France’s equality regulator has determined that Facebook’s job advertising algorithm is discriminatory towards women, following an investigation that revealed a bias in job ads for mechanics favoring men, while ads for kindergarten teaching positions were predominantly shown to women.
The watchdog group, Défenseur des Droits, contended that Facebook’s targeted job ad system discriminates based on gender, which constitutes indirect discrimination. The regulator advised Facebook and its parent company, Meta, to implement measures to eliminate discriminatory practices in advertising and granted the company three months to inform French authorities of its actions.
According to the regulator’s ruling, “The system implemented for distributing job listings treats Facebook users differently based on their gender, thereby resulting in indirect gender discrimination.”
This ruling followed an initiative from Global Witness, a campaign organization focused on examining the influence of major tech firms on human rights, which posted advertisements on Facebook that included links to various job opportunities across countries like France, the UK, Ireland, and South Africa.
The findings revealed that, notably in France, 90% of individuals seeing ads for mechanic positions were men, whereas the same percentage of those encountering kindergarten teacher ads were women. Additionally, 80% of viewers for psychologist job ads were women, while 70% of those seeing pilot job ads were men.
Global Witness, along with French women’s rights organizations La Fondation des Femmes and Femme Ingénue, which had reached out to the rights group, praised the ruling.
In a joint statement, they remarked, “This seems to be the first instance where a European regulator has ruled that a social media platform’s algorithms exhibit gender discrimination, marking significant progress in holding these platforms accountable under existing legislation.”
“This decision conveys a powerful message to all digital platforms that they will be held responsible for such biases,” stated attorney Josephine Sheffet, representing the plaintiffs. “This legal principle establishes a crucial precedent for future legal actions.”
Mr. Mehta disputed the ruling, with a spokesperson stating: “We disagree with this decision and are exploring our options.”
Meta had agreed to modify Facebook’s algorithms in 2022 after allegations from the U.S. Department of Justice suggested that the platform’s housing advertising system discriminated against users based on criteria like race, religion, and gender.
On Thursday, federal health authorities released a report stating there is no scientific basis for administering hormones or surgical interventions to young individuals experiencing gender dysphoria. This marks a significant shift from prior agency guidelines and the recommendations made by various US health organizations, highlighting concerns surrounding potential long-term harm.
The report emphasizes the importance of psychotherapy, which has sparked considerable debate, as some proponents equate it with conversion therapy aimed at altering gender identity.
Certain sections of the review appeared to challenge the very notion of a gender identity that diverges from one’s sex assigned at birth.
In January, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Amputations,” directing the Department of Health and Human Services to compile a report within 90 days on optimal treatment approaches for youth indicating a disconnect between their gender identity and their birth sex.
The executive order suggested that the administration had already drawn its conclusions about gender transition treatments for minors, denouncing the “blatant harm done to children” as a “stain on our country’s history.”
The report, spanning 400 pages, adopted a calmer tone yet arrived at a similar verdict. Notably, the report’s author remains unidentified as the post-publication review process is set to commence in “the coming days.”
Officials at HHS declined to comment on the review process, noting contributors included a diverse group of physicians, medical ethicists, and methodologists selected for their commitment to scientific integrity.
Importantly, the report clarified that it is not designed to establish standards for healthcare or formulate policy recommendations.
The findings were primarily based on analyses of scientific studies regarding adolescent blockers, hormone treatments, and surgical interventions conducted over the past few decades as these therapies became accessible to adolescents.
The assessment concluded that while the advantages of medical interventions remain unclear, potential harms, including erosion of birth rates, are deemed less substantial.
“Clinical practice in this area is exceptional and concerning,” the report asserts, pointing to American medical groups that advocate for an intolerant atmosphere where clinicians may feel compelled to self-censor.
The appropriateness of treatments such as adolescent blockers, hormone therapy, or surgery for young individuals remains a subject of vigorous debate.
Recently, several European nations have imposed restrictions on such treatments, with scientificreviews and discussions highlighting the insufficient quality of supporting evidence and uncertainties about long-term risks.
In the United States, 24 states have enacted legislation preventing doctors from offering such treatments to adolescents.
“This report misrepresents the prevailing healthcare consensus and fails to represent the realities of pediatric care,” stated Dr. Susan Cresley, chair of the Academy. “This document favors opinions over a rational examination of evidence.”
Advocates for transgender rights criticized the report for presenting ideological views disguised as scientific.
During Trump’s initial 100 days in office, his administration aimed to downplay transgender identities in public forums. The measures included cutting funding for hospitals that provide gender transition treatments to individuals under 19 and contemplating barring transgender individuals from military service.
The administration facilitated the transfer of transgender men and women from federal prisons to their homes and ceased recognizing the gender of transgender individuals on their passports.
“Is the administration’s animosity towards this healthcare grounded in genuine scientific insights or ideologically motivated by its disapproval of transgender individuals believing that transgender identity is fabricated?” questioned Shannon Minter, director of legal affairs at the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
The Center represents transgender plaintiffs in multiple lawsuits contesting the administration’s policies’ constitutionality.
“This is an ideological declaration, not a medical one,” stated Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the Trevor Project, an organization focused on suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth.
This report signifies a triumph for individuals who categorize this medical field within a broader agenda to deny the reality of biological gender.
Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, commended the HHS report while condemning “profit-driven physicians and ideological groups” for convincing families that “children’s sex aligns with everything they profess.”
According to government statistics, around 3% of high school students identify as transgender, a significant surge over the last decade. However, a much smaller percentage of these adolescents seek medical interventions.
Despite this, the topic of medical transition for minors has turned into a political battleground, with Trump making it a focal point of his campaign while some Democrats believe this strategy may aid his electoral prospects.
The new HHS report extends beyond similar assessments in Europe, which have initiated new limitations on gender-related treatments for adolescents.
Independent Clinical Services Reviews for UK youth reached a comparable conclusion, led by Dr. Hillary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Pediatrics. It noted the insufficient quality of evidence supporting the use of adolescent blockers and hormone treatments for minors, with surgery being unavailable to minors in the UK.
However, this review, conducted over four years, painted a broader picture of the medical landscape by consulting young patients, transgender adults, parents, and clinicians.
Dr. Kass concluded that evidence regarding the benefits and risks associated with treatment is “significantly weak,” but acknowledged that some young individuals are very likely to benefit from early interventions.
“Certain young people will undoubtedly reap the benefits of the medical pathway. As research evolves, we need to ensure that those individuals can access care under research protocols, but we mustn’t assume this is the right path for everyone,” Dr. Cass expressed in an interview last year.
This review concluded that the use of blockers in England should be restricted and that clinicians are encouraged to prescribe hormones to teenagers only with “extreme caution.”
Other clinicians who have expressed concern about the field of adolescent gender medicine are unclear about how the new report will be applied.
“We are pleased that in recent years US authorities are finally considering what is happening in Europe,” remarked Erica Anderson, a child psychologist and former president of the American Transgender Health Association.
She is outspoken about her concerns that adolescent gender clinics are shifting away from thorough mental health evaluations in light of the growing number of children seeking gender treatment.
However, Dr. Anderson supports the need for early intervention for certain young people, despite the inflammatory presidential order leading to the report.
“It’s akin to calling someone out on their rank and then expecting to engage in a meaningful conversation,” she stated. “This approach doesn’t work well with real individuals, who possess emotions and histories.”
Minter from the National Center for Lesbian Rights argued that by emphasizing psychotherapy over medical interventions, the HHS report effectively endorses conversion therapy aimed at altering minors’ gender identity or sexual orientation.
Variousmedicalassociations support prohibiting the practice, citing evidence that it leads to depression, anxiety, and feelings of self-loathing.
However, the Supreme Court has agreed to review a First Amendment challenge concerning Colorado’s conversion therapy regulations, initiated by a licensed professional counselor who contends that “individuals prosper when they align with God’s design, including their biological sex.”
Other therapists, including Dr. Anderson, advocate for what they term “exploratory therapy” which assists supportive clinicians in addressing mental health challenges related to adolescents’ gender identity.
Kellan Baker, a researcher focusing on transgender health policies at Whitman-Walker, a Washington-based nonprofit health center, remarked that the report signifies a divergence from customary health policy development in the US.
“It’s crucial that healthcare is administered by individuals with specialized knowledge, not dictated by the federal government, but by skilled clinicians operating according to the standards set by their respective healthcare fields,” Dr. Baker stated.
He voiced concerns that the report could be utilized by the government as a pretext for denying medical coverage for transgender youth.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of HHS, issued a letter last month directing Medicaid agencies to refrain from using funds for gender transition care for minors.
Activity within brain networks appears to differ between boys and girls
People Images/Getty Images
Artificial intelligence can now distinguish the brain patterns of 9- to 10-year-old boys and girls according to their sex and even gender, but not everyone is convinced of the accuracy of the results.
The prevalence of pain, headaches, heart disease, and other illnesses Varies by genderHowever, little is known about neurological variation in this regard or among sexes, particularly among children.
You can learn more and Elvisha Damara Researchers at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York analyzed thousands of sets of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from more than 4,700 children, roughly equal in gender, all aged 9 to 10, who were participating in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Project.
Sex was defined based on “anatomical, physiological, genetic and hormonal structures at birth,” while gender was determined based on “an individual's attitudinal, emotional and behavioral characteristics.”
Parents weren't asked directly about their thoughts about their child's gender, but were assessed with a series of questions, such as how often their child imitates male or female characters on TV or in movies, whether they wanted to be a girl or a boy, whether they said they disliked their genitals, etc. All these questions were weighted equally and combined into a score.
A separate score was created from questions that asked the children themselves, such as whether they felt like a boy or a girl.
The researchers did not disclose the different genders the children identified as, or how many of the children had a gender that was different from their own gender. “We thought of gender as a continuum, not a binary,” Damala said. “We did not limit our analysis to gender categories, so we cannot comment on how many children had a gender that was different from their own gender.”
The researchers first looked at the relationship between brain networks and sex, and then looked at the relationship between these networks and sex for each assigned sex. They found that sex and gender differences were associated with distinct patterns of functional connectivity, a measure of communication between distant brain regions.
Gender was associated with connectivity between the visual cortex, which controls movement, and the limbic system, a group of deep brain structures involved in regulating emotion, behavior, motivation, and memory. These networks were “important in distinguishing participants based on their gender,” Damala said.
Gender-related networks were widespread throughout the cerebral cortex (the outer layer of the brain that is also associated with memory, movement, sensation and problem solving), both when using gender scores constructed from responses to parental questions and when using separate scores constructed by asking questions of the children themselves.
“In assigned females, sex mapped to networks involved in attention, emotion processing, motor control, and higher-order thinking,” Damala says. “In assigned males, the same relationships existed, but there were additional networks involved in higher-order thinking and visual processing. Although there was some overlap between sex- and gender-related brain networks, they were very distinct from each other.”
Once the researchers trained an AI model on some of the MRI data, it was able to identify a child's gender based on brain connectivity patterns in other datasets. It could also predict gender, but this was much less accurate and was based solely on the gender reported by parents, not the child themselves.
A better understanding of how brain activity patterns differ by sex could help scientists learn more about conditions that affect boys and girls at different rates, such as ADHD, Damala said.
The findings could also have implications for how human brain research is conducted, she says: “This shows that sex and gender need to be considered separately in biomedical research. This applies to how data is collected, how it is analyzed, and how results are interpreted and communicated,” Damala says.
but Ragini Verma The University of Pennsylvania researcher says the study tells us little about the neurological basis of gender. Because of the study's large sample size, the team was likely only able to find signals of different brain activity patterns between the sexes, but “any variability in gender predictions is based on low precision,” she says.
P In a feminist bookstore in Madrid, 17 women gathered in the back room, engrossed in their laptops, sharing snacks, chatting, and laughing. The room was filled with the sounds of typing, periodically interrupted by enthusiastic applause marking milestones in the group’s mission to close one of the world’s most persistent gender gaps.
Only about 15 percent of Wikipedia’s content, including biographies, focuses on women, explains Patricia Horrillo, who has dedicated the past decade to cultivating a community of Wikipedia editors committed to creating content that highlights women.
Groups like Spain’s WikiSfera, Italy’s Wikidonne, and Switzerland’s Les Sans Pages have emerged globally to address this gender gap issue on Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia Foundation acknowledges the historical biases within Wikipedia and the need for more diverse contributions to address these gaps. Organizations like Horrillo’s Wikiesfera have received support to help bridge this divide and give visibility to women’s achievements.
Encina Villanueva participated in a Wikipedia content creation workshop at La Fabulosa bookstore, where she emphasized the importance of recognizing women’s accomplishments beyond their appearances or associations. She has seen the impact of her work reverberate across the internet, amplifying women’s stories.
Celia Hernandez-Garcia, a middle school teacher, joined Wikiesfera to highlight women’s achievements often overlooked in textbooks. With no prior tech skills, she embraced the opportunity to elevate women’s narratives through Wikipedia, impacting her students’ understanding of history.
Horrillo’s vision for Wikiesfera began a decade ago, aiming to empower individuals to contribute to Wikipedia by addressing barriers beyond technical knowledge. Despite challenges, the group continues its efforts to increase female representation on the platform.
Though obstacles such as a lack of sources documenting women’s achievements persist, Wikiesfera remains committed to bridging the gender gap on Wikipedia. Each article added during their sessions represents a step towards rectifying the systemic invisibility of women in historical narratives.
Until February 28th and March 1st In 2021, I sent the following text as an email attachment to others: 30 people I thought were closest friend. The subject was: : “It's a bomb.” I grinned at the unintentional pun and wondered if there were other people out there who would do the same. The title was simply “Lucy”.
TOn February 16th, when I downloaded FaceApp for a laugh, he burst out. I tried this application a few years ago, but something went wrong and it returned images that failed horribly. But I had a new phone, so I was curious. The gender swap feature was the biggest takeaway for me, and the first photo I used this feature on was one I had tried before. This time, it gave me a frontal portrait of a middle-aged woman who is strong, healthy, and living a clean life. She also had beautiful flowing chestnut hair and very subtle makeup. And her face was mine. There's no question about it – her nose, mouth, eyes, forehead, chin. she was me When I saw her, I felt something melt in her core. It shook from her shoulders to her crotch. I thought I had finally arrived at my calculation.
Soon, I was entering all my portraits, snapshots, and ID card photos into the magical gender portal. The first archival photo I tried was a studio portrait of an anxious, awkward teenage girl, around the same time as my first memory of gazing into the mirror and having my hair and expression styled like a girl's. The result of the transformation was the revelation of a happy girl. Other than her long black hair, little was done to transform her into Lucy. The biggest difference was how relaxed she looked.
And that's pretty much how it turned out. I was having a lot of fun as a girl in that parallel life. I passed through every era through the machine and experienced one shock of recognition after another. That would have been exactly me. Oddly enough, the app seemed to be guessing at my hairstyle and fashion choices at the time. And the less the images changed, the deeper they drove the dagger into my heart. It could be me! Fifty years are underwater, and I can't get them back.
My high school graduation portrait turned out to be an incredibly delicate almond-eyed fawn (admittedly 17 years old was the pinnacle of my beauty, perhaps that's why my male incubus soon That's probably why he grew a beard). Ten or twelve years later (unfortunately, there are very few photos of me in my 20s; I've always been camera-shy), I was a Lower East Side post-punk radical with a Dutch-boy bob and a pout. I'm a lesbian feminist.here i am sports illustrated Junkett, 33, of Arizona, looked modest in a red polka dot dress and white sweater.
There are many reasons why I suppressed my lifelong desire to become a woman. First of all, it was impossible. My parents would have called a priest and sent me to some convent. And of course the culture wasn't ready.I knew about Christine Jorgensen. [the first person widely known in the US for having gender reassignment therapy] When I was quite young, however, she seemed to be an isolated case. Most of the time, what you encountered were raunchy jokes by Las Vegas comedians and the occasional provocative tabloid article. I kept searching for images and stories of girls like me, but without much success.
Over the years, I have consumed a tremendous amount of material on transgender issues, from clinical research to personal reports, journalistic exposure, and pornography. However, there isn't much porn. It disgusted me. I researched this topic in depth, just like I did for the other books, but I had to keep all my notes in my head.
I immediately got rid of all the materials because I was afraid people would see them. Before browsers allowed anonymous searches, I used to clear the search memory on my computer every day. You may be wondering why I felt the need to go so far. Long story short, my mother regularly raided my room, read my handwriting, and scrutinized every print for possible sexual innuendos. I relayed that warning to my friends, who were also left with the idea that women would be disgusted and repulsed by my transgender identity. Most of them would probably have been sympathetic. where did you get that? This may be because as an only child of orphaned immigrants, I didn't have many female friends until my late teens, and I didn't have any female friends until I was 17.
Needless to say, I was terrible at sex. I didn't know how to act like a man in bed. I wanted to see myself as a woman in the act of love, but I had to suppress that desire while at the same time trying seriously to please my partner (because, at least at first, I almost never slept with someone I didn't love).
I was never attracted to men, but I spent enough time in gay environments in the 70s to convince me of that. During adolescence and beyond, I didn't know how to construct a masculine identity. I hated sports, stupid jokes, chugging beer, and men talking about women. My image of hell was a night with a bunch of guys. Over the years, by necessity, I have come across as saturnine, intelligent, a little aloof, a little wolfish, perhaps “eccentric” and, despite my best intentions, very close to asexual. I created a male persona.
Another reason for my repression was the feeling that if I changed my gender, it would erase everything else I wanted to do in life. I wanted to be an important writer and I didn't want to be pigeonholed into a category. If I were transgender, that fact would be the only thing anyone would know about me. Over the years, transgender people have become increasingly visible in the media, and coverage has become a little less cruel. I lived in New York City, so I saw a lot of transgender people. I had been friends with photographer Nan Goldin for a while, but he never spoke to me, even though I'm sure he would have understood what I was saying.
Sometimes I would hear rumors about this or that person being “dressed up,” and as a result, I became forever uncomfortable in their presence – out of envy, of course. My office in the late '80s and early '90s was located a block away from Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, where I attended Wigstock, the annual Labor Day drag festival. I never looked into it. It was also half a block away from the Pyramid Club, which was the epicenter of New York's drug scene at the time, but I've never been there either. At the time, there was a black menu board on the sidewalk outside the club that read, “Drink and Be Merry.” I shivered every time I passed there.
I was scared to face what I was facing now. I wanted to be a woman with every fiber of my being, and even though that thought was pasted on my windshield, I still trained myself to do it and see through it. Now that the floodgates have opened, I’m falling in love with the idea in a new way. The first time I uploaded a photo to her FaceApp, I felt my core melt into liquid. Now I feel a pillar of fire.
But that shouldn't mean steely determination. The idea of transition is both infinitely fascinating and infinitely frightening. If you take and edit at least one selfie every day, your photos will feel more and more true to life. With a little makeup, some estrogen, and a really nice wig, I could probably look exactly like that. But will the fact that I can't grow my hair make me feel like a fake forever? And he will be 67 years old soon. What if I look grotesque? Or am I just pathetic?
It's a big decision that affects every aspect of my life. As a result, will you accidentally destroy something important in your life? I'm hoping that some situation will force me to migrate. Maybe my therapist is saying it's important for my sanity. Anyway, I'm going to start here by writing it down – something I've never done before – and sending it to a very small number of people I trust and think will understand. My name is Lucy Marie Santé, just one letter added to my dead name. February 26, 2021
Luc Santé before the transition, photographed in New York in 2015. Photo: Courtesy of Lucie Santé.Tim Knox/The Guardian
TThe hat was written in a whirlwind. Every time I think about the chronology, I am amazed again. The first manifestation of her FaceApp occurred on his February 16th. Ten days later, I came out to my therapist, Dr. G, and he didn't blink, just told me he thought transitioning was a logical and good idea. The next evening, after I finished writing the letter, I came out to my partner Mimi, which was the hardest thing
for them to do. And the next day I came out to his son Rafael. The secret fortress I had spent nearly 60 years building and fortifying fell to pieces in a little over a week.
The response was immediate: emails, phone calls, text messages. There was a range, but everyone was kind. Some people said, “It's unexpected, but not surprising,'' “I'm surprised, but not surprising,'' and “It's shocking, but not.'' On the other side, there were several people who reacted as if they had been hit by a train. there was. Other method. They tend to be primarily men who, over the course of years of friendship, have come to think of me as a kind of mirror or double, and that reevaluating me means they need to reevaluate themselves. Did. All of the
people on the “not surprised” side were women, as were the three people who wrote that they had tears of happiness in their eyes after reading my letter.
Of course, I was prepared for some sort of backlash, expressed calmly and thoughtfully, but it never really came, either then or later. Most reactions were, “Yay, go for it, you'll do it.”
Well, as I write this article, I am about to enter my 18th month of hormone replacement therapy. I am legally Lucy, I identify as a woman, and I have feelings for everyone in my life, no matter how far away. I'm completely normal and the same person I've always been, but I'm also a completely different person. I feel more socially secure than ever before. I've gotten a lot of stares, but I've never felt any aggression. Because I'm not a threat. I'm old, white, and reasonably privileged.
I can honestly say I have never been happier. The shadow of me that once hid under the floorboards has finally taken up residence within myself. In fact, I feel free from the neuroses that have been bothering me all this time. Of course, you can and will get sad for a variety of reasons, but at least depression has been avoided for now. Of course, I wish I could have transitioned in my teens, twenties, or at an earlier age than I did, but in return I was left in peace and able to embrace my changes within the life I had already constructed. It has survived all eras. censorious
elders. I really like myself the way I am. I turned out better than I ever imagined, better than I feared.
I am more aware of others and find it much easier to take out emotional issues on others. In various situations, I often experience a kind of calmness, a general sense of correctness about the world. I no longer hate myself or feel sorry for who I am. I walk with pride. Thank you for using whatever force you had to crack my egg before it was too late. I was saved from drowning.
we heard it all. Men's brains are larger and have better spatial awareness. Women's brains are adapted for multitasking and emotional intelligence. Stereotypes about how sex influences behavior abound, and as increasingly sophisticated brain-scanning technology emerges, claims about such inconsistencies are becoming more apparent.
But as we discovered in our feature on the human brain (“Your Amazing Brain: 10 Challenging Questions That Uncover Amazing New Discoveries About the Human Brain”), men's and women's behaviors, interests, We are trying to identify the biological reasons for population differences in . The issue of occupation is a delicate debate that includes not only sex but also gender, and has never been resolved.
Still, we should keep trying. In particular, if there really are gender-related brain differences, this would have a major impact on our health. That's because many pathologies related to the brain and neural branches affect men and women at different rates and in different ways. For example, women have higher rates of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Men have higher rates of autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
There are many possible reasons for this imbalance in the gender ratio. For example, autism may be underdiagnosed among girls, or typical behaviors may manifest differently. Similarly, biological factors may make women more susceptible to depression because they tend to have lower incomes or because men are less likely to seek help for mental health problems. .
However, brain differences between the sexes may also exist. If so, the photo is not yet complete. These may not be due to direct genetic or sex hormonal effects, but may be due to the way society generally treats men and women differently throughout their lives.
Elucidating all of this could shed light on the mechanisms behind these symptoms and lead to better treatment strategies. After all, this is not a competition between male and female brains, but an initiative that has the potential to help everyone.
Comparisons are difficult because men’s brains tend to be larger than women’s.
Sergiy Tryapitsyn / Alamy
Are male and female brains that different? A new way to investigate this question has led us to the conclusion that they exist, but we need artificial intelligence (AI) to tell them apart.
The question of whether we can measure differences between male and female brains has long been debated, and previous studies have yielded conflicting results.
One problem is that men’s brains tend to be slightly larger than women’s. This is likely due to the fact that men are generally larger, and some previous studies have compared the size of various small areas of the brain. Unable to adjust whole brain volume. However, no clear findings have been made so far. “When you correct for brain size, the results change quite a bit,” he says. Vinod Menon at Stanford University in California.
To tackle this problem in a different way, Menon’s team used a relatively new method called dynamic functional connectivity fMRI. This involves recording the brain activity of people lying in a functional MRI scanner and tracking changes in how activity in different areas changes in sync with each other.
The researchers designed an AI to analyze these brain scans and trained it on the results of about 1,000 young people from an existing database in the United States called the Human Connectome Project, identifying which individuals are male and which individuals. told the AI whether the person was female. In this analysis, the brain was divided into 246 different regions.
After this training process, the AI was able to differentiate between a second set of brain scan data from the same 1000 men and women with approximately 90% accuracy.
More importantly, the AI was equally effective at differentiating male and female brain scans from two different, never-before-seen brain scan datasets. Both consisted of about 200 people of similar age, ranging in age from 20 to 35, from the United States and Germany.
“What we bring to the table is a more rigorous study with replication and generalization to other samples,” Menon says. None of the people in the training or testing data were transgender.
“Replication with a completely independent sample from the Human Connectome Project gives us even more confidence in our results,” he says. Camille Williams At the University of Texas at Austin.
The next question is whether the AI will be just as accurate when tested on an additional, larger set of brain scan results. “Time will tell what results we get with other datasets,” he says Menon.
If confirmed, the findings could help us understand why some medical conditions and forms of neurodiversity, such as depression, anxiety, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, differ by gender. No, says Menon.
“If we don’t develop these gender-specific models, we will miss important aspects of differentiating factors.” [for example]”An autistic man and a control man, and an autistic woman and a control woman,” Menon said.
To find out more, they asked 253 Chinese and 270 British people (about an equal number of men and women) aged 18 to 84 to take part in an online survey.
Researchers selected 24 emojis to represent one of six emotions: happiness, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, and anger based on the suggestions that appeared when you typed the word. There are four emojis for each emotion, representing different designs used by Apple, Windows, Android, and WeChat.
Each participant then assigned an emoji to the emotion they thought best matched.
Women were more likely than men to match emojis to the same emotions selected by researchers. The researchers say women may be better at recognizing facial expressions, perhaps because they make more eye contact.
Younger participants also matched emojis better than older participants, probably because they used them more frequently.
On the other hand, British participants agreed better with emojis than Chinese participants, although this may be because the latter group uses emojis differently. “For example, it has been suggested that: [people in China] According to the researchers, people rarely use the happy emoji to express happiness, but instead use it in negative connotations, such as sarcasm.
“When you send someone a message that includes emojis, you can't just assume that they see the emojis the same way you see them,” says Fillick.
Isabel Butet Researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada say matching 24 emojis to six emotions is extremely restrictive. Nevertheless, “assigning emojis specific emotional labels is problematic when you don't know how they will be interpreted in various online communities,” she says. “For example, it would never have been considered to use eggplant as an allusion if that meaning had not developed in a particular community.”
You can learn more about david atance del olmo Researchers from the University of Alcalá in Spain analyzed mortality data from 194 countries from 1990 to 2010. These countries can generally be classified into five groups according to longevity trends.
The group with the highest life expectancy consisted of countries with the highest incomes, including Australia, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the rest of Western Europe. Rwanda and Uganda were the only groups with the lowest life expectancy.
Comparing the average life expectancy of men and women in these countries, men in Rwanda and Uganda experienced the largest increase in life expectancy, from just 30.85 years in 1990 to 45.22 years, an increase of 14.37 years in 2010. became. Life expectancy for women in these countries increased by just 0.94 years from 50.37 years to 51.31 years during this period.
Among the group with the longest life expectancy, the average life expectancy in 1990 was 4.84 years, favoring women. This decreased slightly to 4.77 years for her in 2010, but researchers predict that the gap will narrow further, reaching 3.4 years for him by 2030.
The researchers observed the same trends for three other groups of countries.
Although the researchers only looked at data through 2010, they expect similar trends to continue into the present. However, they acknowledge that COVID-19 may have had an impact on human life expectancy, particularly for men.
In recent decades, both men and women have benefited from medical advances and increased awareness of diseases such as AIDS, Del Olmo said. Smoking and alcohol-related deaths, which particularly affect men, were also down, which may have contributed to narrowing the gap in life expectancy between men and women, he said.
“This study is consistent with epidemiological trends that suggest global life expectancy is increasing and gender disparities are narrowing over time,” he says. Brandon Yang at the University of California, San Francisco.
Our health care system has fundamental flaws that are negatively impacting women.
Systemic gaps and biases have led to women’s pain being less understood and therefore mistreated compared to men’s pain – a phenomenon known as the gender pain gap. This gender pain gap is only expanding, with 11% more women than men feeling their pain is ignored or dismissed compared to 7% in 2022, according to a recent report commissioned by Nurofen.
The report surveyed over 5,000 people, finding that women in the UK take longer than men to seek medical attention for the same type of pain. Additionally, less than half of the women surveyed were diagnosed within 11 months, compared with two-thirds of men. More women still had undiagnosed pain after 12 months or more. A third of women reported that their late diagnoses were due to medical professionals not listening, taking them seriously, or ignoring them.
Another study found that 50% of women feel their pain is ignored, particularly when it comes to menstrual health. Additionally, medical professionals often dismiss women’s symptoms as “normal” and attribute them to hormones and stress, leading to women’s pain being ignored and undermining their confidence and authority as patients.
These pain disparities contribute to a shorter healthy lifespan for women, given that they suffer from chronic conditions more than men.
Despite the complexity and multifactorial nature of the gender pain gap, women have historically been underrepresented in medical research and clinical trials, contributing to a lack of understanding of women’s healthcare needs and pain symptoms.
Women continue to struggle to have their pain taken seriously and treated appropriately, resulting in significant impacts on their lives and wellbeing.
About our expert Dr. Marike Bigg
Marike is a science writer with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. She argues that medicine is not gender-neutral, from research to diagnosis to treatment in her book, This Doesn’t Hurt: How Women Fail With Medications.
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