I think this stereotype is largely driven by the traditional roles of women as nurturers and men as protectors. And while you could probably find plenty of examples to support this I think you'll find that it's the personality of the player, and not their gender, that determines what roles they feel comfortable playing and excel at.

Our guild is comprised of all female toons but a mix of male and female players and I would venture to guess probably a higher ratio of female players than most guilds. And I'm not going entirely by people saying they are male or female this is based on Vent, Facebook friending and meeting a number of them in real life over the years.

Looking at our most active players that I've grouped and raided with over the years I don't see any particular pattern to gender determining group roles. Right now we have mostly female healers but they all also have DPS and tank specs/toons they play regularly. We only have a few male players who heal (and I am not one of them, I'm a failhealer). In the past we've had a fair number of male healers but when Cataclysm came out that shifted. Currently our highest DPSer in the guild is a female who plays a ret pally and her off spec is tanking- so much for the females only play ranged DPSers. Our guild is pretty heavy on the altaholics and so many guild members, male and female, have a number of alts of various classes and roles.

This would make for an interesting study though. I'd like to see a breakdown on the numbers of this as far as male and female players- as well as their toon genders, and what roles/classes they play. I suspect you'll find a lot of female toons are healers regardless of the gender of the player which creates an illusion that supports the stereotype.

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