I don't know much about this field (and I did not purchase the full article), but it seems like quite a leap to assume this is a source of the gender-gap. First of all, you're talking about 80% of one standard deviation difference in reading-to-math scores between males and females - that doesn't seem like enough to study it as the cause of anything.
And how does being better at reading steer people away from STEM? There is just as much reading going on in STEM as out, and arguably more intensive reading in.
It seems like the score difference is probably related to the gender-gap somehow, but I doubt it is a cause. I would be interested in reading the article if it was freely available.
The funny version I heard was basically that girls are like super humans compared to boys. They're good at Math but they're also good at non-Math too. The boys on the other hand are bad at Math compared to the girls. They're also bad at non-Math but they're not equally bad. They're really really bad at non-Math and merely bad at Math.
What to do? For the boys the choice is easy - go with what you're best at. For the girls on the other hand it's harder - what do you do if you're good at everything? The answer is to do whatever you enjoy the most. So all the boys go into STEM and the girls spread their talents all over the map.
It's probably not a true deception of reality but it's certainly a funny one.
I’ve had this thought that intelligence and talent is actually very limiting. You need to be a little stupid to sit in front of a computer for 10 hours straight. You need to be a little stupid to go into a coal mine, or work on a fishing boat, or chase down criminals.
As much as we like to think talent = productivity, maybe it’s more of a curve? You need to be just talented enough to maximize productivity. Too much talent and you never get anything done.
It's a thing, and well-studied, at least on some levels. The top achievers in any given high school cohort usually aren't the kids with the highest measured IQs, for instance, and the kids with the highest measured IQs aren't usually more successful after graduation.
> that doesn't seem like enough to study it as the cause of anything
Unless I'm mistaken, their measure is basically Cohen's d, and 0.8 is indeed considered a large effect in the social sciences (look at the table in [1]).
And how does being better at reading steer people away from STEM? There is just as much reading going on in STEM as out, and arguably more intensive reading in.
It seems like the score difference is probably related to the gender-gap somehow, but I doubt it is a cause. I would be interested in reading the article if it was freely available.