Re:The natural gender gap. (Score 1)

While hardcoded behaviour accounts for a significant amount of the gender differences seen in humans today, I do not believe it can take credit for the huge imbalance of the sexes in the tech workforce. It's true that from an early age girls gravitate toward dolls. This makes a certain amount of sense, as they will one day be mothers, and they need all the training they can get. (Caring for a baby is scary!) Similarly, girls cultivate an empathic response to others' difficulties, perhaps because logic is most often useless when dealing with babies and children. This does not prevent women from exercising their analytical skills. North American culture, however, does. Girls remain strong throughout elementary school in all areas of academics, including math and science. Come adolescence, however, there is overwhelming cultural pressure on girls to conform to a feminine stereotype. Perpetuated through the media and funded by commercial industry, this stereotype dictates not only the teenage girl's ideal body type and weight, but also her ideal societal role. Unsurprisingly, it is submissive, dependent, insecure, and materialy impulsive. Girls' math scores take a huge dive in junior high. Ask a 14 year old girl what she thinks of math, and she will *proudly* declare that she sucks at it. I remember hiding from my peers my own traitorous report card that displayed an 'A' in Math. For many girls, high achievement in an area viewed as unfeminine often results in their being ostracized. At 14, what would most girls rather be, popular or smart? If you think that one does not prevent the other, you have obviously not been a girl growing up in the past 20 years. For those would like a more informed read on how adolescent girls are abused by our culture, I suggest "Reviving Ophelia". Girls today are trained to reject careers focusing on science and math. It has very little to do with the large number of geek guys in the field, or with a feminine reluctance to use logic. (ASIDE: Though I would love to dismiss the latter explanation out of hand, I have only myself and my other geek friends to use as an example. I figure this sample does not quite satisfy the diversity required for a well supported argument.) It has to do with social conditioning. Given an environment encouraging of female development in *all* areas, I think it likely that significantly more women would choose tech jobs.