Discrimination along protected attributes such as gender would be highly illegal though, so no doubt you’d have tons of evidence to present beyond “gossipy HR ladies”.
It might be worth Googling James Damore as an early example of this chilling effect.
This seems like a very roundabout way of saying there was no evidence of discrimination against women :-/
Where are you going with this? Because if "no evidence == did not happen", then that's true for the decades prior to the 90s, right?