Indeed. The "largely" in the article's headline is a blatant lie. It cannot largely explain, it probably just largely correlates, considering the samples at han

Indeed. The "largely" in the article's headline is a blatant lie. It cannot largely explain, it probably just largely correlates, considering the samples at hand. One could write tens of similarly attention-catching articles with other variables "explaining" the issue. The article's conclusion contains a call to action: "Stop telling people to do what they are good at and instead tell them to do what pays!" Now, there is actually evidence that women in countries where there are strong socio-economic incentives to study STEM (Iran, India) are more likely to do so than women in western countries. Not that this explains the whole picture, either, but it's certainly interesting.