I did not suggest the gender paradox does not exist. What I am saying is that I am not 100% convinced it is caused by genders being more different in more gender equal societies. I think it is perfectly possible for women to be more feminine and interested in an engineering degree than a less feminine women.
Secondly correlation is not causation. It is a classical mistake and most of these articles make zero attempt at explaining possible causes of the correlation by say third factors.
One example is about gender equality or welfare states being the blame for Nordic countries having fewer female CEOs than e.g. the US.
But if you actually look more in depth at both societies and the people involved one can see a lot of other possible explanations. Nordic countries have low levels of economic inequality. That manifests itself in many ways: there are few people doing low skilled menial tasks, such as carrying suitcases, doing garden work, nannies etc. It also means Nordic CEOs make considerably less money than American ones.
You notice that female American CEOs tend to have large houses and lots of help they can pay for, such as home deliveries, nannies/babysitters etc. That tends not to be available to Nordic CEOs. Not only are there very few people doing such assistive jobs. It is also frowned upon in the culture. It is expected that parents spend a lot of time with their children.
E.g. pre-schools don't stay up very late.
A final factor which cannot be discounted is that the world is more globalized today. When I grew up in the 80s in Norway, boys and girls were in a lot of ways more similar. But from the early 80s American pop-media poured in. It focused on far more traditional gender roles than what Nordic countries had done: Lots of pink princess stuff for girls and macho militaristic stuff for boys. I've seen how girls have become more feminine under this influence.
The other influence is the end of a more socialist society where one tried to even out gender differences more. As Nordic countries became more capitalist, one could also see stores pushing clothes, toys etc which a stronger gender difference, because they knew that would sell more. I think this helped amplify differences.
Maybe it does not matter, but I am trying to make the point that when it comes to social science, the interactions and influences can be very complex. Separating cause and effect can be very difficult. Doing this study in a multitude of countries do not actually represent separate independent tests IMHO. E.g. Norwegian gender roles cannot be cleanly separated from American concepts of gender roles, due to the out-sized influence of American mass media.
Many of these studies do not consider the fact that you have to consider the whole female population. Often they compare only the working populations, but since most women work in Nordic countries while few do in developing countries, it skews the results. Lots of women in Nordic countries are paid caregivers in pre-schools and retirement homes. These women are not paid to do the same in developing countries and thus don't show up on the labour statistics.