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Side note: this is the first time I've heard Simpson's paradox explained intuitively.

When I read the wikipedia page it had a pretty clear real-life example (inspection reveals: still there!) --

UC Berkeley was sued for accepting male grad students at a higher rate than female grad students. On examination, most departments at Berkeley admitted females at a higher rate than they admitted males, but males preferentially applied to easier departments.

As another side note: This still constitutes bias if you turn the attribution around. Rather than "men choose easier-to-get-into programs", you could say the university underfunds the areas of study that women are more excited about.

Even assuming there's some inherent difference in what women want to study (as opposed to cultural differences which could ultimately be removed) - funding isn't always the choice of the university.

You can't take a DARPA grant to research robots and then spend it on interpretive dance lessons.

interpretive dance for robots?

(I'd really like to see that...)

That's societal bias then. And the university is accomplice to it.

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