Of course: (1) Crib. There is a recent study indicating that already in the crib girls are paying attention mostly to people and boys, to things. I wish I'd k

Of course: (1) Crib. There is a recent study indicating that already in the crib girls are paying attention mostly to people and boys, to things. I wish I'd kept the reference. (2) From the crib on, girls are much better with people, and socially more generally, than boys. So, net, in K-12 and college, the girls are much better than the boys at the social aspects, e.g., wanting to please the teachers, sensing what the teachers want, especially in humanities subjects, and giving it to the teachers, in K-12 usually women. And there are other differences: In K-12 girls are much better behaved in class, have much better verbal aptitude, and have better manual dexterity, e.g., much better handwriting. There's still more, much more, on the differences between boys and girls, in K-12, college, etc. And over those years, the nature of the differences change, markedly. There's more in D. Tannen, 'You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation'. E.g., she shows a really neat experiment at age 5: Each student is asked to go into the hall and pin a tail on a donkey or some such. Well, there's no donkey or it has no place for a tail, or some such. So, right, it's a psychology experiment where the subjects have been lied to -- set that aside for here and now. Well, the purpose of the experiment is to show the difference between the boys and girls: Typically a girl returns to the room and meekly tells the teacher that there is no donkey. The teacher says, "That's fine," and asks the girl to take her seat and she does so. All very courteous. Typically a boy returns to the room, goes to the teacher's desk, stands with his feet apart, puts his hands on the front of the desk wide apart, leans toward the teacher, and with anger and outrage asserts to the teacher that there is no donkey. Again the teacher tells the subject "That's fine. Take your seat.". That's already at age 5. Net, boys and girls are different, not the same -- not saying that in total one or the other is inferior, but they are just very different. Dogs and cats are different; so are boys and girls. In general, though, it appears from my experience that can expect that throughout life the boys are more interested in things and the girls, in people. Yes, a dog can, with difficulty, walk on just its hind legs, and from all I can see with difficulty a girl can get as interested in things as a boy -- commonly with difficulty. Just what the nature of the difficulty is, social pressure, self-image as a girl, desire to avoid competing with boys and desire to let the boys feel superior in something, say, changing a flat tire, desire to appear to need to be cared for (important if she is to be a mommy, which will be important as long as there are humans), native ability, just more interest in other thins, ..., for a huge list. But, net, in a word, they are different. Now, supposedly the French Revolution got Western Civilization to fear that any recognition of any difference would be a threat of unfair treatment. I'm not trying to justify unfair treatment. Indeed, I would suggest we assume, human males and females deserve equal respect as persons. > they're simply being treated better by teachers Sure: In K-12, nearly all the teachers are females and, thus, find it easier to appreciate the girls. This stuff is very well known and is readily accepted by movie audiences, e.g., as in the Disney children's movie Bridge to Terabithia. E.g., one girl in the class is nasty, but several boys are. The class goody-goody, star student, is a very confident, diligent girl. The lead girl is creative in story telling, and the lead boy is creative in art. "Boys' handwriting sucks. No offense" -- she was correct, but in time the bad handwriting improves. At one point, the teacher goes ecstatic in praise of the role of adjectives in "any writing". Hmm ... Well, maybe for writing in fictional literature! Alas, definitely not for most writing in the STEM subjects! Sorry lady! So, he teacher is pushing fictional literature, and the girls are better at that, i.e., story telling. Did I mention, they're different? One reason girls are doing better in college: They are going for one of the two traditional fields, K-12 teaching or nursing. And girls have found that they can do well in law. Girls have long generally been better in the humanities, especially fictional literature. And psychology and sociology are now popular majors for girls. The STEM fields -- not so much. The movie The Social Network has some of the differences clear: Zuck is totally wrapped up in computing, e.g., understands the various bits involved in virtual memory paging and, thus, finds his operating systems course beneath him. The girl he wants to impress is very sensitive and astute socially, while Zuck is very clumsy socially. The girl insults Zuck's interest in computing and his Web site The Facebook as playing with "video games". Yes, maybe Aaron Sorkin's writing was not true to Zuck, but it was likely true to what movie audiences were quite prepared to accept from norms, experience, thinking, or just old social stereotypes. I.w., movie audiences are willing to accept such differences between boys and girls.