Every issue has extremes on either side. I think that we are doing ourselves a huge disservice by focusing so much on these extremes. We either point to the opposite side's extreme and use it to negate anything and everything that side says and does. Or we are so entrenched in needing our side to be right that we turn a blind eye to our own side's extremes, even when we know they're wrong and dangerous.
In both cases, we lose.
It's not just the extremes but the assumptions as well. Whenever a statistic comes along that can be construed as negative towards women (e.g. the so-called wage gap, gender gap among software engineers, etc.) then it is immediately assumed that sexism is the cause. There are a lot of potential causes of such a statistic that could vary depending on how the statistics were collected. It isn't necessarily sexism and even if that is a factor it isn't necessarily the only or primary one.
There seems to exist an assumption that men and women should be statistically identical in everything. It's a pretty dumb assumption given that men and women have physical, biological and psychological differences and don't (on average) need, want or have the same drive for the same things. Of course a woman can be a Software Engineer. Of course a man can be a midwife. But should we expect that a statistically equal number of men and women will choose to pursue each of those career paths?
I'm certainly not saying that sexism doesn't exist or that it is ok. It certainly does and it certainly is not. I just feel that it is exaggerated at every opportunity and it doesn't do feminism as a movement any good.
Ya, I agree with you on this. If we claim that differences in wages, etc. are solely the result of sexism when that isn't the case, then it keeps us from finding and addressing the other causes.
Statistics are a good tool to identify where problems exist, but we still have to address those problems on an individual basis.
That said, most of the women I know -- myself included -- have experienced sexism at some point in their lives, so it certainly does exist and it certainly is a problem. And most of those women did not exaggerate the situation; in fact, they tried to downplay it because sometimes that's just easier then taking a stand and being labelled.