[referring to questions of gender and CBI] The way I perceive it is that the issue is how and why the computer is used, and that has a lot to do with the fact that some people (abstract--generally correlates with boys) like to control the computer as a tool, whereas some people (concrete--generally correlates with girls) like to do "bricolage"--move objects around and work interactively with them (hence OOP and the Mac interface). As a scientific programmer I started with coding, because that's the way it was done. You have total control that way. However, when I was first introduced to the Mac, I really liked the drag and drop feature and the desktop metaphor and the way it made it so easy to do graphics. So I can see the issue from both perspectives.
So there are really two issues here--how the computer is used (perceived value, purpose), and what the gender of the user is. There is a correlation, but no way does correlation imply causality, nor does it mean that girls always like Macs and boys always like PCs. But all too often, these separate issues get mixed up, leading to a lot of silly arguments and misunderstandings.
Then there's Bonnie Nardi's new book that you really ought to read, Information Ecologies. She has a nice case study of Lincoln High School in California. Basically, when the computers were used for digital art, and digital art was wholly integrated into the art program at the school, the "pro-technology" male gender bias went down. I saw the same thing a couple of weeks ago when doing an onsite data collection trip to a school in Vermont where MIDI was part of the performing arts program, and all students took performing arts. Equal motivation, use, and quality of compositions from both genders. Why? Because it wasn't technology for technology's sake, but for a real academic purpose that was valued by all students.