Are women able to see more colours than men? A man may describe something as “purple” but a woman may describe it as

Question: Are women able to see more colours than men? A man may describe something as "purple" but a woman may describe it as "violet" or "lilac" and differentiate between shades. Why is this?
- Keywords:
  behaviour,
  colour,
  gender,
  perception
Asked by fuzzyduckling to Asif, Laura, Lena, Sean on 21 Mar 2012.
- Lena Ciric answered on 21 Mar 2012:
  
  Interesting question.
  
  I don’t think there’s any evidence that suggests that women can see more colours than men biologically. The biology of our eyes and the way our brains process this information is the same. I think women tend to take more notice of the names of colours. Ultimately, violet and lilac are both a type of purple. Being a woman I can tell you that lilac is a light purple colour and violet is a vibrant purple. Both are basically purple, though. Hope that makes sense…
- Sean Murphy answered on 21 Mar 2012:
  
  This is something I find quite funny. I tend to agree that men will use about 8-10 colours to describe things, while women can use hundreds of names, most of which sound like fruit rather than colours 🙂
  
  As Lena said, I don’t think that women actually see colour different to men, but perhaps their brains are better equipped to distinguish minor differences in colour. As a man violets and lilacs are both purple flowers 🙂

ogoldfinch09 commented on 21 Mar 2012:

My brother often perceives colors to be different than the ones I see and he is definitely not a woman. Some people simply recognize different shades with the wrong names.

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Question: Are women able to see more colours than men? A man may describe something as "purple" but a woman may describe it as "violet" or "lilac" and differentiate between shades. Why is this?