Multitasking? Not even women really do it

Actually this isn't new, If You Think You're Good At Multitasking, You Probably Aren't : "...scientists say that the better people think they are at multitasking, the worse they really are at juggling". A few years ago I saw some early research which seemed to indicate this. At that point I realised that 'multitasking' for most people is not really parallel processing but the ability to switch rapidly and relatively effectively between tasks. AND ... men can do that too.

The thing about that 'women multitask' thing is that men let women frame the discussion in terms of things that were important to women: men multitask (recognising that multitasking is just a way of talking about rapid attention shifting) all sorts of things they are interested in but don't really either notice they do it or have not realised that rapid-switching counts as multitasking. 'Women multitask' was a way for women to assert their dignity in working in the home, doing several things at once -over against men in the same domestic sphere who were trying not to do loads of things at once (heck, they were doing that at work).

Now I'm not saying there aren't all kinds of issues and problems with that -just trying to say how this little piece of battling between the sexes might have come about. Fact is, there are differences between the sexes (on average but often not in particular) but 'multitasking' so-called is not one of them.