Atheory, you need to calm down. I for one posted a facile generalisation because I wanted to spark some discussion beyond that which i had time to fully engage in myself. I have a degree in psychology including two modules on gender formation, for what its worth. For your part you should do a bit more research into the kind of neurological hardwiring that we're referring to (albeit clumsily.)
"Baron-Cohen's theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. " Simon Baron Cohen - article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/pag ... 43,00.html
Inborn structural and chemical differences are then shaped, reinforced or counteracted by very complex environmental pressures, as you say, but that doesnt stop the underlying neurological differences being the fundamental factor underlying observed differences in the kinds of play children engage in.
Male type-tendencies, from a very young age, can be summarised as follows:
"Some psychological tests also show the male advantage in systemising. For example, in the mental rotation test, you're shown two shapes, and asked if one is a rotation or a mirror image of the other. Males are quicker and more accurate on this test. Reading maps has been used as another test of systemising. Men can learn a route in fewer trials, just from looking at a map, correctly recalling more details about direction and distance. If you ask boys to make a map of an area that they have only visited once, their maps have a more accurate layout of the features in the environment, eg, showing which landmark is south-east of another.
Boys are also better at constructing block buildings from 2D blueprints. These are constructional systems. And in Nick Hornby's novel, High Fidelity, the male protagonist is obsessed with his record collection, and works in a second-hand record shop catering for (almost all male) customers searching for that one missing item in their collections of music. Collections (of albums, or anything else) are often highly systematic in nature.
The male preference for focusing on systems again is evident very early. Our Cambridge study found that at one year old, little boys showed a stronger preference to watch a film of cars (mechanical systems), than a film of a person's face (with a lot of emotional expression). Little girls showed the opposite preference. And at one day old, little boys look for longer at a mechanical mobile." (Baron Cohen, Cambridge - see
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/ ... 22,00.html)
On the contary, females' early tendencies and abilities are very different:
"Baby girls, as young as 12 months old, respond more empathically to the distress of other people, showing greater concern through more sad looks, sympathetic vocalisations and comforting. This echoes what you find in adulthood: more women report frequently sharing the emotional distress of their friends. Women also spend more time comforting people. When asked to judge when someone might have said something potentially hurtful, girls score higher from at least seven years old. Women are also more sensitive to facial expressions. They are better at decoding non-verbal communication, picking up subtle nuances from tone of voice or facial expression, or judging a person's character." (Baron Cohen, Cambridge - see
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/ ... 22,00.html)
The above Guardian article simply summarises this area of research. If you really want I can provide links to more specific pieces of research.
In looking for the developmental reasons for these observed differences, it can be found that chemical differences during gestation probably play an important role:
"The presence of androgens in early life produces a "male" brain. In contrast, the female brain is thought to develop via a hormonal default mechanism, in the absence of androgen. However, recent findings have shows that ovarian hormones also play a significant role in sexual differentiation.
One of the most convincing evidences for the role of hormones, has been shown by studying girls who were exposed to high levels of testosterone because their pregnant mothers had congenital adrenal hyperplasia (4). These girls seem to have better spatial awareness than other girls and are more likely to show turbulent and aggressive behaviour as kids, very similar to boys." (Sabbatini,
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/ment ... omens.html.)
But instead of all the above, just use your eyes and your intuition. My girlfriend is a bigger dance music fan than me. We both *love* this music from the ground up, but she could not be less interested in a single technical aspect of it's creation, dissemination, culture or classification. They are irrelvant, my domain only.
What matters to her is how the music makes her feel.
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