[paulsherwin]

Women do have greater manual dexterity than men, generally speaking - that's just a physical thing, not a social convention. They have always been used on precision assembly lines, and still are in China where a lot of manual assembly still takes place. There's also a belief that the female ability to multitask makes it easier for women to switch off mentally when performing boring repetitive tasks, chatting away to co-workers and so on, while men are unable to defocus in this way.