[pwny]

While I agree with your point, I believe "projects with 'random' (assigned) partners" to be a bad idea as far as encouraging social interactions. From my experience, no one enjoys being randomly assigned a partner (at least in high school) and starting your social contact with an unpleasant experience might ruin the chances of proper interaction.

I think you make an excellent point that a lot is at play during high school though. It seems like most kids are fine and don't notice gender differences before their teens and that the social issues manifest and strengthen from the start to the end of puberty. Teenagers are mean and that period of life is when people judge the most based on looks and social aptitude. Solving this situation (which probably can't be solved readily) would most likely raise everyone's social interaction skills, smooth the social differences across the board and solve a lot of gender stereotypes (and even other problems).