Women use the F word less?

;-)

It's not a dumb question. My take, FWIW:

Boys as youngsters are encouraged to explore the workings of mechanical,
electrical, and electronic gadgets more than girls. (With some exceptions.)
Girls quickly become accustomed to not showing curiosity, because it's seen
as unfeminine. It doesn't get them attention the way dressing up and finding
the perfect haircut etc. do. And guys feed this to some extent, though I
doubt it's an entirely conscious thing. E.g. girls on the softball field who
are best remembered by some of the men are the bona fide babes, not the
athletes. (Again there are exceptions.)

Hence many of the women who ultimately do want to do much more with
mechanical, electrical, etc. gadgetry start fiddling with--putting their
hands on--such gadgets at a much later age than men.

The consequence of this is females' less intuitive (so to speak)
understanding of mechanical leverage, circuits, etc. They don't "get" things
as quickly as guys do. I speak not just for myself but from educating
college engineering students, both boys and girls. The difference is very
noticeable. I reached the point where I could quickly discern the gals who
flat out could not imagine certain stress concepts and needed more graphic
or hands on examples to help them understand. (Some of the boys would have
problems and need these aids, too, but it tended to be the girls moreso.)
Supporting this is also an observation from a former, elderly colleague of
mine: The guys weren't even as adept as mastering concepts in the 1990s,
because fewer and fewer were working on cars, the farm tractor, around the
house, carpentry, whatever, and instead were spending more of their boyhood
on computers.

I did some fidgeting with gadgets as a young girl. E.g. I built my own radio
using a relative's old Navy radar basic textbook. I got stuck where it said
to install a "cat whisker." (It was an /old/ textbook!) My relative helped
and said a crystal diode would work fine instead. He got one for me. I put
it in. The radio worked! Very cool, but not something I ever advertised as
having done until I was in my 30s, cause it was, ya know, geeky. I still
remember the weird looking old capacitor I used to tune the radio to
different stations. Granted I got only a few stations.

But I never worked on cars as a kid. I did my first oil change at the age of
23. I had a lot of hands on experience in college, turning a lot of
wrenches, for one, due to the nature of the unusual program I was in. But I
was way behind the learning curve when taking that hands on experience and
applying it in the engineering classroom. The way forces work together was
something that was often obvious to certain boys who were poor at
mathematics (unlike myself). I had to read and reread descriptions in
textbooks, and eventually would devise little desktop experiments, where
possible, to prove, reinforce, and then master a concept to the point I
could teach it or publish it in reputable places. (And I mean that
literally.)

So in a nutshell, if the words describing a technical concept aren't dead on
accurate, I will be more likely than a lot of men to scratch my head and
wonder, say, 'Did he mean this? Or could this phrase instead mean that?'

Not to say my technical writing is perfect.

I'm not asking you to buy any of this. It's just my take, based on years as
an engineering educator yada. In no way do I profess to know as much about
auto repairs and maintenance as many of the regulars here.

Here is my nauseously detailed discussion of crankshaft pulleys and holder
tools and oil in spark plug tubes.

http://home.earthlink.net/~honda.lioness/index.html

Pithy suggested changes are welcome.