Which countries are you looking at, in that case? Because although the percentiles do naturally vary from one country to the next, they show the same in each country: women are more likely to work part time than men, women have a greater preference towards the public sector than men, women are more likely to be the stay-at-home parent than men, women are more likely to be single parents than men. I am not aware of any country where the ratio for any of these are reversed.
You kinda sorta did, you know, when you said it would help create gender parity - in reply to me saying that a one-sided focus would not achieve much.
Testosterone does have a pretty major effect, though. You cited testosterone as contributing only risk tolerance before, but this is a very incomplete picture. Male risk tolerance is especially tied to the fact that the male brain develops more slowly than the female - specifically the prefrontal cortex, which deals with risk assessment. But this is hardly the only part of the human brain which is sexually dimorphic. The brain has been the subject of extensive study, but I am not aware of any study that concludes the only gender difference is tolerance for risk taking.
No, that's too simple. Being physically stronger means, theoretically, that the physically strong get to decide which work is "manly work" and which can be left to the women. But assuming it were this simple, how come men have always chosen the same?
In practice, we have to go back to the mesolithic at least in order to see physical strength as the dominating factor. Because, after all, men do not only dominate
women because of the physical disparity, but other men as well. But from the neolithic onwards, when prestige occupations relied less and less on physical strength, we do not see men strong-arming their way to the top. Well, metaphorically that still happens, but physical strength does not account for social mobility - and hasn't for many thousand years. In fact, physically strong men tend to be perfectly happy with socially modest roles, doing manual labour. The military, the police and the fire departments are also predominately male to this day, though it is not power or money that attracts men to these professions.
Also, it is worth noting that while men do indeed dominate the most privileged positions in society, they also dominate the
least privileged positions of society. If it were as simple as "social mobility is tied to physical strength", then you'd expect women at the bottom, because the weakest women do tend to be weaker than the weakest men.
Personally, I would rather point to a more traditional reason why gender roles have developed pretty much the same all over the world. Because no matter what role you feel physical strength has played, it still begs the question:
why are men physically stronger than women? Women are shorter than men, have smaller feet, smaller hands, smaller noses, softer facial features, less muscle tone... and permanent breasts. There isn't any
practical reason for this, and the same degree of sexual dimorphism is not to be found in most other mammals. Each of these features only serve to make women appear more vulnerable, which in turn serves to trigger protective instincts. We might have evolved this way because of our social nature - sure, there are other social animals as well, but with complex brains come complex societies, and the message "I'm so small and vulnerable, won't one of you big boys come and protect me" is one way to ensure a guy sticks around - by appealing to his protective instincts. Permanent breasts feature into this beacause they are a signal of infertility, however temporary - a turn-
off, by all rights. Yet when
every adult female has them, whether they are with young or not, then they do not become an incentive for the male to move on to other, fertile females instead. Somehow, consequently, breasts instead become a source of attraction. And this will naturally affect behavioural patterns.
This was the case for early man, and the physical signals (and the instincts that go with them) are the same today. Women are not in the same helpless situation today as they would have been 12,000 years ago, but that does not mean that the protection element is removed from gender dynamics. It still means that men want to protect women, and women seek the protection of men, speaking generally. Women still look for financial security when considering a potential partner, but men do not consider this at all when looking for a woman. Oh, you'll find exceptions, I'm sure - but generally, what I said is true. And as all individuals - of all species - tend towards the path of least resistance, this means that so long as these instincts are in play, this gender disparity will also be reflected in the career choices we make.
I should add that this is not my field of study (my education is in supply chain management), and that the above is very much my own take on what I have studied in an amateur capacity. But I believe it is sound - stands to reason, otherwise I wouldn't have written it
Not so much a shift, as merely bridging the gap. There
has been subjugation in the past, absolutely - and certainly present cultures are not stain-free of the past. But men and women have not been barred from any career choice for many decades now. We have had affirmative action for about 50 years, and the world is well accustomed to seeing women in every profession. Even Pakistan has had a female head of state. To suggest women are being held back in the West is without merit. There are societal pressures, but these are made by
every member of society - including women. In Western countries, these pressures are not only not enforced by the government, but often actively opposed. So you certainly can't blame it on men in power enforcing the status quo. You can make an argument for that in many places in the world (including the aforementioned Pakistan), but not the West.