They're more inclined to go into those fields. That doesn't necessarily mean they are naturally better at those subject.

**The gender gap in STEM subjects does _not_ necessarily mean men are naturally better at STEM subjects, to tackle this difference we need to confront stereotypes to prevent socialisation.** There is a social stereotype that men are better at maths and science than women, when looking at the statistics this outlook seems to be supported. For example, as [this study](https://www.stemwomen.co.uk/blog/2021/01/women-in-stem-percentages-of-women-in-stem-statistics) shows, the percentage of female students in core STEM subjects is only 35% and females only made up 26% of STEM graduates in 2019. Moreover, in 2019 women only consisted 24% of the STEM workforce. If indeed men are naturally better than women at scientific subjects, then it’s not that surprising that women are so underrepresented. However, a [recent study](https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-baby-scientist/201904/are-boys-really-better-girls-math-and-science) found that gender differences in mathematical abilities do not become evident until children reach adolescence. For example, between 6 and 9 years old, girls perform just as well as boys in maths and science. In this sense, men are not naturally better at STEM subjects, but they are just more inclined to go into those areas as children start to conform to common stereotypes. For example, the previous study also shows that girls’ assessments of their own math ability were directly proportional to whether their mothers held gender stereotypes about STEM subjects; daughters of mothers who thought maths was a “boy’s” subject felt worse about their own abilities in maths and science.

The majority of 'STEM' fields are object-oriented (rather than person-oriented) and it's reasonably well established that even as infants, males have higher proclivity/interest in things, females in persons. Interest motivates 'betterness', no?

A lot of commentators here don't seem to understand how a normal distribution works. Men are consistently better than women at STEM subjects at the very top tail of the distribution. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06292-0/figures/1 But they are also more common at the very bottom tail too. So actually males are both better and worse than females at STEM.