It could also be the other way around: Social expectations concerning men as primary income-earners makes it a hard choice for men to pursue less lucrative fields of study.
The "Social expectations" are enshrined into law. Just a quick look at the legal rights involving paternity vs maternity leave make that pretty clear [1]. So do the regulations regarding divorce and alimony in most legislations, see eg. [2] for the case of the US.
The best way of thinking about this issue from the social power angle: Work is unpleasant in most cases (hence mostly only done when incentivised by pay or force) and best to be avoided. Those most able to avoid work are those with most social power. Parental leave is a social mechanism to avoid work, since most people prefer spending time with their children to working.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Variation_in_in...
And there's the sexism: the idea that raising children is not "work".
Anyone who believes caring for a newborn is not hard work is welcome to try it and report back.
If the relationship between you and your children is like that between you and your employer, you are probably not doing it right ...
You can also look at this from a power angle: what do feminist typically campaign for? Do they typically campaign for mandatory patertal leave to match or exceed maternal leave? This would be the case if looking after one's children was such a drag. Nope, they are typically quite happy with women getting the biggest chunk of parental leave, but they want society to view maternal leave as work on par with working in a company.
But the rewards are like no other.
As a parent, I have a disinclination to consider parenting 'work', as in 'I should get paid for this because it sucks', because I don't think that all things that suck should be paid for, in general. Life does suck. Deal with it.
And the suckiness of parenting is in no way at all the same level of suck as, say, having to do a Timesheet every single day and accounting for every 6 minutes of effort in order to get paid a pittance, and so on. Because you can't say: this human being is costing me $__ amount.
To incentivize - or even, associate - parenting work as an under-privileged system of unpaid labor is to allow the conditions of human slavery to slip ever slightly more through the door.
It speaks much of any -ism that claims that child-rearing isn't one of the truly greatest privileges for any living being, sentinent or otherwise, to experience.
Thank you!
An analogy would be beauty. It's quite obvious that it's the women who care more about their appearance (due to male sexual preferences) rather than men caring less.
If a person is expected to only choose a high paying field, but has two options open:
1. High paying field they don't really like.
2. Low paying field they'd love to do.
Then if there are social expectations that someone must make a lot of money, they will generally be forced to choose option 1.
The argument that men are forced by social expectations to choose option 1, and women are more freely able to choose option 2 is not 'absurd'. It may be correct or incorrect and would need some evidence to back it up, but please don't go around labeling positions you don't like as 'absurd'.
[1] see for example Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (MIT Press) http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-Pr...
You added the idea of conscious planning. Replace "plan on supporting them" with "higher probability of getting support".
> tons of evidence around sexist cultures in engineering and CS
This has no bearing on the above claim though, does it? That men have a higher risk of being able to find a partner capable and willing on supporting them financially.
Could we once do without it?
invariably makes these discussions fall off a cliff
Alas it's difficult to defend against.
Not at all what I said. Rather, women have the freedom to pursue their interests because they know that their ability to have children will not be determined by whether they can support a spouse.