Creating more opportunities for super-bright girls to skip grades might be one of the most viable ways to open cracks in the glass ceiling that has plagued STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields for decades. But these days, young children are far more likely to be “redshirted”—held back from school to allow extra time for physical, socioemotional, or intellectual growth—than they are to charge ahead of their same-age peers.

Grade-skipping and early college admissions were relatively common in the U.S. during the Cold War, when the nation’s brightest students were considered a strategic resource and nurturing their talents became a national priority. Educators encouraged acceleration, and school districts invested in enrichment programs for the most capable and eager students.

These post-Sputnik brainiacs rose quickly through schools, universities, and graduate programs, spurring an unprecedented increase in doctorates and highly educated adults whose innovations boosted living standards, created tens of millions of jobs, and fueled much of the West’s economic growth.

It was a hallmark of the times that most of those high-paying science and engineering jobs were filled by men. The times have changed, but the imbalance in science and technical fields persists: Though women now make up more than half of the U.S. workforce and earn the majority of masters and doctorate degrees, they comprise just 24 percent of STEM workers.

That imbalance can’t be explained by lack of early interest: Nearly three-quarters of high-school girls in the U.S. are interested in the fields and subjects of STEM, according to a study by the Girl Scout Research Institute. But other research indicates that pervasive stereotyping and gender discrimination—by teachers, parents, and fellow students—exposes girls to the message that females are inferior in the STEM fields. Despite a raft of initiatives to support and encourage girls to pursue these fields, engagement with math and science tends to wane as girls get older.

Among women who do make it into the STEM workforce, the ranks tend to dwindle with each higher rung on the career ladder. At the very top, women hold only 5 percent of leadership positions.

What is holding high-ability women back when they go into their peak career-building years? At least one study suggests that the gender gap in STEM professions the can be attributed at least partly to different priorities and life and work choices that men and women make.

The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) has for 46 years tracked the careers and accomplishments of some 5,000 people whose high cognitive abilities were identified and supported in their early years. The SMPY data have generated more than 400 papers, including one that looked at how the career paths of precociously gifted males and females diverged over the past four decades. While they started their academic lives similarly, priorities began to deviate once they rose to the professional level. Men reported working an average of 11 more hours per week than the women. Asked how much they’d be willing to work if they had their “ideal job,” 30 percent of women were unwilling to work more than 40 hours per week; only seven percent of men felt the same way.