This frames the decision to dedicate more time towards childcare than work as a something thrust onto women by societal expectation when women would rather work. Studies indicate that only 20% of women would prefer to work full time after having a child, with the rest preferring part time work or staying at home with the children. Furthermore, 70% of women with children that are currently working full time responded that they would rather be working part time or not at all [1]. By comparison the majority of men indicate that they would rather work full time.

Women and men both have to choose between their careers and spending more time with children, and their choices reflect their preferences. One can make the argument that this is indirect sexism - that women's preferences stem from sexist social influence. But the fact remains: most women don't want to work full time, and the lower rates of women working full time after having children is reflective of women's preferences.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/...

I suspect given an economic choice, many men would prefer not to work full time either.

For some reason men don't get asked whether or not this is true. It's simply assumed that men will dedicate their lives to work because it's the only way to pay for a family.

You don't need to suspect, fathers were polled as well. 72% preferred work full time, 12% part time, and 16% not working.

>It's a systemic sexism that has deep roots in how we organize the aesthetics of our society

Or it's a systematic sexism that has deep roots in human biology and thousands of generations of sexually dimorphic specialization, and I can't believe we've successfully convinced multiple generations of westerners now to pretend that men and women are equally suited for all roles, including child rearing.

Now we need an article which takes an honest look at the possibility that gender imbalance in STEM (and other fields) is at least partly a result of similar specialization for cognitive tasks, where researchers like the author of the article are closer to extremes of an ability distribution. But I'm relieved to see a take that questions the tired, pervasive assumption that STEM is simply not welcoming to women because old white men are sexist.

>Or it's a systematic sexism that has deep roots in human biology and thousands of generations of sexually dimorphic specialization

Are you saying women are naturally more nurturing than men? And more inclined towards childcare?

Because I vehemently disagree.

>I'm relieved to see a take that questions the tired, pervasive assumption that STEM is simply not welcoming to women because old white men are sexist.

It can definitely be a factor. And even a more important factor is the fact that women can feel unwelcome in tech. At Oxford only 10% of the undergraduates accepted to study computer science were women. Now imagine being a woman in that class. You might feel like you don't belong, although you might be friends with your predominantly male classmates. Some of them will make jokes at the expense of your gender, others will hit on you, and the list goes on. Obviously not all of them will treat you differently, but some of them will, and that's enough to feel unwelcomed. And thus, you might be more inclined to leave tech for a field with more women, like biology.

Can confirm that I know multiple women who work less then they imagined for themselves or want to, cause their husbands basically finds it more fun to be in work and cant be arsed to go home.

Their resentment is quite real. Their actions looks like choice, until they trust you well enough to vent to you.

That is often true. But the frequent prequel is also “I want a baby” originating from a woman. I don’t have un-anecdata too, but it happened to me, to my buddies and to my male family members. As men may or may not definitely, consciously want kids and do related work, at least we need to bin resentments into two buckets (fail of promise vs. fail of expectation) and evaluate them separately.

That would be another situation where something that looks like a choice from outside is not one.

With some of the women I had in mind, I know for sure they strongly did not wanted next kid while husband suggested that, so it is not the same (in the sense that he did not wanted kid and therefore it should be all on her).