Multitasking: Man vs. Woman

Ousman Kamara 10/6/14

ENG:99

Multitasking: Man vs. Woman

While reading the article ‘Are women really better at multitasking?’ it was declared by British researchers that women are in fact better at multitasking than men are. In an experiment 50 male students and 50 female students were assembled to perform three tasks in a span of 8 minutes. According to the author 70 percent of the women performed better than their male counterpart. The experiment did show that women do take a look at things more logically but that does not mean that they performed better on all the tasks. The author does state that there is evidence showing that multitasking is hard on productivity for every person despite their gender.

The thing that i found interesting is that the men handled the math problems without many problems and also on pinpointing map locations but the woman did well on the most complicated task. This proves that women are better at multitasking, but depending on the tasks given whether its simple math problems or something confusing like making plans to find a key either gender can do a single task better than the other. I feel that neither gender is better than the other.

In response to the article i don’t agree with the statement that women are better at multitasking, but i also don't think men are better either. I recall at one point me and my friends were at a restaurant and we saw how the waiter and waitress were juggling their roles from taking orders, to delivering the food and cleaning. I noticed that both had shared the same task while woman were more organized from the way took the orders but when it came to bringing the food the males were more productive. This show that given the same tasks either one can do good regardless of gender.         

While i was reading that article i found evidence stated by Dr.Etienne Koechin in which she said that multitasking is a drag on everybody despite their gender. I found out that when an individual is working on one task the brain focus only on completing the task, but when working on two tasks the divides its focus and splits the work up between the left and right hemisphere of the brain. I remember a friend of mine was working on two separate class projects. While i advised her to work on them individually she decided to work on both at the same time. In the end she ended up getting low scores on both the projects.This shows that gender does not play a role in whether someone is better at multitasking than another.

To sum up my response to the article no gender is better at multitasking. While woman appear to be better at it it all comes down to the individual, meaning men can be better at multitasking to whether it be at a restaurant setting or any other place, everyone is different . But regardless whether a man or woman is better at multitasking, multitasking is a drag on everybody.