There is a difference, but there is also a relationship.
Consider a world (and ignore, for the moment, whether it corresponds to reality) where professional technical environments just genuinely are really awful to female employees. In that case, the teachers and parents are probably doing what's best for the individual girls (though potentially with some long-term tragedy of the commons). Would you condemn, there, the honesty of the well-intentioned messengers?
We should also consider an alternative fictional world, where women never have any issues in technical fields, and the cultural myth has arisen by whatever historical accident. In that case, I agree that it's quite legitimate to lay much of the blame at the feet of those perpetuating the incorrect myth.
Reality, of course, looks absolutely nothing like either hypothetical.
FWIW, my wife says she was turned off of technical studies after getting to Berkeley (having enjoyed physics in high school) by her impressions of the technical students on arrival.
Consider a world (and ignore, for the moment, whether it corresponds to reality) where professional technical environments just genuinely are really awful to female employees. In that case, the teachers and parents are probably doing what's best for the individual girls (though potentially with some long-term tragedy of the commons). Would you condemn, there, the honesty of the well-intentioned messengers?
We should also consider an alternative fictional world, where women never have any issues in technical fields, and the cultural myth has arisen by whatever historical accident. In that case, I agree that it's quite legitimate to lay much of the blame at the feet of those perpetuating the incorrect myth.
Reality, of course, looks absolutely nothing like either hypothetical.
FWIW, my wife says she was turned off of technical studies after getting to Berkeley (having enjoyed physics in high school) by her impressions of the technical students on arrival.