But, this is up to their designers. I spent most of my professional career being one of the only women in a room of mostly men, so I am so used to ignoring gender differences that, consequently, I really don't know much about them. Colleagues have told me that there are important differences that have been found among large groups of men and women, although these may not hold for a particular man or woman. I would be delighted to help make technology more appealing to women, especially to girls. Making technology more feminine, however, has never been the primary goal behind affective computing.
Emotions are essential for both males and females to function properly.
It is because the capabilities of man and machine are so different that the computer has such potential. Marvin Minsky has declared that machines will some day be so far superior to us that we will be lucky if they keep us around as household pets. I don't agree with Marvin, given that we humans will continue to develop and grow along with that which we make. I think these are questions that transcend science, and we must beware of any scientist who tries to answer them without appeal to higher causes. I will be giving a plenary talk at a conference at MIT at the end of April that will address these issues.