Maybe I should have made my explanations even longer! You are failing to 'get it':

The stuff about "Mother Nature" is just an abbreviation for fundamental effects that are easy to see and seem fundamental but seem to have strong causes difficult to explain.

"I work with kids of this age; particularly teaching them computer science stuff (and other engineerign topics)."

We're not talking about really the same thing. What I am talking about is more fundamental in this discussion. Here I am drawing directly from Tannen, and she's right:

Okay, in my scenario, in middle school at lunch a boy, all excited about some technical topic he just learned, say, the TCP part of TCP/IP, tries to explain the topic to a girl. Likely he will not get a good reception for, say, four reasons:

(1) She's a girl, knows that she's a young women, and is reluctant to interact with males her age or older without a good reason. She has been warned by older women that such interactions have a tough tine being just casual because the male can easily start pursuing more. So, she is selective. Maybe if the boy is 1-2 years younger she will feel less threat and be more ready to be just friends.

(2) He's all fired up about the technical topic. Sorry, but boys have strong desires to master any technical topics around them that appear important. In part there is a lot of innate curiosity. Why? Exercise. Sorry: It's rare for girls to do that. For how an automobile differential works, there is something wrong when a boy is not wildly curious or when a girl cares at all unless, say, being able to give a description will get the her something else she wants, say, an A, and thus praise and approval from others, on a test in middle school general science.

(3) Females make connections with others, and more generally get acceptance in groups, by gossip where they express their feelings. Boys are taught to keep their feelings suppressed as in "How you feel about it is just irrelevant.". So, what the boy is trying to give the girl is not really girl gossip and, thus, is not liked by the girl.

(4) Males make connections by sharing information, especially, neat, cool, technical information. So, that is what the boy is trying to do. The girl doesn't give a weak little hollow hoot about technical information (for it's own sake).

Here (1) was your observation; for (2) I'll let you justify that yourself; (3) and (4) are directly from Tannen.

Lesson for girls who want to be more like boys in computer science:

You have heard about virtual memory. Now, any boy with any hope at all of liking Hacker News, will be eager beyond belief, and thrilled enough to jump out of his skin, for any even small bit of information about why virtual memory and how it works. When they get into page-segment tables, look-aside associative memory translation buffers, least recently used techniques, how I/O makes the virtual to real translations, and the shockingly low average execution time overhead, etc., then they will grow two feet taller instantly and have a "Eureka!" experience.

Similarly for closure in programming languages, binary search, the Gleason bound, the TCP part of TCP/IP, multi-protocol label switching (MPLS, used in the core and backbone of the Internet), and much more. They'd rather understand such stuff than eat, sleep, play sports, watch a movie, or sit in class. They really, really, really want to learn this stuff, all of it they can, whenever they can. The first time they get to see a tower case with the sides off will be one of the most exciting moments in their life.

Girls: If you want to do computing, go for it. It's clean, indoor work with no heavy lifting. Don't need gloves, masks, or special clothes. A computer for less than $1000, a good Internet connection, and a lot of time alone with the computer are a lot of what you need from the beginning into quite high competency.

To get to the "pay window" (JLM at AVC.com), right now you go to the head of the line, well ahead of all the boys with similar qualifications:

(1) The hottest thing in computing now is social media, and there in conceptualizing the opportunities the girls should be knocking the socks off the boys. Uh, much of Facebook, with over 500 million users and worth over $50 billion, is about gossip where boys can at best try to use a telescope from Mars to look at Venus. Larry Page just said that 99% of social search has yet to be done; so, what's in this 99% that would be good to do now?

(2) Learn how to bring up a corresponding Web site. The site will need some graphic design where girls are much better than the boys (25% of whom are partially red-green color blind and likely still draw both trees and people as stick figures). The site will need a good user interface and user experience (UI/UX), and here girls should totally knock the socks off the boys. The site will need some text, and, again, girls are much better at not just typing and spelling but at writing for emotional effect -- knock the socks off the boys. Still more important, girls are much better than the boys at writing and correctly estimating the reactions of others. E.g., I'm a man, here am just writing ideas, and clearly don't have even a clue about how others will react! Maybe I don't even care, but girls both care and know, and that's a big advantage.

(3) Once the site goes live, you will need to get some publicity: "I don't know if you know who runs that business, but I assure you it's not the Boy Scouts." (Dangerfield in Back to School). Neither is it the mafia, but it is women.

(4) Older men with big bucks tend very much to want to help women. No joke. Not just into bed or to be a Daddy Warbucks or Svengali. So, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, and Mark Suster have all been loud and clear on their blogs about how happy they are to fund women. May find much the same at KPCB and Sequoia. You are at the head of the line; the door is being held open for you. HP was thrilled to have Carly Fiorina and Patricia Dunn. Yahoo was thrilled to get Carol Bartz.

Go for it!