Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your summary is incorrect. They are not taking their results to indicate that their assumption is incorrect, but rather that the anti-female bias must be even stronger elsewhere to overcome the significant pro-female bias at initial stages.
I think the two of you are in violent agreement.
We generally agree, though not violently :). I was pointing out that the effect is a bit bigger than the parent suggested. The authors aren’t abandoning their priors about anti-female bias; on the contrary they aren’t even recognizing that this evidence challenges those priors—they assume that the evidence to prove their priors must exist elsewhere and in sufficiently large effect as to counteract and dominate this pro-female bias.
Note that I think it’s a fine thing to stick to one’s priors until they’ve been conclusively disproven, but recognition when the evidence obviously challenges one’s priors is my baseline for good faith. That said, I suspect this paper is written as it was because the authors thought their careers might be in danger for merely suggesting that the disparity might have a cause beyond discrimination.