[joshuamorton]

That doesn't address the nature vs. nurture question.

Assume for a minute we all agree that there are observable iq differences and observable differences in likelyhood one ventures into computer science.

Then what? You've claimed that this is due to biolgical factors not social ones. Prove it.

[elzbardico]

Why in hell would societies start by nurturing the sexes differently if they weren’t different to start. I know that lots of girls are mechanically inclined, but in average they aren’t. 14 years and thousands of dollars of robots, mindstorms and all kind of stuff that my daughter is not into technical stuff, no matter how much I tried to avoid the barbies and make up stuff. And she is like most, but not all the friends her age. We need to make sure that girls that want to do stuff that usually is more associated with boys are free to pursue their interests in equal conditions. But extrapolating this to “we need to have parity in all those predominantly masculine professions(of course, only the well paid).

[joshuamorton]

> Why in hell would societies start by nurturing the sexes differently if they weren’t different to start.

We're talking about biological differences in either cognitive ability or interest in engineering/CS.

The well understood answer to your question is that there was a split in gender roles at about the time agriculture was adopted, with men working outside and women doing indoor tasks. This led to a breadwinner/homemaker split across gender lines which impacted the way genders were conventionally taught.

This extended to higher education opportunities, which in the US for example only really began to be open to women in the mid to late 1800s.

Note how none of this has anything to do with any cognitive ability that women might have had. It extends from the fact that men were superior agricultural fieldworkers thousands of years ago.

[CRConrad]

Note how

A) You start out with "either cognitive ability or interest in engineering/CS", but by your last paragraph you're down to "cognitive ability" alone. Damore's thesis was, AFAICR, mainly about the "interest" bit. Does this divergence in what you are talking about vs what he was mean anything, and if so what?

B) > The well understood answer to your question is that there was a split in gender roles at about the time agriculture was adopted, with men working outside and women doing indoor tasks.

And this split... Just happened? Or was it maybe due to differences in, well, how interested people of different sexes on average were/are in different kinds of tasks? Or why else were men "superior agricultural fieldworkers thousands of years ago"?