I assume you're talking about mine. Perhaps you'd see it differently if you knew that many of the people most keenly aware of the problem I describe, and who do at least half the work done to address it, are high-achieving women in stereotypically masculine endeavors who want to encourage other women to follow them. When they identify someone who has a special talent for a field, or who could simply benefit from an activity, sometimes their first task is to grant them social permission -- which is a more delicate and uncertain task than it sounds -- to acknowledge and develop their ability.

The examples I cited aren't made up; they come from personal experience. Of course, when dealing directly with somebody I don't use the (admittedly complainy) tone I did in my post. I'm more subtle and try to be more sensitive. But my observations are simply, unfortunately, observably true. They're no different from the academic studies that have established many ways in which providing social context can hurt women's performance on tests. Nor are they different from the observation that many men require lots of social permission and support before they can reveal intimate emotions to other men. It's a general problem of people self-limiting because better performance would violate their identity and threaten their place in society.