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"Well, this is kind of fascinating. A new study out of Europe found that as countries develop, women&amp;#x27;s episodic memory and numeracy (the ability to comprehend and deal with numbers) increase at a higher rate than men&amp;#x27;s in those countries. Short version? Women are better at remembering things overall and learn faster than men as societies improve. According to Forbes, researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna looked at the cognitive difference between men and women and then asked how economic conditions and culture might play into those differences. Researchers combed information from interviews that the European Survey of Health conducted with men and women ages 50 to 84 in 13 European countries. Reports Forbes: &amp;quot;Each country in the study was assigned a regional development index (RDI) that benchmarked a combination of gross domestic product (GDP), education levels, life expectancy, and infant mortality rates.&amp;quot; The development changes for each country were looked at next to the lives of the people in the study to show the economic, social, and public health conditions they had experienced. Participants were then evaluated by memory, numeracy, and category fluency (the ability to name items in a group, like the names of fruits). The results? Overall, men outperformed women in all geographic regions and across all age groups on numeracy, and women from almost all age groups and all areas did equally as well (or better) than men on episodic memory tests. (There wasn&amp;#x27;t much of a difference on category fluency.) As the Economist reports, this isn&amp;#x27;t unexpected. But are women actually biologically wired to have stronger memories, or are we simply taught to have them? The nature-versus-nurture question has long been debated, which is why this finding from the study is particularly noteworthy: When improvements in the regional development index were factored in, both men and women had better cognitive performances&amp;amp;mdash;but the improvements were much greater for women. The takeaway: When RDI increases, women&amp;#x27;s brains benefit more than men&amp;#x27;s do. This is significant because it may indicate that cognitive differences between men and women are learned (nurture!), which means there&amp;#x27;s potential for growth and change. (It also suggests that men might not be innately better with numbers&amp;amp;mdash;society just tells them they are.) Economic and social factors have long been understood to influence intelligence, but what&amp;#x27;s most amazing here is that positive societal changes seemingly benefit women more than men. Just a little something to think on."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/blogs/the-conversation/2014/08/women-are-officially-better-at>