Gender Gaps

Hi friends,

I'm taking this really cool robotics class this semester! Making and playing with robots is a lot of fun😊

But, I didn't start this topic to tell you about my school experience😆

I am one of only 5 girls in that class. Already, this is an extremely disproportional distribution of genders. However, my school as a whole has about 65-70% female students and 30-35% male students. This makes the gender gap even larger.

Other classes with more male students than female students are java/c++ (or any computer programing class for that matter) and weight training gym.

All academic required classes have more females than males (because of the disproportional distribution in the student body). However, home ec. classes like pottery, cooking etc are all or almost all girls.

Such gender gaps are not specific to my school, or high schools in general. We can see them in the mojors students study in university and in the workfield. Why are there more male engineers than females? Why are there more female teachers than males?

What is the reason for such distinct gender gaps in school and within the workforce? To what extent are cultural and societal streotypes responsible for this? what can be done to lessen the gap?

Similar topics have been discussed before, so instead of generalizing, let's focus on the school/college/university and work setting.

It is an established fact that male and female brains are different...
these differences may have been inherent eg. the male brain on average is larger than a female brain but the area that controls emotions and memory on an average are larger in female than male brains.

the intellectual differences between male and female brains may also have been evolutionary...

" We know that the average man and woman have slightly different intellectual strengths. Some of these differences appear to be the result of a division of labour between men and women going back to our hunter-gatherer past. For example, men are better at spatial-navigational skills such as map reading and judging distances and at targeting skills (dart throwing for instance). These skills probably developed through hunting. Women have a better memory for words and objects, and are better at fine motor skills. These abilities probably developed through food gathering near the home and through making clothes and preparing food."
http://www.sfu.ca/~dkimura/articles/britan.htm

The sex hormones are also believed to influence intellectual skills...female rats exposed to androgens immediately after birth develop spatial skills that are different from females and more like males

Lots has also been written about the males being better at Maths because they have more number of brain cells...however counter studies have shown that that is not the case and exposure to sterotypes results in anxiety in girls about perfomance in Math and this may be the actual reason!