Gina Rippon

Gina Rippon (born 1950) is a British neurobiologist and feminist. She is a professor emeritus of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. Rippon has also sat on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychophysiology. In 2019, Rippon published her book, Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain, which investigates the role of life experiences and biology in brain development.

Career

Researcher Rippon gained her PhD in 1982 in physiological psychology, and then focused on brain processes and schizophrenia.

Gendered Brain In 2019, Rippon released her book, Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain. Rhonda Voskuhl and Sabra Klein, of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences, responded in Nature to Eliot's review, arguing against the idea that sex differences in behavior are due only to culture, and criticizing Eliot's claim that the brain is "no more gendered than the liver or kidneys or heart". They state that biological and cultural effects are not mutually exclusive, and that sex differences occur also in animals, who are not affected by culture. In a review for The Times, psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen stated that "most biologists and neuroscientists agree that prenatal biology and culture combine to explain average sex differences in the brain". He argues that Rippon "[boxes] herself into an extremist position by arguing that it’s all culture and no biology". In a mixed review at The New York Journal of Books, Jane Hale noted the book could be improved by finding "a social scientist to partner with".

Views

Criticism of 'neurotrash' Rippon is critical of what she sees as the misrepresentation and hijacking of neuroscience, what she calls 'neurotrash'. Neurotrashers, she says, "extrapolate wildly" from their data and believes that their science can be used for "social engineering" to reinforce perceived male and female roles and status. and has also criticized experiments done by Simon Baron-Cohen. When asked for a comparable "watershed" moment in science to compare her findings to, Rippon responded "the idea of the Earth circling around the sun".

Rippon states that "I do think there are sex differences in the brain; there are bound to be, with respect to different roles in the reproductive process". She expanded that, when discussing brain differences, "there are sex differences that we should pay attention to, but the power that’s attributed to biology is what needs challenging".

Media appearances Rippon appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme alongside professor Robert Winston and BBC's No More Boys And Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free?. She was interviewed on the podcast NOUS on the publication of her book The Gendered Brain, where she responded to her critics.