[Udo]

> Most of them aren't interested in developing, but in functional analysis and leading teams.

But why is that so? Is it because we as a culture have decided that "men are focussed on building things" and "women are focussed on social interaction"? I'm interested in the thought process that actually motivates people to decide what they prefer to be working on.

When I look back on how I got started with programming, the overwhelming aspect for me was the incredible coolness of being able to make anything I could dream of. It's this feeling of creative empowerment that really drives me to this day. And somehow I never thought of this as being a gender-specific motivation, but I would like to hear more opinions on whether I'm mistaken or not...

[pnathan]

Is it because we as a culture have decided that "men are focussed on building things" and "women are focussed on social interaction"?

I think that that is the root of the problem, that collective decision, that outsourcing of our moral responsibility to our bodies.

[philwelch]

Is it because we as a culture have decided that "men are focussed on building things" and "women are focussed on social interaction"?

"Decided" or "observed"?

[Udo]

That's the same thing. When a culture "decides" something like that it becomes a behavioral reality. The human mind is incredibly plastic. Cultural expectations and preconceptions shape us tremendously, they play a big role in all issues where identity or life goals are concerned.

[philwelch]

No, you're presupposing that it's some sort of cultural influence that came out of nowhere rather than (one of many) quite natural, pre-existing behavioral differences between men and women.

[Udo]

You're absolutely correct, I'm am. And you're presupposing that those differences are biologically hardcoded, I get that. I just don't agree with you.

[philwelch]

I'm suggesting a possibility; you're presupposing a dogma.

[Udo]

Traditionally, dominant groups have often invoked (fake) claims of a naturally fixed order to protect, justify and market the status quo. For example, this line of reasoning has historically been used to assert that black people are a subhuman race incapable of higher intellectual thought and that women shouldn't be allowed to vote on the grounds that they are immature and hysterical by nature.

Another reason why I believe most of the omnipresent assumptions about a natural order are essentially bullshit is that I know quite a few men and women who violate these supposedly biological gender roles. They are not sick, they are not mutants, they are not troubled individuals with identity problems and they're not trying to be rebels. It's just that they don't care about their socially prescribed attributes.

Lastly, there have been quite a lot of experiments in psychology to successfully illustrate that expectations actually shape your capabilities. Not just the conscious idea of identity itself but indeed capabilities that were always thought to be innate are now found to be subject to variations stemming from motivation and expectation.

Recently I read about a study where participants were asked to do cognitive tasks that traditionally have a strong gender bias, for example spatial orientation. The results were as expected. However, the researchers then did a second run with a second group, explaining beforehand which tasks usually favor women and which tasks were better performed by men. The catch was: the experimenters lied, they actually switched the descriptions around. When this second group then took the tests, they performed according to the (now inverted) "expectations".

So I do have a few pointers that helped me arrive at this "dogmatic" position. So what's your position? What's the actual background of your suggested possibility?