I second the "didn't link the right video" sentiment. "Male" and "female" is clearly a reference to the orientation of the mechanism, not a reference to who designed it.
Ryan_m_b said:
No borek I'm not saying that there are not biological differences between men and women but that there is little justification for the idea that personalities are strongly biologically determined to the extent that men on average are better suited to certain industries.
More often than not this type of thing is just a post-hoc rationalisation for passive (or even overt) sexism and/or cultural influences I.e gender roles.
Sorry, ryan, but that's very clearly wrong. Of course you know that biological differences exist, with the physical differences being the most obvious and therefore most accepted [to exist]. Since there are jobs that require physical strength, it is quite fair to say that those jobs are "more suited" to men and vice versa. I'm watching a baseball game right now. There are no female players in it. Why? Because on average they are
less suited to be professional baseball players than men.
Once we accept that reality, it should not be a stretch to accept the other equal reality: men and women have different psychological make-ups. They therefore
are differently suited to jobs with different psychological requirements/skills. I have several female friends who are social workers or similar. Their jobs require them to deal with highly emotional situations on a daily basis. They are capable of coming home, crying about it, then (mostly) leaving it behind. Such a job would
crush me emotionally. I'm less suited for it than they are. Do I have scientific proof that that's typical? Nothing peer reviewed*, but I would hope that every bit of what I just said is common-knowledge, basic reality: I shouldn't need to provide a reference for my claim that there are no female major league baseball players in the US, for example.
I agree with Borek that this is just political correctness run amok.
[edit]*Evidence is plentiful so I might as well take a few seconds to post some, but you have to be careful about what you are looking at. The political correctness I perceive in the issue focuses on the issue of
intelligence. Studies abound on the subject of intelligence (consistently saying there is little difference between men and women), but they really need not: intelligence is not the issue and the studies are consistent that there is little difference. Personality is the issue. And differences in personality are very well documented. I link the wiki only because it summarizes and lists a dozen sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_psychology#Personality_tests
First linked [meta]study on empathy:
Summarizes results of 75 studies that reported accuracy for males and females at decoding nonverbal communication...Results show that more studies found a female advantage than would occur by chance...
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/85/4/845/