Congrats!
> extremely distressing to me.
Why?
> just imagine [..] appears to an aspiring programmer
Hmm...how do you think it should appear? You hint (strongly), but you don't really say.
> none of you are saying that ALL women are less capable than ALL men,
Yes. As in: not even a bit.
First, most of the talk is about preferences, not ability. Second, if anything it is about distributions that have large overlaps, with average ability being the same and with differences (in STEM), if anywhere, mostly in the width of the distribution (so males may have wider variance). Third, there is apparently one difference in ability, which then reflects itself in preference: women with high math scores tend to also have high verbal scores, whereas men with high math scores tend to only have high math scores, they are not good at the verbal bits. And statistically, people of either gender with high scores in both prefer going into non-STEM fields.
Fourth (going back to the second point): all of these are at most distributions. They say absolutely nothing about any individual. For example, I am a guy but despite the fact that I scored high in both math and verbal parts (and absolutely atrociously at the 3D mental rotation that supposedly explains a slight edge for guys in STEM), and was interested in (a) physics (b) english literature and linguistics (c) philosophy here I am as a programmer.
> but what I'm reading here is the subtext.
What is the subtext you're reading? Can you be specific?
What I see, text and subtext is an entire field defending itself from being smeared as sexist assholes with zero credible evidence of this being true and due almost entirely to choices other people make, choices that the people in this field have absolutely no influence over.
> [How will be perceived/respected etc.]
This will depend almost entirely on your individual circumstances, meaning most people will treat you with respect if you treat them with respect and behave respectably yourself. If you enter as a gender warrior, things might be different. Is this a 100% guarantee? Nope, nothing is. Assholes exist. In every industry.
If I told you the things that have happened to me in this industry, you probably wouldn't believe me, and if I claimed this happened to a woman, it would be seen as surefire proof of the systemic sexism in the industry. Except it happened to a guy, so whatever. And if shit happens to you, you probably want to assume it is because there are shitty people, not because of your gender.
A 2008 survey[1] by the ACM that actually interviewed both men and women didn't find significant differences in most parameters of job satisfaction, and in fact women reported slightly higher support by their superior than men did.
[1] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-...