The Female Brain (book)

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The Female Brain
Author Louann Brizendine
Publisher Morgan Road Books
Publication date
Media type Hardcover
Pages 187, 210 including notes.
ISBN ISBN 0-7679-2009-0
OCLC 63660885
612.8 22
LC Class QP376 .B755 2006

The Female Brain is a 2006 book by the American neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine. The main thesis of the book is that women’s behavior is different from that of men due to hormonal differences. Brizendine says that the human female brain is affected by the following hormones: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, (oxytocin), neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin), and that there are difference in the architecture of the brain (prefrontal cortex, hypothalamus, amygdala) that regulates such hormones and neurotransmitters.


The Female Brain includes seven chapters, each one of which is dedicated to a specific part of a woman’s life such as puberty, motherhood, and menopause, or a specific dimension of a women’s emotional life such as feelings, love and trust, and sex. The book also includes three appendices on hormone therapy, postpartum depression, and sexual orientation.


The book sold well but received mixed reviews, because there was some controversy about the validity of the content. Some of the authors that supported the content of the book include:

Some of the authors that criticized the content of the book include:

Academic feminists have given mixed reviews to The Female Brain. Brizendine was given the tongue-in-cheek 2006 Becky Award, which is given to "people or organizations who have made outstanding contributions to linguistic misinformation".[6] The award cited errors in The Female Brain, including one sentence (removed from subsequent printings) which contrasted the number of words used by men and women in one day. The numbers had been taken from a book by a self-help guru and were incorrect.[7]

Later retraction[edit]

Brizendine later acknowledged that this book overemphasised gender-based differences, saying: "Males and females are more alike than they're differences. After all, we are the same species".[8]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ 'A Brain of One's Own'. Washington Post August 20, 2006.
  2. ^ Nature called The Female Brain a "melodrama" "riddled with scientific errors" and "fail[ing] to meet even the most basic standards of scientific accuracy and balance" and that "human sex differences are elevated almost to the point of creating different species, yet virtually all differences in brain structure, and most differences in behaviour, are characterized by small average differences and a great deal of male–female overlap at the individual level".
    "Psychoneuroindoctrinology". Young and Balaban. (Nature 443(7112), p. 634, October 2006
  3. ^ Fine, Cordelia. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. 
  4. ^ How different are male and female brains? (from Wayback Machine)
  5. ^ How Women Think
  6. ^ 2006 Becky Award
  7. ^ "The Language of Eve", Geoffrey Nunberg, January 3, 2007
  8. ^ Tugend, Alina. "Engendering Sons". California (magazine) (Winter 2014): 48–49. 

External links[edit]