remember that study that came out a few years back that claimed that countries with MORE gender equality have LESS women pursuing STEM careers? and a ton of people were pointing to it as 'innate sex differences', and we ourselves were trying to theorise why this could possibly be?
it was a bunk, unrepeatable piece of shit. also, the two MEN who published it have been claiming that women are biologically less geared for science than men for decades, so complete bias. they have their belief and work backwards to try and 'prove' it, the complete opposite of what actual scientists are supposed to do.
funny how the media and people who pushed this online never posted corrections.
A theory I also have that could be relevant here, is that the people in the "progressive" countries that perceive themselves to have already achieved gender equality (such as through enacting laws to legally allow women the same rights as men, or from having a handful of women in their country in powerful positions in politics or in industry), probably stop making as many organized efforts to actually empowering the girls and women in their societies to overcome the other types of social or economic obstacles and pressures that tend to hold women back from pursuing male-dominated fields across all societies.
Laws being passed in countries to give women and men equal rights don't automatically equate to men actually perceiving women as their equals, so if barriers like sexism and misogyny still exist, women will still struggle to make a place for themselves in STEM fields without the additional societal support encouraging them to enter and remain in these fields even when they feel pushed out.
it's just straight up untrue though. like, i feel like i have to emphasise how completely false it is by describing how they measured interest in stem fields. by careers? no. by degrees? no. by active participants in the field overall? no. by children and teens' interest and pursuit of the subjects? no.
their 'measurement' was some vague concept of 'interested in the field' aka, hobby; by a still to this day refused to disclose form of what is considered 'interest'. they considered fields like archeology and biology (i may be misremembering the EXACT subjects they mentioned, but biology was one of them) to be 'male dominated' despite more women in university in it and entering into the fields because 'more men had an "interest" in these fields'. WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN????
they also removed countries like brasil and other major ones, that would have completely REVERSED their results if included, for zero reason. they had no reason for removing them, they just did and doing so 'just happened' to make their results the ones they wanted.
this wasn't a study, this was a botched up piece of propaganda posed as 'science' that men ate up. which just proves why it's a good thing that more women are going into the field.
Never trust a study without at least 1 woman researcher on it. Men make terrible researchers and are completely blind to their own bias.
