[bmcleod]

There is an interesting issue in the philosophy of science regarding the "hard center" of theories. Basically any prediction about a reasonably complicated situation will rely on a large number of premises.

If you happen to be committed to one premise more than the others, you will always blame one of the other premises when an observation doesn't fit your hypothesis.

In the case of sexism there are so many confounding factors that you'll never be able to say with certainty that sexism is the root cause, only that there is a good chance that it is.

If there is a good chance that something bad is happening then it seems like you could reasonably be expected to produce a non-zero amount of effort in avoiding it.