Men and women really
do have fundamentally different characteristics, according to research which has
confirmed many longheld gender sterotypes.

A survey of 10,000
people found that women tend to be more
“sensitive, warm and apprehensive” than men while men tend to be more “emotionally stable, dominant, rule-conscious and
vigilant”, experts
said.

Some previous
research had suggested that the average
personality differences between men and women are small.

But the new analysis
published in the Public Library of the
Science One journal revealed that each sex shares a distinct set of
characteristics, with just 18 per cent of men having a typically “female” set of
traits or vice versa.

Past studies have
shown that men and women average similar scores on the 16PF5 – a well-known and
frequently used measure of personality.

But by estimating the
average difference in men’s and women’s scores on each of the test’s 15
different measures of personality, and comparing them against one another,
researchers found that in fact the sexes shared less ground than previously
thought.

The study showed that
because men scored higher in some areas and women in others the differences
between the sexes cancelled each other out when viewed as a simple average, but
made for a significant gulf when added together.

The new paper
“clearly rejects the idea that there are only minor differences between the
personalities of men and women,” researchers said.

The study could
explain why certain professions, such as engineering, are dominated by a
particular sex in spite of efforts by governments to promote equality, Dr Paul
Irwing, of Manchester Business School, who co-authored the paper,
said.

He added: “You find
far fewer women in engineering and it is normally contended that you cannot
explain this in individual differences, but that is on the assumption they are
small and our study shows they are huge.

“People are
self-selecting into careers that fit their personality characteristics – it is
the complete opposite of what people have assumed for the past 100
years.”

Dr Marco Del Giudice,
who led the study, said: “Sex differences in personality are believed to be
comparatively small. However, research in this area has suffered from
significant methodological limitations.

“The idea that there
are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females
should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology.”

Prof Janet Hyde of
the University of Wisconsin – Madison, who proposed the theory that men and
women have largely similar characteristics, said the method used by the
researchers led to “uninterpretable” results.

She said: “The
scientific evidence still shows that, contrary to stereotypes, men and women are
quite similar on a wide array of psychological
qualities.”