Men are more intelligent than women, claims new study

The study - carried out by a man - concluded that men's IQs are almost four points higher than women's.

British-born researcher John Philippe Rushton, who previously created a furore by suggesting intelligence is influenced by race, says the finding could explain why so few women make it to the top in the workplace.

He claims the 'glass ceiling' phenomenon is probably due to inferior intelligence, rather than discrimination or lack of opportunity.

The University of Western Ontario psychologist reached his conclusion after scrutinising the results of university aptitude tests taken by 100,000 students aged 17 and 18 of both sexes.

A focus on a factors such as the ability to quickly grasp a complex concept, verbal reasoning skills and creativity - some of they key ingredients of intelligence - revealed the male teenagers had IQs that were an average of 3.63 points higher. The average person has an IQ of around 100.

The findings, which held true for all classes and levels of parental education, overturn a 100 year consensus that men and women average the same in general mental ability. They also conflict with evidence that girls do better in school exams than boys.

But Prof Rushton, who was born in Bournemouth and obtained his doctorate in social psychology from the London School of Economics, argues that the faster maturing of girls leads to them outshining boys in the classroom.

Who is more verbal, the average man or woman? By a wide margin, of course, the answer is the woman. She speaks twice as many words as the man and has done so even before the age of two. Boys and men are much more nonverbal, usually preferring physical spatial activities even as small toddlers. So the evidence is clear that women hang out more in their left brains, whereas men tend to hang out more in their right brains.