This isn’t related to design, but I recently came across this story about women in computer science. Up until the mid 80s their participation in the field had been growing, then personal computers came out and were marketed towards boys. The number of women in CS flattened then plummeted. That was probably not the only cause (they say nothing about the changing nature of the work in the article) but I think it shows how the way children are raised and what is given to them as a child greatly affects their perceived ability to excel in a field.