My experience raising three daughters is that they were always very aware of what others were doing. Their male peers were pretty uninformed (as I expect I was as a teen). I observed that the men were much more inclined to pursue an "unusual" activity (ie not what other people are doing)than the women were. It seemed motivated not by feeling "weird" rather it appeared to be motivated to not do something that their friends were not interested in participating with them. From a sense of inclusion they didn't spend group time on activities that other members of the group were not interested in.
I worked with my middle daughter to build a knitting pattern illustrator in Perl[1]. She and her friends could talk for hours about knitting, which is essentially programming as Jacquard proved, because they all were interested in the ways to produce interesting weaves. My friends were interested in talking about computers when I was a teen because we were interested in machines that could 'compute'.
The question I wonder about is if the disparity goes away when women develop group activities around programming.
[1] I liked the pun of using Perl for a knitting application.
I worked with my middle daughter to build a knitting pattern illustrator in Perl[1]. She and her friends could talk for hours about knitting, which is essentially programming as Jacquard proved, because they all were interested in the ways to produce interesting weaves. My friends were interested in talking about computers when I was a teen because we were interested in machines that could 'compute'.
The question I wonder about is if the disparity goes away when women develop group activities around programming.
[1] I liked the pun of using Perl for a knitting application.