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In a landmark study involving over a million students, it appears that the reason boys dominate girls in STEM fields is not that they are better than girls at it (the reverse seems to be true) but, perversely, that gender differences are lower in non-STEM fields.
About the STEM grades, which are often abused as an explanation:
A classroom with more variable grades indicates a bigger gap between high and low performing students, and greater male variability could result in boys outnumbering girls at the top and bottom of the class.
“Greater male variability is an old idea that people have used to claim that there will always be more male geniuses – and fools – in society,” O’Dea says.
The team found that on average, girls’ grades were higher than boys’, and girls’ grades were less variable than boys’.
But girls' and boys' variability were much closer in non-STEM fields.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @02:43PM
Yeah and the boys that do well in STEM in high school go to STEM fields for university and work. Whereas the boys that don't, don't.
Similarly it doesn't matter whether or not there's a big difference between the average white/black/man/woman in how fast they run 100 meters. The 100 meter race and records remain dominated by black guys.
And few care about the 8th fastest person in the 100m race even if he's actually faster than billions of people. Just like few care about the 8th person who independently rediscovered the theory of relativity...
In many fields the average doesn't matter as much as the outliers.