# Why the gender disparity in geekdom? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 4, 2008, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775 "2008-06-04T16:51:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/61 "2008-06-06T02:55:20Z")
It’s probably better to say that looking good is a skill, rather than looks. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/62 "2008-06-06T03:44:04Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] Those strikes me as fairly arbitrary and not generally accepted definitions of the words “geek” and “nerd.” [/QUOTE] Eh, it seems the definitions are all pretty arbitrary, and there’s plenty of different ones. [Here’s](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=434800) the thread I started about it. ---
**Author:** ![GomiBoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@GomiBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GomiBoy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/63 "2008-06-06T08:04:49Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] I agree. Around here, the distinction seems to be one of action. “Geeks get it done” and all that. Nerds obsess, but they may or may not actually produce anything from this obsession. Geeks invariably _do_ produce. [Meaningless side note] One of the favorite shirts my Forensics Team has is the the one that says (front) **Speech Geek** (back) **Hey, at least we’re not Band Nerds!** [/msn] [/QUOTE] That’s always been my definition - geeks produce, nerds obsess. Classic example - nerds work in software stores to get discounts so they can buy their favorite games; geeks write software because they want to know how their favorite games work and want to make more. ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/64 "2008-06-06T10:19:19Z")
[QUOTE=sturmhauke] Sure doesn’t look like knitting to me. [/QUOTE] Nevertheless, that is what it is called. (Says the girl who is currently making a box-chain bracelet and has a half-finished Lorica Hamata in the closet.) [QUOTE=Siege] Yes, but to this female geek male geeks are HOTHOTHOT!!! And the best looking one’s mine, glasses and all!! [/QUOTE] Actually, mine is the best looking one 😉 What’s the deal with thinking geeks are ugly? Most of them are good-looking and sweet, funny guys. Is there something in the water over in 'merica? ---
**Author:** ![Pithy\_Moniker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8dc957/32.png) [@Pithy\_Moniker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pithy_Moniker)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/65 "2008-06-06T11:39:48Z")
My wife is still in denial with regards to her geekiness. She’s always told me that she has a thing for geeky guys. (Obviously so, she married me.) However, she has never really considered herself a geek. She collects quite a bit of baseball/hockey items. She also has several action figures and collectibles from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc. When I pointed out to her that if a guy had the exact same collection that she has, he would be labeled a geek erd. She hesitantly agreed but I still don’t think she considers herself to be one of us. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/66 "2008-06-06T17:39:23Z")
[QUOTE=DSeid] DING! Yes men tend to be “systematizers” and females “empathizers” and autistic spectrum has bee proposed to be an [extreme](http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/518449) of this trend. [/QUOTE] One of the IT trade rags I get had an article on how to manage people like this. There is a support group. I read an article about an expert on Asperger’s who was quoted as saying that when he lectured at universities he tried to pick out Asperger’s sufferers in the audience - except when he lectured to engineering faculties, where he tried to pick out who didn’t have it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/67 "2008-06-06T17:46:59Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] So far in this thread, the ‘geek’ label seems to be only applied to people who dive way into SF, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and role-playing games. How does it look if the definition of a geek is widened a bit, to, say, people with degrees in scientific fields, math, computer science, and the like, or people making their living in those sorts of fields? Speaking as someone who makes his living as a statistician, there are _lots_ of women statisticians these days. [/QUOTE] I know lots of statisticians at work, and most of the geeky ones came in through other fields. There is also a big difference between someone who has a CS degree and programs vs. someone who is compulsive about programming. When I was in school 40 years ago there was a lot higher percentage of geeks in CS, but that might be because no one had computers at home, and so had to go out of their way to get near one. Almost no one - one friend of mine played with his father’s 360 in high school, and a student of mine spent some of his high school years writing code to help his father prove the four color theorem. Both are CS professors now, which proves their geekdom. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/68 "2008-06-06T17:50:29Z")
[QUOTE=Justin\_Bailey] Might as well throw one more anecdote on the pile. I was a freshman at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1999. That year the school was crowing about the fact that the male to female ratio finally dipped below 3:1 (it’s currently at 2.2:1). [/QUOTE] When I was at MIT in 1970 it was 6 - 1 male, now it is about 50-50. I don’t know how that gets distributed over departments these days. The ratio in CS was about 6 - 1 also. ---
**Author:** ![fluiddruid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@fluiddruid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fluiddruid)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/69 "2008-06-06T21:40:10Z")
[QUOTE=Justin\_Bailey] But I think the real disparity is (as others have said) in the looks department. Shegeeks are HOTHOTHOT to male geeks, but most are still relatively attractive compared to “normal” girls too. It’s a lot easier to hide your geek status if you don’t outwardly look like a geek. And male geeks are much more likely to look like a geek. [/QUOTE] I think part of the problem is, frankly, that male geeks aren’t really very accepting of non-hottie geek girls. As a totally geeky and non-hottie girl, I’ve found that over half the geeky guys I’ll talk to just have no use for me whatsoever. The assumption seems to be that girls are either hotties to be obsessed over, or nonentities; only men can be ‘real’ geeks to have as friends. The geekier the guy is, the more this seems to be true. More socially savvy, or, less obsessive geeks seem to be less prone to this behavior. My personal opinion is that geek culture is still pretty sexist. Even Digg (which is by no means entirely geeky) pretty much assumes the reader is male. Fortunately there are actually quite a number of geeky girls out there. Go to cons or LARPs or what have you - you’ll see a lot of women. I participate in a LARP-like event based on Lord of the Rings, and I would say women are practically a majority, even though it’s a very physical event (a lot of running, mucking your way through swamps, getting rained on, and so on). ---
**Author:** ![Leiko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Leiko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leiko)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/70 "2008-06-06T22:59:35Z")
In a lot of cases, I think that nerdy activities and interests better correspond to the male half of traditional gender roles, especially for kids. Boys are more likely to be given nerdy/geeky toys they are young children than girls are. They get comic book and fantasy/sci-fi/superhero TV show tie-in toys- Batman, Superman, TMNT, Transformers; little girls get the Barbies and Dora the Explorer and far too much pink stuff. This is just a WAG, though, and obviously doesn’t work all the time. I had many Barbies, and my brother had lots of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but we’re both huge nerds now. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/71 "2008-06-07T03:11:53Z")
Voyager writes: \> I read an article about an expert on Asperger’s who was quoted as saying that \> when he lectured at universities he tried to pick out Asperger’s sufferers in the \> audience - except when he lectured to engineering faculties, where he tried to \> pick out who didn’t have it. I don’t believe this for a second. Asperger’s syndrome isn’t that common. It’s been remarked on this board several times that you shouldn’t believe anyone who claims that they are self-diagnosed autistic or Asperger’s sufferers. Diagnosing either one takes a professional assessment (and not just a glance by a professional). This expert might be able to pick out geeky people who _might_ have mild autistic spectrum disorder, but there aren’t that many autistic or Asperger’s sufferers out there, and their symptoms are far more noticeable than the average slightly geeky person’s quirks. ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/72 "2008-06-07T15:43:10Z")
It’s because [more males than females tend to be autistic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism) > [@](#): > > Most recent reviews estimate a prevalence of one to two cases per 1,000 people for autism, and about six per 1,000 for ASD, with ASD averaging a 4.3:1 male-to-female ratio. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/73 "2008-06-07T16:35:30Z")
ratatoskK writes: \> It’s because more males than females tend to be autistic Perhaps so, but notice that saying that this answers the question in the OP makes two assumptions. First, it assumes that geekiness is a mild form of autism or Asperger’s syndrome. Second, it assumes that the greater number of men than women with true autism or Asperger’s syndrome also means that geekiness (this supposedly mild form of autism) is also more common among men than women. Is there any medical or psychological evidence about this? (No, your personal observations don’t count as medical or psychological evidence.) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775/74 "2008-06-07T17:46:17Z")
My theory is when men lack the social skills or attractiveness to attract the opposite sex or are uncomfortable around people in general it leaves a gap that is usually filled by friends and girlfriends. Often times, they fill that that gap with inane minutiae from films, comics or other hobbies. In time, those nerds can form their own social groups defined by their interests/obsessions. Unfortunately this has the added effect of further identifying them as outsiders and isolating them from regular folk. I think there are more “nerdy” men than women because men have a more active role in the courting process. They are the ones who have to go out and pursue. That takes energy and when you aren’t using that energy to pursue women, it has to go somewhere else. In this case, it goes into D&D, Monty Python and dressing up like a 4 year old. Anyhow, that’s my theory that I’ve been working on for the past 10 minutes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-gender-disparity-in-geekdom/451775.md?page=3)