blueshift:

I think you are making Shaffer's point.

There is no solid data to say women have innate cognitive differences from men. She's not saying that there is none, but to date, we can't say anything meaningful. However, there are authors pushing there own shoddy readings of the data out there. So Shaffer is not exactly making a point or answering a question. Instead she is pointing out that others who seem to be pushing an agenda while claiming to be following objective truths.

I'm not sure of what "innate cognitive differences" means, but if we just mean that men and women might process data differently from each other, I think there is indeed plenty of evidence that this is true. Schaffer's proofs demonstrate that men and women are equivalent in outcome, but this doesn't prove that there's no difference in the processes by which we arrive at that outcome.

Also, as I pointed out elsewhere, her counter-proofs are on qualitative assessments of outcome that were intentionally designed to minimize any sex-based differences. So, yes - where men and women are the same, they're the same. But that doesn't prove there are no situations in which we think differently.

I haven't read these two books, so I don't know if they make any other claims. If all these are books are saying is that women have larger vocabularies and speak faster, then yes, I agree that we can dismiss them out of hand. But somehow I doubt that's all they're saying.

--s