Surely the reason is obvious, as it pervades all of society. Women are, generally speaking, more interested in people than men are, and men are more interested in things. Yes there is a big overlap, and yes there are plenty of exceptions, but the trend is very clear. And yes it is present from birth, so it can’t be just society.

> Surely the reason is obvious

Most human behavior is not obvious on close inspection. And when what seems "obvious" happens to align with traditional expectations of historically oppressed groups we should be very very skeptical of our personal gut feelings.

It’s not just a gut feeling though, there is plenty of scientific evidence. And given our evolutionary history and the fact that women give birth, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that women are more interested in people.

I really don’t see the point in denying this, it certainly doesn’t benefit women. Most women probably wouldn’t like to be men.

I have somehow missed all that scientific evidence (I am not trying to sound sarcastic). I am generally very sceptical of "evolutionary psychology" and claims that are based on popsci biology that neglect cultural factors. It might turn out that you are right, but there is no evidence yet, definitely not in our "evolutionary history", that women and men are inherently different in the way you described. The fact is, we do not know how much of these differences in choice are cultural and how much is biological. And from my work with students, and from the studies (reproducible studies) I have read, much of it can be easily explained as an "artificial" cultural artefact.

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00018...

I guess I was not very clear in my statements, but to reiterate: yes, we all know these observations about interests are true, but no, we do not know whether they are biological. On the contrary, we have strong evidence that these preferences stem from the way we talk to young boys and girls.

There was a video documentary by someone in Scandinavia where they did experiments on infants, and from a very early age, the differences between male and females start to manifest, even before any sort of social input and differences in treatment. It seems to be biological. Females are more interested in "faces" and the males were more interested in "things".

That doesn't mean women are not interested in STEM though. I've seen a very interesting anecdote at a university in the middle east. It was segregated (men and women had different campuses), and for a certain amount of time, there were the same number, if not more, women than men in the engineering colleges. A nearby university, which was not segregated, and offered practically the same curriculum, had very few women in STEM, most women there ended up in business and media majors. Though things could probably change after graduation where female STEM graduates end up taking work that is less hands on and involves more dealing with people.

In the Middle East there is absolutely societal pressure against women, I’m only saying there’s none of that in the West.

I’ve lived in Jordan, one of the freest and most tolerant countries in the region and I could definitely imagine that women would like to avoid atudying with men.

That's not what I've seen. Plus, that's not the point of discussion here.

This was in a Gulf country. And it's not about avoiding studying with men (the majority of the population there are foreigners, and those schools attracted non-Arabs as well). Again, repeating what I saw, in the segregated school, the ratio of men to women in engineering was almost 1:1 (I don't know if that changed recently). In the university next door, it was closer to what we see in the West (way less women in engineering). However, in that same coed university, women ended up more in business majors where they were also studying alongside men. I've also seen a lot of women enter pharmacy and architecture majors.

Sure it's important and maybe one day we will understand:

1. Why it happens

2. Whether or not it is positive or negative

3. How to engineer society to work differently

But as it stands now, we don't know any of that and programs that try to force women into STEM fields are just weird. I mean, I am all for programs that help them feel welcome and accepted and uninhibited in STEM careers because some of them do choose to be programmers and such and they should be respected and treated fairly. But programs that look at the gender gap and assume it is a problem that needs to be fixed are just dumb.