The fact that you currently understand that lower aptitude is not the reason there are fewer women in STEM, in spite of the numbers, tells me that this problem

The fact that you currently understand that lower aptitude is not the reason there are fewer women in STEM, in spite of the numbers, tells me that this problem could be solved by giving people the correct facts regarding the situation and showing how the arguments for aptitude being the reason for the imbalance are flawed. Secondly, there could very well be some evolutionary basis for differences in preferences between men and women when it comes to liking "things" vs "people" (in addition to culture being a factor - just want to note I'm not trying to argue there is no cultural factor here). I am currently reading a book called "Behave" by Robert Sapolsky that in one part discusses a study where they put chimps in a room full of toys and observed which type of toy the male and female chimps went for. If my memory is correct, the female chimps more often went for the dolls and the male chimps went for the cars (I don't have the name/authors of the study handy, but I can dig it up. The fact that Sapolsky, a respected primatologist from Stanford, thinks this study is legitimate enough to mention in his book indicates to me that the study doesn't have any serious flaws). Clearly the female chimps were never culturally predisposed to prefer playing with dolls, so there is something else going on here.