You raise some good points, and I'm not trying to minimize the very real obstacles that women face and have faced. For example, I pointed out that incredible women like Florence Nightingale chose to be single. And of course there was a very good movie (the name right now evades me) which dealt with the issues women face when joining a "male" field like construction. The bullying by men who were hostile to a woman on their turf, while told in a fictional movie, was based in fact.
HOWEVER, there is also the other side - women really do avoid certain fields. In fact, I have known many women who HAVE made choices, such as a PhD in physics who was one of my fellow students at MIT who chose to stop working when she had babies. She did not make this choice because she couldn't afford childcare - her husband, a fellow MIT student, and herself both made six figures. She WANTED to stay home with her kids and in fact they had to cut their lifestyle to afford her doing it.
Another friend of mine, a PhD in math, made a similar decision after having a baby. So did a third friend, who majored in engineering from Clemson. She and her husband chose to live with only one car so she could stay home with the kids. It was not a choice he forced her into - she was the one who actively wanted to stay home with her kids.
And it's not all anecdotal - there was a Harvard study a couple of decades ago that addressed this very issue and came to the same conclusion - that many women CHOOSE being SAHM or working part time and many more WOULD choose these options if they could afford to do so.
It's not an either/or thing - women DO face obstacles but they ALSO make choices.
I'm glad you replied to my comment because you raise additional factors that are valid. But just like the original article didn't address every issue, neither did my comment and neither does yours - because this is a complex issue. It's not just one thing - it's a variety of factors.
The reason I focused more on how women's choices affect their career is because I was giving a counterpoint to the original article. While you are correct that some women face bullying, etc. (which I think I also mentioned) others make choices freely, of their own volition.
Additionally, in some of the countries where women are the most emancipated (the Scandinavian countries), women are much more likely to go into "traditionally female" fields. A recent study out of Germany examined this.
When I worked with young children, I made a great effort not to direct them in how they played - I encouraged each child to play with whatever toys THEY wanted. Nevertheless, the little girls were much less likely to play with trucks, for example, and the boys mostly avoided dolls.
One reason I did not fit in when I was a child - I liked to build things with Legos, play with cars and violent video games and never wanted to "mother" a doll baby. I became an engineer and there were very few women in my classes despite the fact that, at that time, women were being encouraged big time to get into STEM fields.
Re. birth control - it is very affordable nowadays, particularly when you tell your partner he needs to pay half. If he's not willing to do so, dump him. Part of being a strong, independent woman is not accepting B.S. from men. If you can't feel comfortable having that talk with a guy then maybe don't have sex with him. You have to love yourself enough to put your own needs for security ahead of his pleasure or ego needs.
As an independent woman, I don't need a man, and I don't allow them to treat me like a doormat. I consider adult women to be independent human beings. They have volition. Even when facing discrimination, they can take action. If women in the late 19th century and early 20th century were able to become doctors, file patents, and so on, we as modern women have no excuse. JMHO
Then again, I grew up in a working class neighborhood and learned to fight for myself, and I've defeated a type III cancer three times, so I'm a pretty strong person. And I come from a strong line of women - my grandmother beat up a bunch of policeman in India back in 1938 and her mother was one of the first female doctors in India. So I never thought there were any obstacles I couldn't overcome... when men told me I couldn't do math or physics or couldn't be an engineer or was too fragile for fencing team or that I wouldn't survive cancer - it just got my back up to prove them wrong.
