Brainwash ?

Last week i had a test. That of course meant that the day before was spent trying to find excuses not to study, - or activities that would leave you feeling less guilty for not studying. Don't get me wrong; I DO study for tests, its just that, somehow, all my motivation takes a vacation the day before a test, and im left trying to study and hunting for my motivation.
One of these activities for me, is watching documentaries. I mean, its entertaining, and at the same time educational (nevermind the fact that its not related to the subject i was having a test in).
The documentary of choice was a one investigating the gender differences. It was lead by a norwegian commedian, who is trying to actually be serious. After all, at some stage he actually obtained a degree in sociology.
My expectations were quite high, as, well, i have a tendency to assume that funny people are smart, and that he was probably up to something mischievious anyways.
I must say, I was not dissapointed at all, although the mischieveous parts were toned down a bit.

Personally, I have been convinced that its mostly the enviroment that creates the differences we experience when it comes to gender differences. My mother, for example, was very concious about giving me both dolls and cars, as to be sure not to force me into any gender sterotype. Although i often chose to play with the dolls, I had no problems playing with cars of any of the boy things either. She never forced me to wear dresses, I wanted to. She never taught me to wear make-up, not that she forbid me to wear it, but she left me completely to my own choice. The result, today, is that i might have a more masculine field of interest than other girls, I like cars and computers; I love to play computergames, and I dont really mind getting oil on my fingers. However, I love to dress up, and I do love to wear makeup, I like pink stuff and don't mind romantic commedies.
I always attributed this to my upbringing, and this seems to be the view of quite a few norwegian scientists. They mean that even the action of giving boy babies blue blankets and girls pink blankets are part of making the gender differences.
Some disagree with them, especially a guy from Cambridge (Sasha Baron Cohen's cousin) who had done research on fresh-out-of-the-womb babies. He and his research team had held up figures of faces and mechanical stuff, and found that the boy babies stared at the mechanical devices the longest and that the girls stared at the faces the longest. From that the research team concluded that there was differences in our fields of interest even from when we were born.

One central question was that Norway is announced to be the most equal country in the world, yet 90% of all norwegian nurses are female. How is it that when women are so equal, women still choose traditional professions?
Personally, I always thought is was the enviroment that affected us, I mean, what your friends do and such. Also, I would imagine that it'd be somewhat "scaring" for a male to enter a nursing programme, when he'd be the only boy. Not that he'd be scared of being with all the girls, but rather that he'd be scared of what his guy-friends would think of him for choosing such a "feminine" profession?
For my part, I always found it amusing and slightly sad, that ppl couldn't imagine me as an engineering student (I did engineering for 2 years), but rather automatically assumed that i was studying for preschool-teacher or nurse..
When they however managed to find out that I did engineering, they automatically assumed it must be chemistry, and they were right.

For my part, though, I never really thought about any of this, I just chose what i wanted to, regardless of any stereotypes. Maybe this is what they speak of when they feel that they can conclude that its not only our enviroment that affects our fields of interests?