> it may still be that women do not possess the "innate affinity" for it - namely, they do not like working in it, preferring other fields instead. To my understanding, there is nothing to contradict this explanation, and it makes perfect sense.

There's no evidence supporting the supposition that there is an innate ability gap. Social explanations are supported by the evidence and that's why people are trying to change the field to be more welcoming.

One of the key things to remember is that this isn't some fixed quantity – any argument for innate characteristics would have to explain why the rates started going down in the 1980s despite the field becoming increasingly popular and lucrative over the same decades and not seeing a similar trend in comparable fields such as math:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...