Country-level gender inequality is associated with structural differences in the brains of women and men.
Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume: 120
Issue: 20
Year of Publication: 2023
Affiliated Institutions:
Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience (SDAN), Emotion and Development Branch (E & D), National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda MD .
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago , Chile.
Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago , Chile.
Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB AH, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA .
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón (IISGM), Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), School of Medicine, Universidad Complutense, Madrid , Spain.
The Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC , Australia.
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town , South Africa.
Centre for Addiction Medicine, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, Karnataka , India.
Barcelona Clinic Schizophrenia Unit, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Departament de Medicina, Institut de Neurociències (UBNeuro), Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques, August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Barcelona , Spain.
Laboratorio de Neurociencia Social y Neuromodulación, Centro de Investigación en Complejidad Social (neuroCICS), Facultad de Gobierno, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago , Chile.
McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health, Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, QC HA B, Canada.
Interdisciplinary Laboratory in Clinical Neuroscience (LiNC), Department of Psychiatry, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo -, Brazil.
Departamento e Instituto de Psiquiatria, Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo -, Brazil.
Grupo de Investigación en Neurociencias Aplicadas a las Alteraciones de la Conducta (INAAC), Fleni-Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas Neurosciences Institute (INEU), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires C, Argentina.
Laboratory of Psychiatric Neuroimaging (LIM-), Departamento e Instituto de Psiquiatria, Hospital das Clinicas, Faculdade de Medicina Universidade de São Paulo (HCFMUSP), Faculdade de Medicina Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo SP -, Brazil.
Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona , Spain.
Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry, Centro de Pesquisa Clínica, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre RS -, Brazil.
Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE AF, United Kingdom.
Laboratory of Experimental Psychiatry, Direction of Research, Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía, Mexico City , Mexico.
Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE AF, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Antioquia, Medellín , Colombia.
Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior Los Angeles, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA .
Integrated Program in Neuroscience, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec HA AB Canada.
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires CAAJ, Argentina.
Early Intervention Program, Instituto Psiquiátrico Dr. J. Horwitz Barak, Santiago , Chile.
Department of Integrative Medicine, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, Karnataka , India.
Department of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo -, Brazil.
South African Medical Research Council (SA MRC) Unit on Risk and Resilience in Mental Disorders, Department of Psychiatry, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch , South Africa.
Department of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), Curitiba PR -, Brazil.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX JX, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto -, Japan.
Department of Psychosis Studies, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE AF, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota MN .
South African Medical Research Council (SA MRC) Unit on Risk and Resilience in Mental Disorders, Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town, Cape Town , South Africa.
Department of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Hospital de Clinicas de Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, RS , Brazil.
Centre for Population Neuroscience and Stratified Medicine (PONS), Institute for Science and Technology for Brain-inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, Shanghai , China.
Escuela de Gobierno, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago , Chile.
The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu , China.
Department of Neuroscience, Central Clinical School, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC , Australia.
Centre for Affective Disorders, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE AF, United Kingdom.
Unidad de Imágenes Cuantitativas Avanzadas, Departamento de Imágenes, Clínica Alemana de Santiago, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago , Chile.
Department of Human Genetics, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, Texas TX .
Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, School of Economics and Political Science, London WCA AE, United Kingdom.
Abstract summary
Gender inequality across the world has been associated with a higher risk to mental health problems and lower academic achievement in women compared to men. We also know that the brain is shaped by nurturing and adverse socio-environmental experiences. Therefore, unequal exposure to harsher conditions for women compared to men in gender-unequal countries might be reflected in differences in their brain structure, and this could be the neural mechanism partly explaining women's worse outcomes in gender-unequal countries. We examined this through a random-effects meta-analysis on cortical thickness and surface area differences between adult healthy men and women, including a meta-regression in which country-level gender inequality acted as an explanatory variable for the observed differences. A total of 139 samples from 29 different countries, totaling 7,876 MRI scans, were included. Thickness of the right hemisphere, and particularly the right caudal anterior cingulate, right medial orbitofrontal, and left lateral occipital cortex, presented no differences or even thicker regional cortices in women compared to men in gender-equal countries, reversing to thinner cortices in countries with greater gender inequality. These results point to the potentially hazardous effect of gender inequality on women's brains and provide initial evidence for neuroscience-informed policies for gender equality.
Authors & Co-authors:
Zugman André A
Alliende Luz María LM
Medel Vicente V
Bethlehem Richard A I RAI
Seidlitz Jakob J
Ringlein Grace G
Arango Celso C
Arnatkevičiūtė Aurina A
Asmal Laila L
Bellgrove Mark M
Benegal Vivek V
Bernardo Miquel M
Billeke Pablo P
Bosch-Bayard Jorge J
Bressan Rodrigo R
Busatto Geraldo F GF
Castro Mariana N MN
Chaim-Avancini Tiffany T
Compte Albert A
Costanzi Monise M
Czepielewski Leticia L
Dazzan Paola P
de la Fuente-Sandoval Camilo C
Di Forti Marta M
Díaz-Caneja Covadonga M CM
María Díaz-Zuluaga Ana A
Du Plessis Stefan S
Duran Fabio L S FLS
Fittipaldi Sol S
Fornito Alex A
Freimer Nelson B NB
Gadelha Ary A
Gama Clarissa S CS
Garani Ranjini R
Garcia-Rizo Clemente C
Gonzalez Campo Cecilia C
Gonzalez-Valderrama Alfonso A
Guinjoan Salvador S
Holla Bharath B
Ibañez Agustín A
Ivanovic Daniza D
Jackowski Andrea A
Leon-Ortiz Pablo P
Lochner Christine C
López-Jaramillo Carlos C
Luckhoff Hilmar H
Massuda Raffael R
McGuire Philip P
Miyata Jun J
Mizrahi Romina R
Murray Robin R
Ozerdem Aysegul A
Pan Pedro M PM
Parellada Mara M
Phahladira Lebogan L
Ramirez-Mahaluf Juan P JP
Reckziegel Ramiro R
Reis Marques Tiago T
Reyes-Madrigal Francisco F
Roos Annerine A
Rosa Pedro P
Salum Giovanni G
Scheffler Freda F
Schumann Gunter G
Serpa Mauricio M
Stein Dan J DJ
Tepper Angeles A
Tiego Jeggan J
Ueno Tsukasa T
Undurraga Juan J
Undurraga Eduardo A EA
Valdes-Sosa Pedro P
Valli Isabel I
Villarreal Mirta M
Winton-Brown Toby T TT
Yalin Nefize N
Zamorano Francisco F
Zanetti Marcus V MV
Winkler Anderson M AM
Pine Daniel S DS
Evans-Lacko Sara S
Crossley Nicolas A NA
Study Outcome
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