This is typical of a certain kind of report about gender difference which drives me up the wall. It describes research which involved showing men pictures of women, and women pictures of men, and measuring how long it took each to come to a decision about whether they were attracted to them. Men, it seems, very quickly decided, on the basis of whether they found the woman physically attractive. Women took longer, and didn't automatically dismiss men who were ugly. In men, we are told, "This is something very ancient and a way of helping men find the best mate to produce children." According to the newspaper, "In contrast women take longer to decide their feelings for a man because they need to weigh up whether he will be a committed partner who will provide for them well – part of their survival programming." Well, perhaps yes and perhaps no. The science was the measurement of time it took to reach a decision, the analysis is surely entirely speculative. I remember once watching a television documentary in which gender differences between girls and boys were investigated. We were shown pictures of boys working on their own and girls working together in groups. This, we were told in the voiceover, was because girls were 'less ambitious.' Less ambitious? What an incredible leap from the evidence which was simply that girls appeared to work more in groups. And a leap which reinforces gender stereotypes, as with the sentence in the Telegraph about women looking, even subconsciously, for a partner 'who will provide for them'. Who knows? Perhaps women simply reckon that if they're going to spend some time with a man, they'd like to spend some time with a brain and a sense of humour, not just a handsome face. And perhaps, even when they were cavewomen, they felt that way too. After all, a cave can get pretty tedious unless there's some good conversation around.