Most women will have heard in their lifetime the phrase ‘men are just biologically smarter than women’, but a brand-new report conducted at ANU completely debunks this sexist belief.

The long-held “sexplanation” has been said to justify why men are overall more high-achieving than women in society.

Lead author of the report, Lauren Harrison, a PhD scholar from the ANU Research School of Biology, said the biological explanation as to why more men are considered geniuses or become CEOs than women has been invalidated by the research.  

Reviewing in excess of 10,000 biological studies and analysing the behavioural traits across a range of more than 200 animal species, the ANU team found males and females have similar levels of “variability”.

The effects and concept of “variability” can be illustrated through a person’s IQ score.

This groundbreaking finding contradicts a belief held by biologists who have long assumed males are more variable than females.

Ms Harrison said the history of this greater male variability hypothesis for evolution can be traced back to Charles Darwin, who suggested this variability is due to sex-specific selection and that men “often look or behave far more differently from each other compared to females of the same species”.

“Based on our data, if we assume that humans are like other animals, there is equal chance of having a similar number of high-achieving women as there are high-achieving men in this world. Based on this logic, there is also just as great a chance of having a similar number of men and women that are low achievers,” Ms Harrison said.

Co-author of the report, Professor Michael Jennions, said, “If males are more variable than females, it would mean there are more men than women with either very low or very high IQs”.

“But our research in over 200 animal species shows variation in male and female behaviour is very similar. Therefore, there is no reason to invoke this argument based on biology to explain why more men than women are Nobel laureates, for example, which we associate with high IQs.”

Ms Harrison added that if humans don’t follow the trend of similar variability in each sex as seen in animals, and men are in fact more variable than women, this would be likely caused by human factors that are unique to our species, rather than biology.

“Instead of using biology to explain why there are more male CEOs or professors, we have to ask what role culture and upbringing play in pushing men and women down different pathways,” Ms Harrison said.

“This includes the many ways that women are discouraged from a career in male-dominated professions, especially STEM fields.”

In the research, the ANU scientists examined five types of behavioural traits used to measure an animal’s personality to conduct their research: boldness, aggressiveness, exploration, sociability, and activity.

Get all the latest Canberra news, sport, entertainment, lifestyle, competitions and more delivered straight to your inbox with the Canberra Daily Daily Newsletter. Sign up here.