Are you insinuating that women - today - are forced into that narrow set of professions if they want to work?

Certainly that was the case in the past, and cultural inertia is real. This allows inequities and biases to persist over time. So although women are not forced to choose teaching, for example, there are more teaching role models who are women and culture nudges women towards that career.

This causes the persistent inequity in career pay that was caused in part by the original influx of women into the field when explicit sexism was rampant.

Cultural inertia is surely a factor, but I doubt it's as severe as the parent is insinuating. For instance, how do you explain women overtaking men in say, veterinary medicine? At one point, the field was entirely male dominated.

So was nursing, and really most(all?) fields. Of course going from nursing to veterinary work is not as huge a leap.

And in all cases, somebody has to be the first one; somebody has to show a path, often against institutionalized sexism. Once the door is open (especially when there are few doors) I can see careers tipping fast.

Of course computer science used to have a lot of women; especially when they were being used as human calculators(!), so I don't know what exactly changed that made it a boys' club.

Regardless of the cause, it has the perception, which makes it self perpetuating in some sense - women see articles about how tough it is to be a woman in tech, and are turned off by it, even if the higher pay is there and it's all just rumors.

I suppose though there is something of a reverse impact in some fields (in terms of labor force participation) - like nursing, which is so female dominated, there's actually negative pressure for men who try to enter it . But it also just isn't held up as high as medicine at the MD level.

forced, no.

But do they face strong institutional barriers and negative climates in some of the best paying professions (like engineering)? Yes.

The scale of it isn't like it was 50+ years ago, but let's not pretend like it's "All Better Now"

They are certainly heavily pushed into those fields.

No, he is not. He is talking of the long-term side-effects of historic sexism.

Why the emphase on `forced` and `today` ?

Because it would make sense 50 or more years ago, when women were openly shut out from other professions. That's not to say the after-effects of those outmoded cultural traditions aren't having an impact, but to claim that this accounts entirely or even majorly for the professional disparity in female representation demands evidence.

Sure. But women are free agents. They don't all need to be teachers, nurses, and secretaries. They can be whatever they want to be.

Now, I fully admit, there is a degree to which women at a young age are socialized into those sorts of professions. And I am absolutely willing to call that sexism, and totally support every effort being made to change that.