[psyopsy]

They did try to account for social conditioning: parents' education and jobs, local labor markets, school performance, the whole bit. The gap still didn't move much. If socialization were the main driver, you'd expect the most egalitarian countries to have the smallest gaps. They don't. In a lot of cases it's the opposite. Sweden, for example, shows bigger differences in occupational preferences than places like Pakistan.

So at that point you're not pointing to a specific confounder, you're basically saying "maybe there's something else." Sure, logically you can always say that. But if the evidence keeps stacking up in one direction and the only reply is "could be something," that's just refusing to update your view.

[__alexs]

You can't control for the social conditioning of gender. This is so fundamentally obvious I don't think you are taking the science seriously.

[psyopsy]

Congrats! You've made your position unfalsifiable.

When the data consistently shows gaps widening as social strictures loosen, and your response is to blame an invisible, unmeasurable "conditioning," you aren't doing science at all. But you are insulating your belief from any possible counter-evidence.