Then think about this, why is it you are not sold on the studies? Is it because the conclusion goes against what you think to be true?
You are not alone. From the last study I linked to, you can find this.
"Sex differences in personality are larger in more gender equal countries. ). "
This was a surprise to many, but, it keeps holding true. When other factors are removed, biology can maximize.
Assuming this is true, what do you think we should be advocating for? Should it be to advocate to get more women into STEM, or, should we keep focusing on removing barriers and letting people choose?
I'm not sold on those studies because I'm skeptical of those sorts of studies in general. It's not a repeatable laboratory experiment, we only have existing real-world societies to compare, all of them specific products of contingent history. There seems to be an assumption smuggled in there that one can easily rate 'socially constructed norms concerning gender' on some abstract scale, divorced from the actual societies in which those norms exist, with their specific real-world cultures and histories.
I'm not utterly opposed to the _possibility_ that there's a deep gender preference for certain ways of thinking. It _might_ be the case, we can't say it definitely isn't. I used to think maybe that had something to do with autism being more common among boys, but recently it seems they've concluded its been under-diagnosed among girls (and I know several women I suspect are on that spectrum, and they seem to me to exemplify exactly what is said about it among girls - that they learn ways of compensating, and 'performing' appropriate emotional reactions, that make it less obvious there's something different going on).
But I don't see any society that is completely free from 'social norms' about gender, either in general or in the culture and practice of 'science'. Sweden or Finland very much included. There's more to gender pressures than the crude economic necessities the articles talk about.
I feel the same doubt about other claims to detect some underlying 'biological' signal under social 'noise' - it assumes we are able to even see that social noise, yet alone correct for it.
it does seem to be the case that in a place like Sweden (strongly social-democratic, allegedly 'liberal') you get women gravitating to 'human interaction skil based' (for want of a better term) jobs in social work and health-care, say, and in less liberal countries (which seem, not insignificantly, to be less economically-developed ones too) like China or Iran, those women who are in the workforce are more likely to be in scientific or engineering fields.
Having family from a less-developed-country it's long been obvious to me that in many such countries women are, to put it how I've sometimes thought of it in the past, "more geek-friendly", than in many Western ones.
Heck, I remember a Chinese science student ruefully commenting that he doesn't meet any women now he's working in the West, whereas in China women seemed far more likely to work in 'hard' sciences (he was unhappy about that for personal reasons rather than idealistic political ones!).
But I just don't fully buy the explanation that it's about some 'natural' preference coming out. There are too many confounding factors, it seems _way_ more complicated than that. The countries being looked at differ in a multitude of ways and not all those variables are independent. E.g. less-developed countries can attach huge social-status to STEM subjects, as they are seen as being 'modern' and vital for the national interest. Whereas in the older West, they have often been looked down on (precisely because someone will pay you to do them, hence they are not professions for the upper classes, STEM is for players not gentlemen).
How do they know that in those societies where choice is 'more free' (because of the existence of a welfare state, as you elsewhere mention) that there isn't still a strong gender-socialisation process at work?
The paper linked to on here seems a bit too quick to leap to talking about 'inherent' differences. As if anything that isn't determined by crude, obvious, economic pressures must be 'inherent' (i.e. biological?). I don't see that that follows at all. There are other differences in society that can mold preferences beyond just 'do I have to work in STEM from economic necessity'.
