Don't dumb girls down

>Obviously there are easily observed physiological differences in brain structure and in the endocrine system etc, however it is a massive leap to go from that to asserting that observed differences in behaviour are down to this rather than down to societal factors.

It's actually no leap at all. Evolution put those differences in brain structure for a reason. It certainly isn't random, but due to some evolutionary benefit, and given that these differences are in the brain, it actually necessitates that there will be differences in behavior resulting purely from these physiological differences. It doesn't say what those differences are, but that there will be some, and then good science would tell us to learn what specifically those are.

In addition, in terms of evolution, you would expect there to be reliable, biologically caused behavioral differences between men and women due to the importance of specialization. Evolutionary, you don't have hundreds of thousands of years of men and women specializing in certain tasks without there being some built-in, biologically caused preferences in terms of what interests guide each gender.

The way you praise a child can have an effect on their definition of success and their goals. For example, something as subtle as praising a child for his intelligence vs praising him for his hard work can make him too focused on the number of points he gets vs actually understanding and learning.

That means that when offered a choice between problems that allow them to get a lot of right answers vs a challenging problem, kids that were praised on their intelligence chose the easy problems (so they wouldn't look dumb) and kids praised on their hard work picked a problem where they would actually learn something and have to work hard. Also the ones praised for their intelligence interpreted failure to mean they weren't smart. The ones that were praised for hard work thought they didn't work hard enough and tried harder.

So maybe we wouldn't be doing them such a favor by teaching them to care about good looks instead of hard work, because when they fail they will think that they are too ugly and have bad self esteem. Praising them for something they have control over and can actually change (such as their education, interests or hard work) would be much better.

(you can read the article I skimmed for this answer "Intelligence praise can undermine motivation and performance" https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/sys... )

I quote a HN comment from HilbertSpace in its entirety:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2111651

> "Way before age 5, the little girls realize that they are small versions of Mommy and NOT Daddy. They know in absolute terms that they are a GIRL and NOT a BOY.

Since their mommy was happy being a mommy, the little girls want to be like Mommy and on the 'mommy track'.

By about age 18 months, little girls are already masters at eliciting positive emotions from adults, MUCH better than boys. The girls are also MUCH better at reading emotions than boys. Facial expressions and eye contact are part of how the girls read and elicit emotions; other ways are to 'act' (they are MUCH better at acting than the boys) cute, meek, and sweet and to be pretty. Since being pretty lets them do better eliciting positive emotions, they love pretty dresses with ruffles and ribbons. So, they are in a 'virtuous circle': They act sweet, elicit positive emotions in an adult, e.g., father, grandfather, uncle, get a gift of a pretty dress, wear the dress, elicit even more positive emotions, get even more pretty dresses, white bedroom furniture, patent leather shoes, cute stuffed animals, etc.

Having to act like a boy or be treated like a boy, instead of like a girl, would be terrifying to them.

So, in their first years, such little girls, to be on the 'mommy track' want to play with dolls and not Erector sets, want to work at being pretty and not how to hot rod a car, want to learn how to bake a cake and not how to plug together a SATA RAID array.

Give such a girl a toy truck and she will know instantly that the toy is 'for boys' and will avoid it as a big threat.

Generally, from a little after birth and for nearly all their lives, human females are MUCH more emotional than human males. So, they pay a LOT of attention to emotions, both theirs and others'.

One of a human female's strongest emotions is to get security from membership in, and praise, acceptance, and approval from, groups, especially groups of females about their own age. That is, they are 'herd animals'. Gossip? It's how they make connections with others in the herd. Why do they like cell phones so much? For more gossip. Why pay so much attention to fashion? To 'fit in' with the herd.

In such a herd, in most respects the females try hard to be like the 'average' of the herd and not to stand out or look different. [An exception is when a female wants to lead her herd, e.g., go to Clicker, follow the biographies, get the one for the Astors, and look at Ms. Astor and her herd of 400.] Well, as long as human females with good parenting are on the 'mommy track', and the human race will be nearly dead otherwise, the 'average' of the herd will emphasize the 'mommy track', dolls, looking pretty, cakes, and clothes and not Erector sets, hot rodding cars, or building RAID arrays.

When it comes to a college major, any human female 18 months or older will recognize in a milli, micro, nano second that her herd believes that mathematics, physical science, engineering, and computer science are subjects for boys and NOT girls. Instead the girl subjects are English literature, French, music, acting, 'communications', sociology, psychology, nursing, maybe accounting, and K-12 education. By college the girls have been working 24 x 7 for about 16 years to fit in with the herd of girls, and their chances of leaving the herd in college to major in computer science are slim to none.

Don't expect this situation to change easily or soon: Mother Nature was there LONG before computer science, and, as we know, "It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.". Or, to get girls to major in computer science, "You are dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand.". Having women pursuing computer careers give girls in middle school lectures on computer careers will stick like water on a duck's back -- not a chance. Nearly all the girls will just conclude that at most such careers are for girls who are not doing well fitting into the herd of girls, are not very good socially, don't get invited to the more desirable parties, don't get the good dates, are not very pretty, and are not in line to be good as wives and mommies. By middle school, the girls have already received oceans of influences about 'female roles', and changing the directions these girls have selected and pursued so strongly for so long is hopeless..."

To convince yourself of the opposite of one fact you are suggesting -- that endocrine system doesn't play a major role in behavior, try administering yourself testosterone shots (ok don't actually do it (!) this is just for the argument's sake). You'll notice how you'll start feeling more agressive. You might start behaving more aggressively. If you stop after a while you might look back and even say something like "wow, I can't believe that was me acting that way".

Now imagine that the change is permanent (you don't stop taking those shots). Pretty sure you'd end up making small (and not so small decisions) in your life that will, in the end, amount to a very different situation than if you didn't start taking extra testosterone.