It doesn't strike me as an either-or situation. True, it's remarkable women were able to directly contribute anything to science or mathematics prior to the 20th century. The treatment was not just shabby, but rude in ways that most moderns would find incomprehensible. From Hypatia to Emma Noether, it wasn't that long ago that we in the west held values not too dissimilar from the Taliban.

That said, I think that a lot of what is driving the equity movements of today isn't science, but socio-political doctrine. Men and women are on average mathematically equal, because the universe is not otherwise just.

k