I just toured Alcatraz recently, and during the audio tour I learned that one of the male inmates there taught other male inmates how to knit, and knitting became a very popular pastime among the all-male prison population of Alcatraz.

There are likely lots of historical, social, and cultural reasons why knitting happens to be more popular among women than men -- reasons that might go back to our hunter-gatherer days, when the stronger, more physically capable men were the ones going out to hunt while women stayed home and took care of, among other things, the creation of clothing.