Why Are There More Male Geniuses than Female Geniuses?

Marie Curie would like to know.

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If I asked you to close your eyes and picture a “genius,” you probably would imagine a wild-haired Einstein or an eagle-eyed Steve Jobs with a permanent light bulb above his head.

Who you wouldn’t imagine is a woman.

You wouldn’t be alone. In 2015, 92nd Street Y, a nonprofit cultural and community center, surveyed 2,043 people on who is a genius.

87% of women and 93% of men said most geniuses are men.

But here’s the real head-scratcher: When asked if they might be a genius, 15 percent of the male respondents said yes. Not a single woman believed they might be a genius. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Take a seat, Ladies. No penis. No genius.

Don’t believe the sexism? Then, google “examples of geniuses” and witness the pantheon of past and present penises.

Screenshot of google results to the question “examples of geniuses”

Poor Madame Curie. It’s a lot of responsibility to be the lone representation of female genius.

To be fair, Google didn’t manipulate this response through some algorithmic sexist shenanigans. Google is merely a mirror of the world’s biases.

So, let’s turn the mirror around. Why does society believe geniuses are only men? Is genius just some hallowed word that rich, aging white dudes use to prop themselves up on the gigantic shoulders of other rich, aging white dudes? Or perhaps gender is not the problem. Could it be the modern media insists on conflating “genius” with “guy who got a lot of retweets”?

The Celebrity Genius vs. The Quiet Genius

Have you noticed how many “geniuses” today are also celebrities? Gone are the days of Isaac Newton quietly sitting under an apple tree contemplating gravity. Genius today must also have a genius level of marketing skills.

Take Kanye West, who has declared himself a genius more times than we can count. Whether he deserves the pedestal is open for debate, but he certainly wouldn’t be able to stay on it without relentless self-promotion.

And then there’s Elon Musk, who understands the power of celebrity enough to pay 44 billion dollars to amplify his brain farts to the world and then spend half his day spreading conspiracies. Genius? Maybe if you are writing the next dystopian novel.

Even some of history’s most revered geniuses were attention whores. For example, Nikola Tesla wasn’t just an inventor; he was a showman. He dazzled audiences with public demonstrations of his inventions, like wireless electricity and the Tesla coil. His rivalry with Edison added drama, further cementing his mythos as a mad, eccentric genius.

And let’s not forget everyone’s favorite genius — Albert Einstein. With his wild hair, iconic photos, witty quotes, and famous friends (Charlie Chaplin was his wingman), he quickly became a media darling and one of the first scientists to achieve rock-star status. (And was quite the lady's man.)

Where are the women bragging about their IQ scores and declaring themselves red-hot geniuses? Maybe women don’t get branded geniuses because we are socialized to demur. No, no, this little thing called polonium. I just cooked it up in my kitchen between baking a quiche and driving the kids to soccer practice…

Many women do genius-level work but don’t get slapped with the “genius” label unless they can pull off Elizabeth Holmes’ black turtleneck and fleece billions out of investors with fake blood.

Let’s face it. Most geniuses today give themselves the label. Even Donald Trump has called himself a “very stable genius.” Mind you; this is the same guy who stares at eclipses, thought George Washington fought the British with the help of airports and suggested injecting bleach to cure COVID. Many assume his daffiness is due to age-related cognitive decline, but Trump has always been this dense. One of his Wharton professors even called him “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” Quite the honor.

Sure, Trump is a genius. A genius conman. He has the self-promotion skills of a carnival barker selling miracle tonic. (Oh, sorry, “concept of” a miracle tonic.) If Trump is a genius, my cat deserves a MacArthur grant for unrolling toilet paper.

Genius Begins with the Y Chromosome

The male genius bias begins with parents, and I am oh-so guilty of this one. When my son began doing third-grade math at age five and stacking blocks with the precision of a Renaissance master builder, I immediately assumed he was a genius. But when my daughter began reading at age five and reciting The Very Hungry Caterpillar verbatim, I just assumed she really liked books. And bugs.

I am not alone in this confession. New York Times journalist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz found that parents' genius worship isn’t evenly distributed between genders. Parents were two and a half times more likely to search “Is my son gifted?” than “Is my daughter gifted?” Add the word “genius,” and the disparity grows even starker.

If you are old enough, you might remember the Baby Mozart CDs that claimed if you blared Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music into your unborn child’s ears, the music would turn your child into the next Rhodes Scholar.

Well, even Baby Mozart gendered its future geniuses. The cover of the CDs always featured a male bear dressed in a bow tie, vest, and suit jacket. Other covers featured a male giraffe and male rabbit. Apparently, the animal kingdom lacks female geniuses too.

This bias exists because it’s self-reinforcing. If parents believe boys are more likely to be geniuses, they invest more time and resources into nurturing their sons’ intellectual development. Meanwhile, girls are steered toward social skills and emotional intelligence — valuable but less likely to earn the “genius” label.

Word Origins of Genius, the Enlightenment, and the Woman Who Told Off Darwin

To understand how we got into this genius mess, we must take a brief jaunt back through the hallowed halls of sexism…

The word genius comes from the Latin genius, meaning a guiding spirit or divine spark unique to a person. In ancient Rome, everyone had a genius — a kind of celestial hype man who helped you crush life’s to-do list, whether it was leading a legion or making sure your toga wasn’t tucked into your sandals. Back then, genius wasn’t about IQ or gender; even women had one.

Fast forward to the Enlightenment, and things took a sharp turn down Misogyny Avenue. By then, genius no longer referred to an external spirit but an innate, almost mystical ability that set extraordinary individuals apart. Spoiler alert: those individuals were almost always men.

Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that women were too emotional and irrational to create anything lasting. Women’s role, Rousseau thought, was to inspire male genius — not to embody it. Essentially, women were the muses, not the artists. Thanks for the pep talk, J.J. Now we will all get naked.

“Women, in general, love no art, know no art and have no genius” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Even Immanuel Kant, who loved to wax poetic about the power of reason, dismissed women as beautiful but not rational. To Kant, educating a woman was pointless because “a learned woman might just as well have a beard.” This is why so many of history’s geniuses are hairy.

The Romantic movement doubled down on these ideas, glorifying the male genius as a tortured, lone wolf type who stared into the abyss while everyone else dealt with reality (and laundry).

Enlightenment thinkers weren’t the only culprits. Nineteenth-century scientists of the era chimed in with their own sexist nonsense. According to the phrenologists, women’s smaller skulls indicated lesser intellectual capacity. This pseudo-science reinforced the idea that genius was biologically male.

By the late nineteenth century, women began fighting back. In 1881, socialite Caroline Kennard got into a hilarious spat with Charles Darwin. Fed up with all the talk of male superiority, Kennard politely penned a letter to Darwin, asking for clarification on what she assumed must be a misinterpretation of his recent views on women’s intellectual capacity. Surely, Darwin — a man whose work dissected the mysteries of the natural world — couldn’t possibly believe women were naturally inferior to men?

But Darwin, ever the Victorian gentleman, responded with a missive that can only be described as the nineteenth-century version of “Well, actually…”

Penned in his famously illegible scrawl, Darwin doubled down on his belief in women’s intellectual inferiority. Yes, women were morally superior, he conceded, but intellectually? Sorry, ladies, nature has already made its choice. Women’s brains, he argued, were not wired for the same heights of reason, imagination, or intellectual greatness that men’s were.

Darwin, not content to merely state his opinion, peppered his argument with evolutionary logic. Across millennia, he explained, men had faced competition for mates that demanded cunning, strength, and intelligence. Women, by contrast, didn’t need to evolve in these areas because their reproductive roles were less competitive.

His magnum opus, The Descent of Man, lays this out in excruciating detail, comparing human evolution to that of peacocks and lions, where males work hard to impress females while the latter just, well, exist. (Tell that to the lioness who does all the hunting while her mate sits around and looks pretty.)

According to Darwin, it wasn’t just biology; it was evolutionary destiny. Case closed.

Kennard was, understandably, furious. In her blistering response, she pointed out that women weren’t inferior. They were simply trapped in limited roles that barred them from competing on the same playing field as men. “Let the environment of women be similar to that of men,” she wrote, “and with his opportunities, before she be fairly judged, intellectually his inferior, please.” Mic drop.

To be fair, Darwin’s sexism wasn’t unique to him. It was — and still is — part of a broader myth: that male genius is an inevitable product of biology, evolution, or divine design. Unfortunately, genius is often conflated with other traits — eccentricity, psychopathy, risk-taking, bigger brains, and divergent thinking.

Let’s untangle this Gordian knot and debunk some of the myths regarding genius.

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Myth #1: More men are geniuses because they take more risks

The genius is usually the guy with a daredevil streak in his heart and the willingness to murder endangered birds to launch rockets. Society eats it up.

Examples of genius taking bold risks are numerous. Isaac Newton didn’t just invent calculus; he jammed a needle into his eyeball to study color perception. That’s not just taking risks. That’s auditioning for a one-man horror show.

Nikola Tesla? He electrocuted himself to prove alternating current (AC) was safe. Edward Jenner? He tested smallpox inoculations on his baby so you wouldn’t have to. (And vaccine deniers could increase the rates of Measles). Humphry Davy discovered laughing gas by inhaling enough to host the weirdest rave in science history. William Buckland discovered coprolites (fossilized dung) by tasting bat urine. I hear rabies is delicious. And Barry Marshall swallowed Helicobacter pylori to prove ulcers weren’t caused by stress, presumably while everyone else in the lab yelled, “Barry, nooooo!”

These reckless leaps into the scientific unknown are lauded as genius, reinforcing a narrative that men are hardwired to take the big, bold risks required to push humanity forward. Meanwhile, the corresponding myth suggests women shy away from risk, content to play it safe and keep the species alive.

Here’s the bro science logic: Males are disposable in the grand scheme of reproduction — a tribe only needs a few of them to keep the gene pool bubbling. Women, on the other hand, are too precious to gamble on. Therefore, men are hardwired to be reckless risk-takers, while women clutch their pearls and keep the cave fires burning.

Consider this: In one study, women were less likely to take risks during a gambling task when they had to record their gender beforehand and were told the task measured math, logic, and rationality. The same women, however, took just as many risks as men when the task was framed as “puzzle solving,” and gender wasn’t spotlighted. Turns out, women aren’t less willing to gamble — they’re just dodging stereotypes that scream, “Math? Leave it to the guys.”

This shines a spotlight on the real issue: women aren’t born risk-averse — they’re socialized to be. From childhood, girls are encouraged to be cautious, avoid failure, and prioritize safety. Boys? They’re cheered on for climbing too high, running too fast, or accidentally lighting themselves on fire. This upbringing follows women into adulthood, influencing how their choices are judged.

When a man launches an audacious startup, he’s a “visionary.” When a woman does the same, she’s “reckless.” A male scientist who experiments on himself is a “pioneer;” a woman doing something equally daring is labeled “irresponsible.” The same action, wildly different narratives.

Cordelia Fine, author of Testosterone Rex, explains that men and women don’t differ in risk-taking ability but in how they approach risk. Men may favor physical risks — BASE jumping, anyone? — while women often tackle social and professional risks, like challenging workplace norms, advocating for policy changes, or pushing a watermelon-sized human through their nether regions. But society doesn’t frame those as “genius” moves because they don’t involve needles in eyeballs or tasting bat pee.

So, let’s set the record straight. Intelligent people don’t take more risks. They take more calculated risks.

Myth #2: The bigger the brain, the bigger the brilliance

I can’t believe it’s 2025, and I still have to debunk this myth, but Elon Musk recently gave this one legs, so here we are.

Now, to be fair, Musk never said, “Bigger brains = bigger intelligence.” He didn’t need to say it. He knew his idiot horde would take that ball and run with it. And run they did.

A ridiculous debate exploded on X on whether people who have bigger brains are smarter. Then that debate spiraled into “women are not as smart as men because they have smaller brains” blah, blah, blah.

As someone who must wear a child’s helmet (no joke), I must defend my small-brained tribe.

Brain size doesn’t equate to intelligence. Elephants and whales have bigger brains than humans, yet they aren’t winning Nobel Prizes. Relative brain size was supposed to settle the debate — until it turned out birds have surprisingly high ratios. Enter the encephalization quotient, a measure that conveniently places humans on top. But even within our species, the correlation between brain size and IQ is weak, hovering around 0.3 to 0.4.

Consider Albert Einstein. His brain, famously donated to science and detailed in my book They Lost Their Heads (Bloomsbury 2018), wasn’t larger than average. In fact, his noggin was on the smaller side, weighing just 1,230 grams. What set Einstein apart wasn’t the size of his brain but its structure — particularly in areas linked to complex thinking. In other words, genius isn’t about cranial real estate but how that space is organized and used.

Sidenote: Brains are indeed getting larger, but it isn’t because women’s birth canals are closed for business. Brains are getting larger due to improved environmental factors — better nutrition, education, and overall health. Our brains are also adapting to a more complex environment, which has increased the size of regions like the hippocampus — crucial for memory and spatial navigation. (Is this why I spend my life getting lost? Don’t answer that.)

Myth #3: Men are more likely to be genius because men are more eccentric

When you think of an “eccentric genius,” you probably think of Elon Musk. I don’t doubt Musk’s brilliance and business skills, but half of his big ideas seem to come from watching The Jetsons while on a Ketamine high. Self-driving cars! Space colonies! Computer brain implants! He’s basically the world’s richest stoner shouting — What if we design trucks to look like uncrushable trashcans but skip the crash tests. (No joke. Cybertrucks have not been officially crash-tested.)

Case in point: One of Musk’s recent douchey quotes about his Cybertrucks:

‘If you’re ever in an argument with another car, you will win.’

That Elon Musk is quite the humanitarian. Apparently, his idea of “winning” is letting all the rich drivers in Cybertrucks kill all the poor drivers in Kias.

How did we get here? A genius used to make society better, not create transportation that doubles as a murder machine. Come on, Elon. The MAGA boys playacting GI Joe have their guns. They don’t need tanks too.

But America eats it up because men with big ideas are entertaining. Women with big ideas…well, that bitch is crazy.

Speaking of crazy…let’s talk about Mae Jemison. Don’t know her? That’s because she’s the Black, female version of Elon Musk — minus the ego circus and Twitter meltdowns.