If people actually believed in their own stated justifications for affirmative action, they would see the lack of diversity female-dominated fields as the far more pressing issue to address compared to the lack of diversity in male-dominated fields

In my experience, the justifications given for affirmative action can be summarized in two different arguments:

1)The domination of a field by one gender is caused by systemic discrimination of the other gender, present and historically. Affirmative action is a correcting action to address this injustice.

2)The lack of diversity is a cost paid in a lack of innovation, neutrality and completeness in the field that is dominated by one gender. Affirmative action is an action aimed at improving the outcomes of those fields, because diversity is a value.

I'm gonna argue here that for both arguments, the logical response would be to mainly focus on female-dominated fields because these suffer worse from both issues. However the logical response is not what we see, which is evidence that most people who support affirmative action based on gender are really just supporting a gender role, that has nothing to do with the justifications that are given.

Let's first explore the first argument. The argument poses that women are discriminated in STEM subjects, and that this should be addressed. The problem with this is that most studies find that boys and men face a systemic grading bias regardless of the field they are in, which implies that STEM would be even more male-dominated if this bias didn't exist. The evidence for women being discriminated against in STEM by contrast is far less hard and systemic, and is limited to vague claims of them being discouraged, usually coming from studies that jump to conclusions, completely ignoring any possible biological explanation in interest.

If people thought logically, they would prioritize the hard evidence over the soft evidence, and look into the grading bias first, before focusing women in STEM. But they don't, because it's really just about maintaining the gender role of women being seen as helpless victims.

But let's then explore the second argument. By this argument, even if there is no discrimination, the lack of diversity is still a problem and should be addressed.

It's hard to know how much of a problem a lack of diversity actually is. It is however plausible to assume that gender bias is going to be a more severe problem in fields that deal with human beings and that leave more room for subjective interpretation of data, as opposed to fields studying physical laws in the universe where the room for subjective interpretation is limited, at least when it is related to gender. The fields that focus on human beings, happen to be dominated by women, with only few exceptions (such as economics). Furthermore, studies consistently find that women have a strong pro-female bias while men don't have such a bias in favour of themselves. Considering that academia used to be dominated by men, and that this resulted in very unethical pseudoscientific theories about how women operate, one can imagine that the potential risk of this happening in reverse in female-dominated fields is even higher considering the difference in bias.

If people thought logically, they would see all of this and decide to focus most of their attention on female-dominated fields, but they do the exact opposite. Because again, the justification is unimportant, it's about conforming to the gender role of seeing women as victims in need of help.

I invite you all to share your thoughts on this topic, especially if you disagree. I welcome open debate.