As modern civilization adapts to the the realization that women are not slaves, defining the new relationship is not easy. This article provides another chapter in the story: http://j.mp/MOPe5C
It prompts, in me, two thoughts.
First, there is talk about satisfaction and work-life balance and other such goodness. Women want that and it seems that failure to experience these goods is observed as a flaw in the achievement of female equality. I disagree. Being miserable at work in a non-gender specific experience.
Though satisfaction and balance are desirable things, they are not common. As a man, I can tell you that I have rarely had either of these. I have felt abused by work, felt like it was taking up all my time, like the idea of 'job satisfaction' is the cruelest fiction conceived. For a woman to judge her place in society by these criteria is to force a bad self-image based on unrealistic expectations. If you, as a woman, are able to pay your bills reasonably well and don't get blisters on your hands while you're working, you're ahead of the game. The same applies to men.
It turns out, however, that women seem less able to ignore their children and domestic situations than men. Call me a sexist if you like, but there are a lot of men that can turn their back on their home life. Not so many women. I don't have time to research but I'm fully convinced the anecdotal represents reality.
That said, it seems to me that, contrary to the idea that women should adapt to the workplace, the workplace should adapt to them. It's as if we said that all police officers must be six feet tall. Short people would be excluded.
Allowing employers to say, "All employees must be heartless enough to abandon their children," is a form of bullying. We allow them to make demands on their workers for efficiency but place limits on those demands to make sure that our society works properly. We, for example, don't allow them to force workers to swim in mercury no matter how efficient because we judge that the injuries would screw up society.
In this case, we should be telling employers that they are not allowed to bully women either because they are smaller in stature or because they are unwiling to abandon their children. If that means that they have to revise work rules to avoid discriminating, so be it. If that means that it's less efficient to hire women, tough luck. Discrimination should not be allowed, nor should the bullying that is a consequence of ignoring different attitudes.
So, my take on this matter is two-fold. First, screw job satisfaction. It's an impossible goal for almost everyone. Second, regulate the workplace to make it 100% family friendly and make it against the law to disadvantage people that the regulations protect, ie, men and women who are fully engaged with their domestic life.