[grandalf]

Good points. Being female puts a person at a disadvantage in certain ways, and particularly makes it more likely that teachers and parents will believe that the easier path of study is preferable to the one that requires more challenges, particularly in mathematics and science.

This does likely have an impact on how many female programmers we see today.

Men are disadvantaged in other ways, such as being taught to suppress emotions and to prefer aggression to problem solving. Many men are permanently damaged by this and the effects harm their employability and relationships for their entire lives.

I'm not suggesting there is equality/equivalence or that large-scale social biases and patterns don't disproportionately effect some people. Just making the point that there may not be an ideal and we may always be trying to correct for various excesses. One notable excess is the pressure put on working parents, which are asymmetrical and backward for both sexes in many ways.