Estrogen Linked to Research and Programming Skills

Neil Halelamien writes "Psychologists at the University of Bath have found that male researchers and programmers tend to have higher levels of estrogen, a hormone which promotes development of the right side of the brain (responsible for spatial and analytical skills). Increased estrogen was also linked to having longer index fingers and a decreased likelihood of having children. Men teaching mathematics and physics tended to have unusually long index fingers, while women in the social sciences tended to have more testosterone. The psychologists also found that male and female students with a smaller difference between their index and ring finger lengths tended to do better on their Java programming exams. The research leaves open the question of why women (who typically have more estrogen than men) aren't more prevalent in the science and technology fields."

Another..

[Anonymous Coward]

There also seems to be a link between the index finger, ring finger and sport abilities..

http://www.liv.ac.uk/pro/news/press_releases/200 1/ ringfingers.htm

gender bias and programming

[dan_bethe]

I think each of these two following documents I'm about to quote tread awkwardly on the reflexive difficulty of gender bias. Of course the primary failure is that they target one specific gender as being biased against, the targeting of which inherently creates bias. They try to define what bias is and isn't, and hence how "women are" and how "women aren't". But they're a decently relevant resource.

Every gender bias related paper I've read is about why women are the inherent underdog, not about the nature of gender bias and programming. Gender bias and programming are inherently equal opportunity victimizations and aggressions perpetrated by society, by natural situations, and by self.

The only equal-opportunity social anti-bias resource I've seen yet is VHEMT [vhemt.org]. ;-)

• "HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux" [tldp.org]
• "Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists?" [mit.edu]

Geees. The article if full of crap!

[Evil Pete]

OK. The article is total bollocks here is the New Scientist version [newscientist.com]. NOTE that it is referring to prenatal levels of hormones not the amounts flowing in peoples bodies when they are adults. Which means that a difference in levels of hormones hardwires the brain for programming, research whatever to a large extent.

Also that the social sciences are where the 'normals' end up.

Re:So the insults are true?

[Singletoned]

dyslexia is formed form dual activity in right and left sides of the brain, intellectual types often have dyslexia and geeks too, whihc may be because of hormonal issues and right/left conflicts.

I'd be interested to see where you got this information from. Currently there isn't even enough conclusive reasearch to say what dyslexia is, or even what all the symptoms are. A lot is known from experience of dealing with dyslexics, but most of the research done has been inconclusive.

(I say this as a practising dyslexic my self).

The British Dylsexia Association [google.co.uk]