[twyabcde]

Commendable you found the strength to admit the double think. The questions of "innate ability" is ill posed. Let's agree that both males and females can achieve similar levels of skill, given similar level of effort applied in acquiring the skill. There is still a difference. Either:

A. The average male and the average female afford applying the same level of effort in becoming programmers, with no extraneous constraints.

B. Motherhood represents a non-trivial portion of the average female lifetime effort. Though not as large as in preindustrial times, where the norm was conceiving, feeding and raising ten children, most of them not making to adulthood, leaving little energy for anything else.

To the extent child rearing cost remains unequally distributed between males and females, we're going to see statistical disparities in occupations, especially in occupations with high skill acquisition cost. Or we banish motherhood, and go extinct.