That is an anecdote, not a fact.
If you are a woman or a minority today, educational institutions and industry bend over backwards to provide opportunities (financial and otherwise) that are not available to equally qualified people who might be white, male, or both.
This has been going on for decades, yet it is continually trumpeted that women are underrepresented in the STEM fields.
This is not a shot a women (as an example). Women have nothing holding them back intellectually, yet they still don’t enter those fields in the same numbers as men, despite thousands of programs, grants, organizations, and efforts to address this ‘problem’.
Why do you think that is?
Problem is that minorities are often held back at the high school level (from my experience with friends who have biracial kids), so they’re less likely to have the resume to get into good universities in the first place. The assistance mostly comes too late.
My daughter is finishing her PhD in Chemistry, the main obstacles she encountered were others in her female social peer group looking at her like she is a freak. Comments from males in her peer group ranged from enthusiastic intellectual “high fives” to a low of “That’s cool!”. All and I mean all of the negativity she encountered came from other college gals her age!
1. Lower average math ability in women. This isn’t sexism - I’m a woman who made it through differential equations, linear algebra, operations research and Calculus 3. It was a challenge for me, and many other women dropped out to become business majors. So did many men, but that’s less of an issue.
2. The long hours associated with STEM dissuade many women from starting the career path. This mindset is why women are more likely to work part time with or without children.
3. Have children, and your odds of working in STEM go down dramatically. Why work in a engineering job where they demand 60 hours a week and/or travel when you can work in configuration management, management or some other position for a standard 40? Some proactively pick the career perceived as more family friendly.
4. Men have stronger visual spacial skills invaluable for design. Few women have the visualization skills to be mechanical engineers, and fewer know about industrial engineering, chemical engineering and other disciplines that pay as well but aren’t classic ME.
5. While there is equal opportunity in entry to STEM fields (and often outright bias against men), boys gravitate to construction toys and disassembly of items at an early age, they are more likely to have the interest, skills and expertise to move into engineering. Girls are more likely to love dolls, cooking toys, etc and want to become teachers, doctors, bakers. I was playing with my brother’s legos, and I know I was the exception.