[Mikell Taylor]

I don't think there's any individual to "blame", and I don't want to accuse anyone of bad parenting. There are tremendous social pressures to do many things when you raise kids, and gender roles are just part of it. Personally, if/when I become a parent, my goal will be to expose my kids to everything I can -- art, music, engineering, science, reading, whatever -- in a variety of ways to make sure they know what's open to them. Maybe my daughter(s) will still go in to nursing and my son(s) will still be engineers, but that's fine -- as long as I feel like I've given them all a fair chance to find something they love.

I remember at one point reading some pop sci article on gendered toys, and the article referenced a study where a variety of toys were given to chimpanzees to play with. Apparently the female chimpanzees, in addition to choosing dolls, regularly chose to play with "pink-colored kitchen toys." The article concluded that female apes (including humans) are biologically programmed to like these sorts of things. My question: how the hell does a chimpanzee know what kitchen tools are or do and since when would an ape consider cooking a role for either gender?

We don't know for sure whether it's all nature, all nurture, or somewhere in between. If it is nature, we can't change it. If it is nurture to any degree, we can influence it -- and why shouldn't we work to give everyone a shot at a fun, exciting, lucrative career like engineering and science?