There's a big tendency to ignore the price at which career success is sold. You have to give up more fulfilling and creative work, perhaps, or spend long hours in front of a screen on difficult yet boring tasks, or put in years and years of all-encompassing work in various qualification gauntlets. Not having paid the price for fame in academic STEM, I have no jealousy of the success these people have found - they have their fame, I have my free time.
I think a big issue in the study of gender differences in work is that it is much easier to quantify the salary earned than the price one must pay in order to be successful in the field. About the best you can do is compare sub-populations that have paid roughly the same price - eg, urban childless single college-educated adults. At that point, studies generally show an insignificant gender difference in wages and success.
So, why is there a gendered component to participation in high-pay/high-sacrifice fields? I've not seen any sort of hard data, so I'd have to speculate. If you made me single out a candidate for investigation, I'd have to look into the how the heterosexual dating market will asymmetrically treat career success. People respond to incentives, and dating success is one hell of an incentive.
Yeah, I'm super uninformed here, but single men's expectations of potential partners are totally the prime suspect here.
Anecdote: My uncle explicitly stated on his dating profile that he was looking for women with masters degrees who were willing to stay at home. I have no idea why he wanted that or why my dad's sister agreed, but this kind of demand is oddly common.
> single men's expectations of potential partners are totally the prime suspect here.
It's both genders; women do not lack agency in the dating market. It'd be as fair to make "my partner should be willing to give up their career to start a family" as the default and blame the dynamic on women - after all, they prefer men who are unwilling to compromise in the pursuit of their career.
I try to avoid either, and just mention that this axis has a gendered component in terms of both what people do and desire.
I think a big issue in the study of gender differences in work is that it is much easier to quantify the salary earned than the price one must pay in order to be successful in the field. About the best you can do is compare sub-populations that have paid roughly the same price - eg, urban childless single college-educated adults. At that point, studies generally show an insignificant gender difference in wages and success.
So, why is there a gendered component to participation in high-pay/high-sacrifice fields? I've not seen any sort of hard data, so I'd have to speculate. If you made me single out a candidate for investigation, I'd have to look into the how the heterosexual dating market will asymmetrically treat career success. People respond to incentives, and dating success is one hell of an incentive.