Re:Why Women Leave Engineering (2011) [pdf]
by danharaj on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @10:29AM
(#14958076)
> when women weren't expected to be a significant economic contribution to the household.
This is wrong. One, domestic labor is still economic activity. Economy used to refer solely to the activities of maintaining a household. Ironic how it has been transformed so that unpaid labor is not considered economic.
Two, proletariat women have always been expected to and have contributed a wage to the household. This is on top of being expected to perform all unpaid domestic labor. The idea of a woman who only works at home was a middle class and upper class phenomenon.
A strong impact on how women's work was divided was the advance in technology that vastly reduced the amount of domestic labor required to maintain a household.
Sounds about right in my estimation. It fits the pattern of social/economic leftovers from when women weren't expected to be a significant economic contribution to the household.
Women are less likely to be the source of the large majority (e.g. 60% or more) of household income for households > 1. Those that are the primary source of income aren't expected by society to do that job.
At the statistical level this results in more women quitting because the negative economic and social implications of doing so are less severe (at the statistical level) than for men.
Edit: tl;dr women are statistically more likely to be in a position to be more picky about working conditions.