Briefly Noted: Before We Call Empathy Feminine

We’ve absorbed the idea that empathy is feminine and detachment is masculine, but the research is far less definitive: the effect sizes are small, the overlap between men and women is huge, and when empathy is incentivized or socially rewarded, the gap often disappears.

For me, the key fact is that measurement is never neutral. How we define empathy and how we test it shapes what we find. So before we call empathy feminine, we should look more closely at how, and why, it’s being measured.

This BBC piece does a nice job unpacking the details.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260213-are-women-naturally-more-empathetic-than-men