Smart women who are capable of STEM careers largely choose different careers, if they can. Whats wrong with that? Doesn't assuming that there is something to "fix" here imply that women are broken? It's already clear that removing the barriers to enter these fields doesn't make them substantially more attractive to women, so whats left to "fix"?
> removing the barriers to enter these fields doesn't make them substantially more attractive to women
Any why is that the case? There are a lot of assumptions about the types of jobs that men/women should be doing, and there are also a lot of cultural assumptions about those job positions themselves and what they expect of their workers. There are also still many jobs which are not receptive to one gender or the other, either by their cultures or the cultures of their customers. This is something that should be fixed, even if it doesn't impact the choices that people make, although we do know that cultural expectations have a huge impact on choice.
We also don't only have cultural expectations about jobs women should have. We also have expectations about jobs men have. For example, many cultures expect men to make personal sacrifices in order to earn more money. Gender expectations usually affect both genders at the same time, rarely one in isolation.
We raise children with an expectation that women need to be “protected” from certain jobs (and other expectations), then after two decades of that conditioning, we ask them to make a “choice”. Of course those “choices” end up being biased. But they didn’t fully choose, they were raised to believe certain things about themselves and their surroundings.
But we do have plenty of examples where the expectations of society have influenced their choices in a way that conflicts with the free will of men and women.
I am sure we can both come up with many examples of things that society expects men to do, and things that society expects women to do. And, examples of scenarios where people would be treated very differently if they were a man or a woman. Obviously, these are a factor in people's life experiences, and therefore a factor in the way people make decisions. We may not expect them to choose differently given their own free will, but we also know that they are not making these decisions due to free will alone.
Nowhere did I suggest as much. I am simply suggesting that the gender roles we ascribe to children early on leave permanent impressions upon what they choose, and maybe more importantly, what others expect of them.
How are you going to correct humanities concepts of gender that have existed for a long time?