and women were the same sex; women were just incomplete, unfinished men. Men and women had the same sexual organs, with women’s located internally. Surprisingly, if conditions were right, women could even turn into men. They also thought women needed to achieve orgasm to conceive.  That’s right. For over a thousand years of western history, women’s sexual pleasure was as important as men’s. 

For anyone who has ever wondered if there is any truth behind sexist gender stereotypes—women are wired to be empathetic caregivers, men are biologically designed to be analytical problem-solvers, for example—award-winning academic and writer Cordelia Fine breaks down what’s really happening in the “male brain” vs. the “female brain.”

Spoiler alert: gender differences aren’t so much hardwired as they are culturally conditioned. I found Delusions of Gender incredibly informative and empowering—if stereotypical gender differences are the result of cultural conditioning, that means they can be changed. 

I became interested in primatology after writing a children’s book about a primatologist, Mireya Mayor, and reading about her life story.

In my quest for information, I read books and articles, watched many videos, and even drove to hear Jane Goodall speak in person. When I read a review of Frans de Waal and his book based on his work with primates, specifically, chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest relatives, I bought the book. It is a fascinating and truly balanced account.

He moves from chimpanzee to human behavior with ease, making the reader aware that we have a lot in common with these primates, especially as it applies to gender differences. I’m a big nonfiction reader because I love learning new things, especially things I’ve only recently become interested in. I enjoy a really fluent and easy-to-read book, which this one was.

I learned so much about chimpanzees and bonobos,… show more.

This book holds a magnifying glass up to the gender differences and stereotypes we see every day. Eliot describes in easy-to-understand language the neuroscience behind gender differences and details how small differences between boys and girls at birth become amplified over the course of childhood by parents, teachers, and the culture. 

This book delivers solid ideas on a successful marriage from a man’s perspective. Johnson’s approach may feel a little old-fashioned, where the man is the strong provider and the woman is the nurturer and she even has power over him because of her feminine wiles. But you know what? It works! Let’s face it, men and women have different world views and priorities. Johnson’s style is sly, fun, and relatable.

This might seem like a strange book to include in a list that has a touch of magic, but in many ways this book sparked my first novel. I am a firm believer that women can (and should) do whatever they want. I also accept that there are differences between men and women based on things like brain structure and biology. These differences are not limitations, but rather things to celebrate. 

As I read, I began to ask questions. What if women have more access to their brain’s abilities than men? What if our connection with creative power were seen as more important than physical strength? My characters became my answers. That, in itself, is magic—because magic is simply answering the question “what if,” with “anything is possible.”

Another dark side of sport is the position it accords women. In this accessible (but not dumbed down) work, American academic Jaime Schultz provides an overview of how women have fared over the years. Her approach is to pose a set of questions that are answered within chapters covering, for example, occupational opportunities, sex segregation (not, I would emphasise, in my bowls team), sexualities, female health, and the media. I admire Jaime for her determination to give women’s sport its rightful place not only in sports history but in contemporary society. She also deserves kudos when, though a young scholar, she challenged my views on methodology in sports history.

When we talk about transgender pride, the voices of Native people are often nowhere to be heard. 47,000 Beads is an exception. This beautiful book tells the story of Peyton, a pow-wow dancer who has stopped feeling comfortable wearing a dress. This book helped me understand more about Indigenous children who are Two-Spirit – a pan-Native term for people whose genders are sacred in their tribal nation, but unintelligible to the white people who colonized the United States. I’m so glad I was able to read it and I hope you will be too. 

What a breath of fresh air! Daina Middleton gets it. She has been in the center of power at elite global companies, and she shares her observations and research data to clarify the critical differences and strengths that women and men bring to the table. And she brings in an often invisible – and certainly undervalued – element. Grace. A trait that women often bring, naturally. Respect, manners, consideration of others. Grit, by contrast, is more naturally embodied and projected by men: Competitive clashing and do-it-now urgency. I found it very satisfying to visualize the careful blend of grace and grit – and the resulting improvement in culture and the bottom line. Well done!