I don't think that anyone was claiming that STEM was the ONLY place where discrimination occurs. Nor that there's necessarily a "conspiracy" to commit discrimination; just because everyone discriminates does not imply that they all agreed to discriminate, or that they were even aware that they discriminate. Clearly, and demonstrably, discrimination occurs pretty much everywhere and anytime in life. Studies have shown a preference for the tall Nordic male phenotype over shorter Nordic, or shorter ethnic, etc. in business settings, even to the degree that "ethnic" first names have been shown to adversely affect the likelihood of getting a resume through the wickets. Did someone issue a memo stating that everyone was supposed to do that? No, yet they do.
The last great world war was driven by someone who perceived the white phenotype as being superior, and even those that fought against the over domination of the world by that phenotype were from that same phenotype, for the most part. And humans have evolved to rank order people according to basic needs and possible threats, so family, tribe, nation, etc., are subconscious ranking systems we all apply to the people we interact with. We behave, to a large degree, based on genetics and cultural programming, to the extent that toddlers going to Walmart for the first time recognize that a certain aisle with an abundance of pink as being the "girls" toy aisle. Even the purple dinosaur has trouble with things like that; one episode talking about what to be when the kids grew up tilted heavily into stereotypical gender roles, teachers and nurses were female, firefighters, chefs, etc., were male. We have a huge amount of cultural baggage that we carry around that would need to be completely dumped before we could even remotely begin to determine whether ANYTHING we do is a completely unbiased and un-coerced decision. We know from tons of research that girls excel in math and science in elementary school, up until the tail end of junior high, and then, poof! the laggardly boys suddenly become math stars. That's certainly odd from a purist perspective. But, we know that in that period of life, biological imperatives take over, and certainly, when I was growing up, "smart" girls were not the popular girls, particularly in high school.
There have been claims that in the currently assessed as egalitarian countries, mostly Nordic, oddly enough, women eschew math and science, but there are hints that other things are going on behind the scenes that might be skewing the results.
Oh, and SWMBO does a LOT of womansplaining to me, so there's that.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
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