Ok, here goes my highly controversial sweeping generalization: men suck at multitasking, women are actually much better at it. My source? Just years of active observation. I'd be very interested to see any actual research on the subject.
Women ARE better at multitasking but when you compare their work when they've multi-tasked vs. when they uni-tasked, the most error free, accurate results come from the uni-tasking.
So it's not so black and white, men shouldn't multi-task but women can. More like, multi-tasking is bad for both genders but not as bad for women as for men.
Well, riding my motorcycle on the California freeways has shown me that women seem much more skilled than men at simultaneously driving, texting, adjusting the radio, and running over motorcyclists ("I just didn't see him there!")
From what I've read for studies on multitasking the basic problem is:
Humans suck at multitasking. Female or male. We do better when we stick to one task at a time.
The impression that we can do more when multitasking is our own illusion.
Ironically playing action games improves your task switching ability, but you still do worse than if you unitasked.
In my experience multitasking skills aren't gender related. I've seen some people who could read and talk simultaneously very well, both men and women.
