THE 'FACTS' OF LIFE? How the Notion of Evolved Brain Differences Between Women and Men Naturalises Biological Accounts of Sex/Gender

Taken together, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience combine to provide a compelling heuristic account of sex/gender differences. In this article, I explore how the meta-theoretical framework provided by evolutionary psychology provides support for a reading of sex/gender effects in neuropsychological research that sees these as evidence of a hardwired' neurobiological basis for sex/gender. I discuss the resistance of these hardwired' accounts to arguments thatlike other neuropsychological phenomenasex/gender could be theorised in terms of experience-dependent neuroplasticity. I conclude that the evolutionary-neuropsychology heuristic obtains much of its appeal from the apparently scientific' evidence it provides for understanding sex/gender as a natural' rather than sociocultural' phenomenona view which is aligned with postfeminist ideologies of sex/gender in the contemporary west.