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Notes -
Men work because they have to; women if they want to.
Such a saying would be hyperbolic in an absolute sense, but it'd be true in a relative sense.
Women have far more latitude to dabble in "fun" jobs to the extent they want to work at all. It's essentially a meme at this point that a lot of women in PhD programs among the softer sciences (and, in certain cases, smarter ones among the harder sciences) are basically doing it for a hobby because the alternative would be having to say you're a Stay-at-Home Girlfriend, Wife, or Mother (which sounds low status and not GirlBossy). Any higher-earning opportunities that may or may not arise from that are just a bonus.
For men, you can have won the game, secured a bag for you and your wife, and she still might resent you if you retire early. Ugh, stupid husband... what have you done for me lately? And people will act like that's normal: because that is the normal, the normal state of affairs, that men have to constantly justify their worth. Many third-parties will even advise the husband to Get A Job, rather than encouraging the husband to tell his wife to get over herself.
While I've seen young or not-so-young men get fired or pushed out from a job, I've never to my recollection seen them voluntarily resign without an exit opportunity lined-up. In contrast, I've seen many young and not-so-young women drop-out of their jobs with no exit opportunity lined-up to become stay-at-home girlfriends, wives, or stay-at-home single-ladies when they felt their roles were too heavily focused on Excel graphs and PowerPoint slides (and too lightly focused on looking cute and girlbossing, too unfulfilling and too little self-actualising).
@ThenElection mentioned he or she knew "multiple women who gave up high paying, high stress careers to be yoga instructors, writers, and life coaches." At a previous job, one of my former coworkers (more senior than me at that time) left because she wanted to have more time to relax, do yoga, and get more in touch with herself. Not even instruct yoga, just do it as a hobby at most.
In my reasonably high-degree-of-difficulty degree program, there were a decent number of women. Don't get me wrong, we were still on the 'wrong' side of the ratio, but there were more than a few. After the program, I saw some of them go and use their degree to significant effect. Some others stood out in the other direction. One in particular openly said that she had essentially zero plan to use her degree for any work; her plan was to get married, have kids, and stay home with them. Sure enough, she did exactly that. I hate to say it, but if I were the woman who didn't get accepted to the program, the one who would be next in line had this woman not taken the slot, I'd probably have been pretty furious with her. (I liked her; we were friends and worked together on some pretty cool projects.)
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