> But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was readi

> But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was reading > And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls in having science as their best subject. The research seems pretty clear. > ...the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger than the number of women who were graduating with stem degrees. This quote is not related to whether there are interest differences or not. They may be equally good in science/math and something else and decide they want to do the other thing without that automatically implying "society is causing this preference" (and by the way, medicine is not "STEM" for some reason, but no one is becoming a doctor without strong aptitude for math/science). If the research results I quoted above are to be believed, regarding aptitude, someone may excel in A (say girls in these countries get "very good" scores in math at the same rate as boys) and be much better in B (they excel in reading/other skills at a higher rate than boys) and it would be natural for this person to pursue B in that case, no?