Is it that simple?
It's my understanding that most med school admits these days are women.
I've also heard that surgeons are atypical doctors.
If either of those are true, the conclusion is questionable.
Also, medicine isn't all or even most of science.
And as far as your question goes "is it really that simple?" In the context I presented (effective early education versus discrimination in the workplace), I personally believe it is that simple. Women with talents in the sciences wont be ignored simply because they are too valuable to business and society. We just need to figure out a way to produce more technically skilled women. While we're at it, we should probably figure out a way to produce more technically skilled men too. Getting people to go into technical fields is already difficult, it just happens to be more difficult with women because of social factors.
On the other hand, I sometimes get the impression (I am primarily viewing this as a teacher of elementary age pupils) that persons with talents in the sciences ARE ignored (at early school age) even though they will be valuable to business and society if they develop those talents as they grow up. I teach supplemental math classes to advanced learners on weekends. I'm gratified that the pupils' parents (many of whom sit in and observe my lessons) think my work is valuable, and that the children think the classes are worth leaving home for on a weekend, but the market for my services only exists because those pupils feel their talents aren't being developed during regular school hours. I'm delighted that I have both boys and girls as pupils, and that through middle-school age (taught by a different instructor in my program) the girls persist in the supplemental math classes quite as avidly as the boys.
But I note for the record that I just came home from sending my son off to the American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) competition this weekend. The Minnesota Gold and Minnesota Maroon teams include quite a collection of math-liking young people, but only just a few girls. Sometime about high school age, at least in my state, there may continue to be a female interest in subjects that lead to being medical doctors, but there seems to be little support for boys, and next to none for girls, in high school for subjects that lead to being mathematicians or economists or computer scientists.
Maybe you and I are agreeing that if someone squeezes through the funnel of high school, the person with talents in the sciences can count on a reasonably assured career, even in a recession economy. But I find it worrisome that sometime around high school age, a lot of girls stop squeezing through the funnel.
This I've seen quite a bit of. It's also why the Simpsons satirizes this on a regular basis; it's because it's now a cultural phenomenon. In most mainstream film and TV programming, scientists and engineers are portrayed as socially inept and unattractive idiot savants, and the heroes are typically portrayed as tough-as-nails buffoons.
This is because the producers are pandering to the stereotypes.
When people grow up with these sorts of stereotypes, it's not hard to see how they become self-perpetuating. By pandering to the stereotypes, the producers are effectively passing the stereotype of their parents on to their children when those children are in their most impressionable stage of development. Unless their parents take on the responsibility of educating them about how inane the stereotypes are, they become self-fulfilling prophecies... like most prophecies.
I don't believe this is true. In general, individuals behave irrationally all the time. Societies are even worse.
There are all sorts of mechanisms by which societies make irrational decisions, but here's one example: we can't evaluate future value. A middle aged woman who has just discovered a cure for heart disease is incredibly valuable. But you'll never get that middle aged scientist if society doesn't spend expend a lot of time, money, and attention on her when she's an uninteresting 12 year old with absolutely nothing remarkable except a vague interest in chemistry. There are lots of critical decision points where society should be investing in that woman, but at almost all of those points, her visible value is very very small.