Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men, good people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are. But the social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear of first dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how women have to treat men on their day to day. I've yet to encounter a woman who has gone from internalizing this aspect of society to dropping their priors and living care free without fear of men they don't know / met for the first time.
They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how things are. And things have not found a way to change to a more easy going society. If anything things have just hardened up as information and media have become more prevalent. In comparison, powerful people fearing being potentially (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to their entire career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager that the OP of this article doesn't have a solution to the problem of trust by investors, because women have yet to discover the solution to their own generalized mistrust of men outside their direct social circle despite how long that situation has gone on for.
Until the risk / reward dynamic changes (and I do not see how it could without making people less accountable), I fully anticipate that this self censorship in society will not only just continue, but will yet increase further in an information society where powerful people can be made accountable by the public as stories of people being held to account to their actions, regardless of whether those actions were deliberate, accidental or misunderstandings.