Of course:

(1) Crib.

There is a recent study indicating that
already in the crib girls are paying attention
mostly to people and boys, to things.
I wish I'd kept the reference.

(2) From the crib on, girls are much better
with people, and socially more generally,
than boys.

So, net, in K-12 and college, the girls are
much better than the boys at the social
aspects, e.g., wanting to please the
teachers, sensing what the teachers want,
especially in humanities subjects,
and giving it to the teachers, in K-12
usually women.

And there are other differences:
In K-12 girls are much better behaved in class,
have much better verbal aptitude,
and have better manual dexterity, e.g.,
much better handwriting.

There's still more, much more, on the
differences between boys and girls,
in K-12, college, etc. And over those
years, the nature of the differences
change, markedly. There's more in

D. Tannen, 'You Just Don't Understand:
Women and Men in Conversation'.

E.g., she shows a really neat experiment
at age 5: Each student is asked to
go into the hall and pin a tail on
a donkey or some such. Well, there's
no donkey or it has no place for a tail,
or some such. So, right, it's a
psychology experiment where the subjects
have been lied to -- set that aside
for here and now.

Well, the purpose of the experiment is
to show the difference between the
boys and girls: Typically a girl
returns to the room and meekly tells the
teacher that there is no donkey.
The teacher says, "That's fine,"
and asks the girl to take her seat
and she does so. All very courteous.

Typically a boy returns to the room,
goes to the teacher's desk,
stands with his feet apart,
puts his hands on the front of the desk
wide apart, leans toward the teacher,
and with anger and outrage asserts
to the teacher that there is no donkey.
Again the teacher tells the subject
"That's fine. Take your seat.".

That's already at age 5. Net, boys
and girls are different, not the
same -- not saying that in total
one or the other is inferior,
but they are just very different.
Dogs and cats are different;
so are boys and girls.

In general, though, it appears from
my experience that can expect
that throughout life the boys
are more interested in things
and the girls, in people. Yes,
a dog can, with difficulty, walk
on just its hind legs, and from all I
can see with difficulty a girl can
get as interested in things as
a boy -- commonly with difficulty.

Just what the nature of the difficulty
is, social pressure, self-image as a
girl, desire to avoid competing with
boys and desire to let the boys
feel superior in something, say,
changing a flat tire, desire to appear
to need to be cared for (important
if she is to be a mommy, which will
be important as long as there are humans),
native ability, just more interest in
other thins, ..., for a huge list.
But, net, in a word, they are different.

Now, supposedly the French Revolution
got Western Civilization to fear that
any recognition of any difference
would be a threat of unfair treatment.
I'm not trying to justify unfair
treatment. Indeed, I would suggest
we assume, human males and females
deserve equal respect as persons.

> they're simply being treated better by teachers

Sure: In K-12, nearly all the teachers are
females and, thus, find it easier to
appreciate the girls.

This stuff is very well known and is
readily accepted by movie audiences,
e.g., as in the Disney children's movie
Bridge to Terabithia. E.g.,
one girl in the class is nasty, but
several boys are. The class
goody-goody, star student, is a
very confident, diligent girl.
The lead girl is creative in
story telling, and the lead boy
is creative in art. "Boys' handwriting
sucks. No offense" -- she was correct,
but in time the bad handwriting improves.

At one point, the teacher goes
ecstatic in praise of the role of
adjectives in "any writing". Hmm ...
Well, maybe for writing in fictional
literature! Alas, definitely not for
most writing in the STEM subjects!
Sorry lady! So, he teacher is pushing
fictional literature, and the girls
are better at that, i.e., story telling.

Did I mention, they're different?

One reason girls are doing better in college:
They are going for one of the two
traditional fields, K-12 teaching or
nursing. And girls have found
that they can do well in law.
Girls have long generally been
better in the humanities, especially
fictional literature. And psychology
and sociology are now popular majors
for girls. The STEM fields --
not so much.

The movie The Social Network
has some of the differences clear:
Zuck is totally wrapped up in
computing, e.g., understands
the various bits involved in
virtual memory paging and, thus,
finds his operating systems course
beneath him. The girl he wants to
impress is very sensitive and astute
socially, while Zuck is very clumsy
socially. The girl insults
Zuck's interest in computing
and his Web site The Facebook
as playing with "video games".

Yes, maybe Aaron Sorkin's writing
was not true to Zuck, but
it was likely true to
what movie audiences were
quite prepared to accept from
norms, experience, thinking,
or just old social stereotypes.
I.w., movie audiences are
willing to accept such differences
between boys and girls.