Don't be fooled by the title: This essay isn't really about women in science. It's about careers in science and how much they suck.
To the extent that there's a theory of gender in here, it boils down to "it doesn't take much of a social barrier to keep people out of a profession that sucks." [1] I'm not strongly convinced by this hypothesis, but your observation -- that there are other miserable professions that appeal more strongly to women than men -- does not invalidate it.
Incidentally, I'm not sure that "science" in general is missing women: There are plenty of women in biology, and of course medical school applicants (who study more science than most) are 50% women:
[1] Well, there's one other theory: That lots of physical science grad students are young, unattached emigrants from foreign countries, a class of people that has historically skewed male in many if not most of the world's cultures. This is an interesting hypothesis and I'd love to see some anthropologists, or perhaps sociologists, weigh in on it. But it, too, is not the primary focus of this essay.
To the extent that there's a theory of gender in here, it boils down to "it doesn't take much of a social barrier to keep people out of a profession that sucks." [1] I'm not strongly convinced by this hypothesis, but your observation -- that there are other miserable professions that appeal more strongly to women than men -- does not invalidate it.
Incidentally, I'm not sure that "science" in general is missing women: There are plenty of women in biology, and of course medical school applicants (who study more science than most) are 50% women:
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/our-people/member-...
Paging a sociologist!
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[1] Well, there's one other theory: That lots of physical science grad students are young, unattached emigrants from foreign countries, a class of people that has historically skewed male in many if not most of the world's cultures. This is an interesting hypothesis and I'd love to see some anthropologists, or perhaps sociologists, weigh in on it. But it, too, is not the primary focus of this essay.