Yes, but the question is not whether that's true, but whether that's useful.
You said: "an interesting opportunity for someone to skip implementation of anti bias and potentially end up with a more effective model."
Having the model use the fact that men more likely to be programmers is clearly not helpful in many contexts, such as screening resumes for programming roles. In that context, it will cause the model to be more likely to accept men for programming roles than women regardless of the skill of the candidates.
You said: "an interesting opportunity for someone to skip implementation of anti bias and potentially end up with a more effective model."
Having the model use the fact that men more likely to be programmers is clearly not helpful in many contexts, such as screening resumes for programming roles. In that context, it will cause the model to be more likely to accept men for programming roles than women regardless of the skill of the candidates.
Edit: Edited for clarity