I think that because it seems unlikely that we’ve managed to completely eliminate thousands of years’ worth of systemic sexism in such a short time. It’s highly improbable that, with so many things changing all the time, this just happens to be the moment when we’ve achieved a level playing field.
And to address the specific claim, why would being interested in people keep women away from computer jobs? It’s an intensely collaborative field. And why didn’t this keep women out of the field a few decades ago when women programmers were much more (relatively) numerous? If women are generally more interested in people and this drives sex disparities in different professions, why are there so few women in politics, the most people-heavy profession imaginable?
I think it's a good example, you (and GP) just missed the more interesting part: Nurses handle the patients on a more intimate level than doctors, and female nurses outnumber male nurses roughly 10:1 in the US.
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of-pr...
These people who insist the explanation comes down to preference are basing this on their own lived experience, on the women they've met and what their interests are. 18% just doesn't strike them as being out-of-the-ordinary.
The percentage of women who own a set of wrenches is even smaller. Should we assume that is also due to unjust influence?
Even if it were worth something, am I to believe that those people have never observed sexism? Regarding your bit about wrenches, have you never wandered into a toy store and seen the toy wrenches filed under “boys”?
What I don’t understand is why so many people insist that this must be the explanation, as if the current state of things is definitely a level playing field (or biased toward women) and the fact that there are so many more men in the field must therefore be due to something innate.
We’re only a few decades out from a time when women couldn’t open a bank account without their husband’s permission, and when raping a woman was perfectly legal as long as you were married to her. I think we should give it a little more time and effort before we declare that everything is now fair and any remaining discrepancies must be biological.