Why didn't I ask that?

When I was at high school I used to hold my hand up and ask as many questions as I thought I needed in order to understand something.

Of course, this depends on the person, but there is another piece of research supporting the idea that (a significant amount of) women systematically think of failure, feel fear about it, and then act the way they would not really want to act.

I do not know if this is a by-pass product of the "Impostor Syndrome" some research studies also show when referring to women in academia and their careers.

This post in NATURE is very interesting (link HERE), related to the following paper:

Carter AJ, Croft A, Lukas D, Sandstrom GM (2018) Women’s visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men. PLoS ONE 13(9): e0202743. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202743

It can be read HERE.