You’re incorrect on this. The science is 100% there. Dozens of studies have shown that women get funnelled away from technical interests early on in our culture, pushed out of technical studies by verbal abuse and sexual harassment, skipped over for promotions and venture capital in favor of men, and that they do as well as men in technical fields when negative social forces are removed.
This is hardly opinion; you seem smart so instead of going with your gut use your brain and take a minute to look for statistics, studies and evidence. For example, a one- minute internet search uncovered this quote from Time Magazine 3/25/13: “ In fact,data from nearly 300,000 students in 40 countries who took an international test showed that in countries where women are treated more equally, no gender gap exists in math and science scores, and in a few countries, women even do better. In more equal countries, not only are women seen as equally capable of math performance, but both genders have government-required paid family leave available to them, as well as free or cheap access to high-quality day care, making the pursuit of demanding careers in science and technology easier and female role models who do it more visible.”
It may be hard for you to imagine how discrimination would work to keep you from doing something and point you in a different direction, so to make it more clear I’ll point out that your name is not traditionally English and therefore you might have a hard time fitting in in certain country clubs in elite parts of America where old money reigns. You would not be invited to play golf or tennis with the in crowd, you wouldn’t be allowed to date their daughters, you wouldn’t be invited to cocktail parties in their homes, your children wouldn’t be invited to their children’s birthday parties. A lot of deals get made at the club and your small business would remain small because they perceived you as Greek, Russian or Eastern European or something.
Your clothes always look strange to them as does the way you wear your hair, the company you keep, even the smell of the deodorant you choose because they like different smells than you do. So in that situation you have two choices. You can say you don’t like those people anyway and get as far away from their scene as you can, or if you really want to be a part of it, you can study their habits and become them. Cut your hair like they do, wear the same kind of clothes.
Change your ridiculously foreign sounding name to Walter Devon, the way Drumpf changed his name to Trump. And leave your lower class and foreign mannerisms behind as you become one of them. You’ve done it! You’ve either rejected them or become one of them and therefore escaped discrimination. But if you’re female or black, you can’t become one of them. It’s physically impossible. If you still try to hang out with them you’ll face discrimination every day. Sure they’re happy to have you working for them. You might be the best caddy, tennis pro or maître d’ they’ve ever had. But you’re still not one of them — you’re just the help.
Like I said,you seem like a smart guy. Think. Research. Consider moving away from opinion on this topic and searching for reality. Try talking to some people in your field who look different from you and ask them for examples of actual discrimination from their own lives. Because you really do sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about