Thank you for responding. Thought experiment: Guys who make fun of women in Tech/Management/Medicine represent no barrier at all to the safety, success, and comfort of women in those spheres, and have nothing at all to do with their underrepresentation. True or False?

I fully understand people reacting angrily to the fathers who change a single diaper and then wait for their lollypop and their pat on the head.

That’s not what/who I’m talking about.

Gloria Steinem once wrote: “Women will never be completely equal in the workplace until men are completely equal in the home.”

Not saying the work is all done, but, we have seen decades of success in women “breaking into” a broad swath of careers; that success is gratifying. Genuinely opening up what have been traditionally female spheres? That’s been slower going. Makes sense that it feels “less gratifying” to look at “taking some space and authority away from women.”

But the policing of “women’s spaces”—in this context, what I would refer to as “maternal gatekeeping,” ridicule being a common tool—stymies the very equality that . . . I thought “we” “all” wanted.

Again, thank you for writing. Hope this makes sense (you agree or you don’t).

Don Unger