But unlike say basketball or other sports, there's no one thing that makes you better at engineering. Why spatial reasoning? I did engineering and what spatial reasoning is there? Maybe a few vector calculus courses, and some mechanics. A lot is a bunch of equations. There's also an argument that you can make up for a lack of skill by either spending more time, or for instance by recasting problems from one domain to another. This is what often happens precisely with geometry, you can turn it into algebra.
Anyway I assume you mean that there's a bunch of these types of skills that might be unevenly distributed, and indeed it would make sense to have the numbers.
I'd say one thing to think about is whether there's an economic effect taking place. Suppose women have comparative advantage in something that isn't software. Then even though they might be just as good at it, fewer of them would choose it. And this is where actually absolutes are not what matter, it's the relative opportunity costs that do. So looking at who is better at spatial reasoning might seem sensible, but the decision might be better understood as economic, requiring us to look at Ricardo.
My wife's anecdotal experience as an engineering student at CalTech may be instructive.
She is very smart, but her spatial reasoning is weak. At first this wasn't too hard for her, but it became a real issue in lab courses. Then she discovered that CS courses qualified as lab courses and were easy for her. So she got her degree, then became a programmer.
So the answer that I give to you is that as soon as you actually have to any part of engineering that involves actually dealing with how physical stuff works in practice, spatial reasoning comes into play. And dealing with how physical stuff works in practice is pretty much core to being an engineer.
Anyway I assume you mean that there's a bunch of these types of skills that might be unevenly distributed, and indeed it would make sense to have the numbers.
I'd say one thing to think about is whether there's an economic effect taking place. Suppose women have comparative advantage in something that isn't software. Then even though they might be just as good at it, fewer of them would choose it. And this is where actually absolutes are not what matter, it's the relative opportunity costs that do. So looking at who is better at spatial reasoning might seem sensible, but the decision might be better understood as economic, requiring us to look at Ricardo.