The changing face of cognitive gender differences in Europe

Abstract

Cognitive gender differences and the reasons for their origins have fascinated researchers for decades. Using nationally representative data to investigate gender differences in cognitive performance in middle-aged and older populations across Europe, we show that the magnitude of these differences varies systematically across cognitive tasks, birth cohorts, and regions, but also that the living conditions and educational opportunities individuals are exposed to during their formative years are related to their later cognitive performance. Specifically, we demonstrate that improved living conditions and less gender-restricted educational opportunities are associated with increased gender differences favoring women in some cognitive functions (i.e., episodic memory) and decreases (i.e., numeracy) or elimination of differences in other cognitive abilities (i.e., category fluency). Our results suggest that these changes take place due to a general increase in women's cognitive performance over time, associated with societal improvements in living conditions and educational opportunities.

Keywords: cognitive aging; cross-cultural research; gender inequality; sex differences.

Fig. 1.

Mean standardized performances (±SEM) in episodic memory (A–C), numeracy (D–F), and category fluency (G–I) per 5-y birth cohort by gender for Northern, Central, and Southern Europe. (J–L) Mean RDI (±SEM) per 5-y birth cohort for Northern, Central, and Southern Europe. As can be seen in A–I, gender differences in the cognitive tasks vary systematically across birth cohorts and regions (see Table S2 for raw mean differences, indicator of significance, pooled SD, and Cohen’s d). (J–L) RDI is lower in earlier birth cohorts, and Northern Europe has the highest RDI followed by Central and Southern Europe.

Fig. 2.

Association between difference score for education (women’s average level of education minus men’s average level of education) and difference score in cognitive performance (women’s average standardized episodic memory/numeracy/category fluency performance minus men’s average standardized memory/numeracy/ category fluency performance), displayed separately for (A) episodic memory (r = 0.74, P < 0.001), (B) numeracy (r = 0.54, P = 0.01), and (C) category fluency (r = 0.62, P = 0.003), indicating that there are larger differences favoring women in episodic memory performance in birth cohorts with smaller educational differences. In numeracy, smaller educational differences are associated with a smaller male advantage, and in category fluency, smaller or no educational differences are associated with gender differences clustering around zero.