[tzs]

I have a guess on that. I've not been able to find any research on whether it is correct or not. (Clarification: it is whether or not the age difference in brain development could affect interests in technology, not the existence of the difference, that I have not found any research on).

One of the things that happens when a human brain matures from a child's brain to an adult's brain is that it undergoes significant reorganization. It prunes a lot of old connections and starts focusing on more important adult things.

In girls this reorganization starts at age 10-12. In boys it starts at 15-20.

My guess is that it is easier for a brain that is still in child mode to develop and maintain an interest in technology. But it isn't until high school that you start to get the education that lets you really move beyond just an interest in tech as a user to a serious interest in going into tech as a career. I think it may be that getting that high school education while you still have a mostly child's brain greatly increases the chances you'll go into technology.

In the US you typically start high school at 14 or 15. That means that in high school most girls will already be well on their way to adult brains, but a lot of boys will still have child brains or be early in the transition to their adult brains. That could greatly skew things toward boys going into technology.

[SamReidHughes]

I don't buy this because among my friends, all sorts of boys did technical stuff or had technical interests. In elementary school the only kids that checked out books on machines or science stuff from the library were boys. And this was starting in 2nd grade, the books were about construction equipment or feats of bridge building. It was in at least two cases, me and one friend, obviously self-generated interest. Also in 2nd grade, we had a teacher who was a bit crazy and decided to turn the classroom into a set of autodidactic learning paths that students could take on their own volition, with little oversight. I remember one kid being super-excited about getting through the math stuff and learning exponents. Of course it was a boy. Many of the girls spent the time writing acrostics about each other.

Though I had a similar theory at one point that math ability was affected by how much you thought about math before puberty. The relative abilities of my classmates went through a reshuffling in that period.