Do women statistically have better multitasking ability than men?

Question

I hear this very often, while woman can do several things at a time. If this is true, what are the qualifications that make woman capable of doing several things at once?

A quick Google search returned an obviously popular book;

However, I haven't read it and I'm not planning to. Plans may change if this gets interesting though.

Are there any evidence that support the idea/ theory?

Answer 1

No, there is no such evidence.

Apparently there didn't use to be much evidence against it either, but I found two recent studies by Noemi Peters (2010, 2011).

First I did a search on "sex differences" multitasking and similar terms, but I could only find a dodgy study in support and not much well-received publications in the field anyway. Apparently Ms Peters found the same dearth in the literature. The fun part: I found her publications by looking who had cited the Pease book :-)

I searched extensively for peer-reviewed scientific publications that examine gender differences in multitasking ability, but the closest I could find is Criss (2006) and Havel (2004), which are manuscripts that are made available online at the website of the National Undergraduate Research Clearinghouse. Both examined subjects who had to perform some specified tasks while tallying keywords from a song/story. None of them found gender differences in productivity when multitasking, but Criss (2006) found that women were better at accuracy. Nonetheless, we do not know whether the findings can be attributed to multitasking as none of them had a control group. Besides, some British newspapers reported recently about an experiment that supports the view that women are better (see Gray, 2010), but when I contacted the lead researcher, Professor Keith Laws, it turned out that there is not even a working paper yet that I could discuss here.

Her evidence to the contrary wasn't published in peer reviewed journals, so if somebody has something stronger, better pay attention to that instead.

From the abstract of her dissertation:

The view that women are better at multitasking is widely held, however there is no scientific evidence supporting it. This experiment examines whether there are gender differences in multitasking ability and in the inclination to multitask. To this end, I conduct an experiment with three treatments: one where subjects have to execute two tasks sequentially, one where subjects are forced to multitask with the two tasks, and one where they can choose freely how to organize their work. The results of the third treatment indicate that there is no gender difference in the inclination to multitask. As far as multitasking ability is concerned, I do find a gender difference but it is contrary to the widely held beliefs: point estimates indicate that men perform better both under forced and voluntary multitasking. This gender difference reaches statistical significance in case of voluntary multitasking.

Answer 2

The Straight Dope wrote an article on this:

A lot of the cognitive research on sex differences in multitasking, unfortunately, has fixated on simultasking. The results have been all over the place — some showing that men do better, some women, some neither. Few of the studies I’ve seen compare the results of simultasking against a control group of unitaskers, that is, people doing just one thing. My guess is that, for intellectually demanding work, unitaskers do way better than simultaskers of either sex...

Research and common sense suggest that the only way to do two tasks competently at the same time is to make sure at least one of them requires minimal brainpower, for example folding laundry while on the phone. A reasonable surmise is that women’s reputation as superior multitaskers stems partly from the fact that they’re disproportionately burdened with mindless household chores that can readily be done simultaneously.

Answer 3

There has been some changes since the OP asked this question and at least one relevant research paper has tried to provide a new answer to this question. According to study this (Mäntylä T. 2013) published in one of the top ten peer reviewed journal of psychology:

Yes there is evidence... but men seems better at it

(emphasis is from me)

The second main finding of Experiment 1 was that males (mean proportion correct = .85) outperformed females (mean proportion correct = .74) at multitasking, as indexed by accuracy in the counter task, F(1, 70) = 6.25, ηp 2 = .08, p < .01.

As shown in Figure 1, the gender difference in accuracy favored men by about 10% across the three counter tasks. This difference was not due to a trade-off between accuracy in the counter tasks and in the background (name-back) task, given that both men and women identified about 38% of the targets in the name-back task (with no differences in false alarms). Furthermore, gender differences in counter-task accuracy were not related to differences in monitoring frequency (F < 1). Females (mean proportion correct = .52) performed somewhat better than men (mean proportion correct = .48) in the letter-memory task, but this difference was not reliable (F < 1).

The second experiment demonstrated another interesting fact:

Experiment 2 provided additional support for this hypothesis by showing that gender differences in multitasking (and spatial ability) were eliminated among females who were in the menstrual, but not the luteal, phase of their menstrual cycle.

Limitations

The author is aware of some limit of his experiments. Most of them are related to the assumption that multitasking involve spatial abilities. I extracted the most interesting part of the discussion, but refer to the original paper for better understanding of their impacts. (again, emphasis is from me)

[...] it was necessary to use (gender-fair) test conditions in which the role of domain-specific skills and experiences were minimized. Furthermore, although most everyday multitasking may involve a great deal of spatiotemporal processing, it is reasonable to assume that these demands are domain specific. A central assumption of the spatiotemporal hypothesis introduced here is that gender differences in multitasking are expected when the demands on temporal coordination are relatively high. In most dual-task conditions, these demands are low and less dependent on spatial abilities than are multiple tasks that may require coordination of a complex pattern of temporal contingencies. This line of reasoning is also consistent with evidence from earlier studies showing no gender-related differences in dual-task conditions.

[...] Another limitation of the study is that both experiments involved relatively restricted time frames and predictable target events (in the counter tasks). The term multitasking is a loosely defined construct that covers a wide spectrum of activities and time frames. Multitasking in some conditions may require very narrow deadlines (e.g., air traffic control), whereas other types of multitasking (e.g., household activities) may impose lower demands on spatiotemporal processing because of more-generous time windows. It is reasonable to assume that, like most goal-directed tasks, everyday multitasking reflects different mixtures of task-independent cognitive functions (e.g., components of executive functioning and spatial processing) and more domain-specific skills and strategies. From this perspective, individual differences in multitasking should be considered in relative terms, given that some conditions may show reduced or even reversed gender differences because of task-specific constraints and strategies.

Mäntylä T., Gender Differences in Multitasking Reflect Spatial Ability, Psychological Science, April 1, 2013 24: 514-520