When applying to university, I picked my major with gender concerns at the top of my mind; I was swayed towards physics because it was the degree with the lowest female enrolment, which I interpreted as a sign of intellectual rigor and therefore worth. I scorned anything female-dominated, like the humanities, which I saw as a scholastic consolation prize for those not smart enough for STEM. I even applied to one school I had little desire to attend, solely because of its severely skewed gender ratio; somehow I twisted that into a sign of intellectual calibre.
