Surely a solution to that problem would be to institute equal maternity and paternity leave while making it socially acceptable and even encouraged for men to take advantage of said leave.

The men would get the benefit of spending time with their newborn children in a way they cannot do today, while their significant others get the benefit of another person available to help them out full-time through the child's early months. The cherry on top is that businesses would be far less able to view women as men who take more time off.

It does not matter if men are mandated to take the leave, biological differences such as the effects of menstrual cycles will make it so, on average, women will request and/or need more days off. Also, the effects of pregnancy beyond the minimum parental leave duration will pretty much only affect women's ability to work, not men's.

This is the case in Germany but the problem is still not fully solved. But it’s a lot better!

But your test doesnt work if the baby/fetus etc. is a person, which is what abortion opponents think. If its a person then your test (does the woman have autonomy to make decisions about her body) has a contradiction. In that case, one expression (abortion) of one person's autonomy would transgress the other. You are not actually addressing the crux of the issue so your argument only works for people who already agree the fetus isn’t a person, which is the very thing being disputed. You have to address if the thing inside the tummy is a person or not, and when.

I didn't posit a test.

>so either one can assume women should always have bodily autonomy, or the other option which is women sometimes do not have bodily autonomy

Framing it as a question of women's bodily autonomy assumes there is only one person involved, which is exactly what abortion opponents dispute. So your framing doesn't settle the issue.

In some sectors, notably academic STEM faculty positions, women are drastically preferred over equivalently qualified men. From "National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track" (Williams and Ceci, PNAS 2015 [1]):

> Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference.

In a meta-analysis of 57 such studies, Galos and Coppock (Science Advances 2023 [2]) found a small 1.2% bias favouring women overall, with gender-coded fields generally have a preference for applicants of that gender (5.1% towards women in nursing, admin, early childhood education; 3.0% towards men in trades, engineering, executive roles).

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418878112

[2]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade7979?hl=en-GB

My personal experience is that all of my female colleagues have found jobs quite easily (even some pretty unimpressive friends of mine), while all of my male colleagues are struggling to find work. There is a massive hiring bias in favor of women as I understand it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/04/jobs-report-women-payrolls.h... is a report I've read recently (it's partially due to the growth in the healthcare industry due to aging population). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFCljh6dBIg&t=144s is a discussion that captures the modern perspective for young men.

The idea that maternity leave plays into this in any signifigant way is totally old-fashioned (in my opinion).

Women essentially have a higher effective charisma thanks to their greater sexual market value. There were some studies that showed women have an in-group bias to support women, but also men have a cross-group bias to support women. People naturally pefer women.

I think the answer is in salary expectations: men have higher average salary. It's easier to find a job if you ask less.