The gender imbalance in STEM subjects is due to socially constructed gender roles.

I think you'll find that at the end, the study states that 'Early experience, biological constraints, educational policy, and cultural context each have effects, and these effects add and interact in complex and sometimes unpredictable ways.'. Now I am not saying that society plays no role in the development of individuals, however if, as the scientists claim, there are biological constraints preventing a 50/50 equal aptitude for men and women the utopia of women leading science would be a fantasy. Now this fantasy can be brought to life, but only if social pressures are very strict. This might perhaps include discouraging boys and simultaneously supporting girls in a hope that this levels out the playing field. It still isn't a fair suggestion however. Now indeed creative people may find school difficult and so the best of us underperform at school, however this is a very rare phenomenon. The only people I can think of who succeeded after dropping out of school were people like Steve Jobs. You may notice a correlation between the discoveries and influence someone has, and the university they attended. The notable alumni of universities like Oxford and Cambridge are extensive, both universities requiring incredibly good grades at school. Unless you have figures on those who underperform at school doing better at later life, I cannot believe the claim. As for the superior verbal skills, the article further states: 'That is, students who are relatively more verbally than quantitatively or spatially talented gravitate toward the humanities and social sciences, whereas those with the opposite ability pattern lean more toward engineering and the physical sciences.' Now verbal skills may very well improve maths and science abilities, but they clearly do not improve such abilities as much as visuospatial skills. Note that the quote says 'students', not men or women, showing that it is the visuospatial skills that encourage going into sciences. The dispute is whether visuospatial skills are naturally better in men or if they are caused by social influences.The visuospatial skills in males have been successfully demonstrated in Rhesus monkeys, who were given a selection of toys to play with. The researchers found that male Rhesus monkeys massively favoured wheeled toys like trucks, and female Rhesus monkeys had a wide range of interests. (1) This may explain why despite the fact that women make up 47% of the workforce (as of 2013, and with the increase in women in work it is likely considerably higher) (2), they nonetheless only make up 37.8% of science researchers (3) This is all bearing in mind that women are 35% more likely to go to university than men. (4)In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is the only outlier. Generally we would ignore outliers, as the vast majority show an unusually high proportion of women. We can ignore the Middle East however, at look at Africa, where women are constantly being shunned. The Sudan, Egypt, the Central African Republic, and South Africa all also have a higher proportion of women in science. Numerous others are surprisingly close. Now I like to think countries like the UK and Norway are FAR more advanced than such countries, but the figures suggest otherwise. I don't cherrypick, you can look for yourself. There are so many countries with a similar proportion of women in science to the UK which we consider a wasteland when it comes to female empowerment. The quality of the research is completely irrelevant when it comes to whether science is something women really want to do. I don't claim the Middle East is superior, but simply that women in liberal countries go to university more often, and choose sciences less.As to more women entering STEM subjects in Britain: I should seriously hope so! The numbers of scholarships, prizes, and job prospects women receive if entering STEM subjects is mind blowing. Women are two to one more likely to get a job in a STEM field than their male counterparts now, only because they are women. (5) The power that women are now gaining is that they are now favoured in every single field over men, performing better than their male counterparts in all humanities subjects, and being favoured when applying for STEM. This refutes your point about women being underestimated. The only underestimation that women have nowadays, is that society now claims women need a hand to hold from preschool all the way through to acquiring a job in science, which I don't hear many complaints about. I would like to add another point into the debate, which is that female babies are better at identifiying faces than male babies. (6) This experiment has been repeated numerous times across many cultures and the results always turn up the same. This would also explain why women favour, and are better at, jobs which include face to face interaction, and why men prefer solitude and fiddling with machines. Although there are clearly influences from society, I think it is abundantly clear that society isn't the sole reason that women choose humanities over STEM. The figures don't make sense when viewed from a social construct perspective as women in more oppressive countries are more likely to go into STEM subjects, and I think the rise in numbers of women in STEM is somewhat due to the excessive bribery of women to join the sciences through scholarships, funding, and positive discrimination. (1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...(2) http://gender.bitc.org.uk...(3) http://www.uis.unesco.org...(4) http://www.bbc.co.uk...(5) http://www.pnas.org...(6) https://hbr.org...