I'm a female biologist and kind of a feminist, so I'm excited for this. Let's get cracking! *rubs hands*
Let's start with your sources. What do they say about this?
- Nothing about biology and nothing we didn't already know.
- This says female students study both biology and chemistry more than males, at a pretty significant proportional difference. (UK-specific, it appears)
- YouTube video from Factual Feminist, i.e., worthless.
- See above.
- And again.
- Women are still underrepresented in biology, just less underrepresented than other fields.
- STEM-geared toys tend to focus on the T and E.
- Same as above.
- Says males are more interested in pursuing technology/engineering and women gravitate towards biology. No precise statistics.
- "similar percentages of men and women planned to major in biology or physical sciences." (this was 1996, however, so things could've changed since then)
- Doesn't say anything related to the gender disparity in biology vs. other fields.
- Same as above.
- Ditto.
- And again.
- Not even specifically targeted at STEM.
- Not really relevant to biology and based on a largely discredited study.
Most of these sources don't really help us, are too imprecise, or are outdated. Narrowing it down to what's relevant:
- Source 2 - Female students are more likely to take biology and chemistry A-level science courses in the UK than male students.
- Source 6 - Women are underrepresented in all "hard science" fields, with a slightly lower disparity in life sciences.
- Sources 7 and 8 - Technology and engineering are more prioritized in terms of STEM-related toys for kids. No comparison to a site geared towards boys, so we can't really say this is disparate between girls and boys.
2 and 6 are contradictory, and 7 and 8 don't really say anything about the situation being gender-related. I really don't think we can say with certainty that women are equally represented or overrepresented in biology based on this evidence, and it seems to suggest that women are still dealt at least a slightly unfair hand. Furthermore, if we check the numbers in terms of actual outcome rather than student ratios, we find some unpleasant gender imbalances, as in these (non-exhaustive) examples:
So it's clear that even if women
are as or more interested in biology, they
aren't seeing the same kind of results. We can argue as to why that is and it's pretty much impossible to get a solid conclusion, but I think it's pretty likely that confidence differences ultimately resulting from what one might call "toxic femininity," combined with both unconscious and conscious discrimination by biologists, are the main cause. If we assume I'm right, then the answer seems to be combating said toxic femininity through programs intended to get women interested in science.
And that brings us to your point about biology being ignored in favor of technology, engineering, and physics. I'm not convinced that it's really a gendered thing at the moment; rather, we see general patterns across education where young children are educated about science in a very biology-exclusionary manner. Typical in-class activities and toys for kids tend to revolve around entertaining chemical reactions (baking soda volcanoes, most famously), building things (e.g., LEGO), or basic coding (e.g., Scratch). While elementary classes sometimes engage in biology-related activities (growing a class plant or keeping a caterpillar and watching its life cycle), they tend to be long-form and take a backseat to those other activities. I think I know why: good biology is often expensive, resource-intensive, difficult to perform spontaneously, and/or not always immediately visible, and kids are very interactive by nature. The symbioses and behavior that help form a leaf-cutter ant's fungus garden are incredibly fascinating, but you need to go into the field to see a colony really acting naturally, it takes a long time to form, and you can't necessarily see everything going on. In contrast, you can very easily grab baking soda and vinegar from your pantry, make a papier-mâché volcano, and make it run in less than an hour with immediately visible and incredibly entertaining results. Which one of these is a teacher going to do to sate their hyperactive 5-year-old students?
So because of this, biology kind of lags behind in our collective psyche. We know it's a science, but we never really learned to associate it as much with science as physics and chemistry because it was largely omitted in this formative period. That's part of why organizations promoting women in STEM might unconsciously focus away from the life sciences. The other reason is that life sciences require a lot of education and outside of medicine, aren't tremendously lucrative or in high demand. We
need computer scientists and engineers because the first world has gotten used to constant innovation and convenience, and we're willing to pay technologically skilled individuals a pretty penny to give that to us. Combine that with the extra underrepresentation of women in those fields and you start to generate a really good set of reasons that we should be promoting women in tech and engineering.
I don't really know what the right solution here is, but your criticisms are kind of jumbled and appear unwarranted in this particular instance.