Isn’t the incentive of journalists to report an interesting story part of the blame, here? Female execs are less common. So a journalist might be interested in

Isn’t the incentive of journalists to report an interesting story part of the blame, here? Female execs are less common. So a journalist might be interested in sprucing up the narrative of their article by doing more background on “what it’s like to be a female executive in a male dominated field” (etc). Journalists are not purely focused on objective, fact-based inquiry. They’re almost always trying to weave a story and if there’s something socially unusual (for a given context) about someone, they have incentive to ask about that. More clicks for a human interest story about a “woman in a man’s world” than yet another male executive. I won’t make a value judgement about whether or not that’s appropriate here, but I think that’s a pretty important part of the equation if we’re going to consider this individual sexism or not (because it has to do with the incentives in journalism generally, not necessarily with individual journalists). I’m sure the question “Have you experienced sexism in your workplace?” is more commonly asked of female executives.