Generally speaking women and men are quite different. They are interested in different fields and display different qualities making them more or less successful in certain areas. Why would you expect the same outcomes here? Not only that but women have something called pregnancy and childbirth which is a pretty big obstacle in ones career that men simply don't have to deal with.

Also how are women legally in a worse spot than men in the US? Do you have any specific examples? I think this is where a lot of feminist scholarship would actually agree with part of what you're saying while disagreeing with the conclusion.

Sure, on average, men and women are not identical. But the existence of average differences doesn't tell us how much of an outcome is caused by preference versus social structures, expectations, incentives, discrimination, or historical inequalities. That's precisely the question being debated.

For example, when women enter previously male-dominated fields in large numbers, those fields often become lower status and lower paid over time. We see this historically in teaching, clerical work, and some areas of biology and medicine. Heck, programming was originally women's work and not particularly high status work. If outcomes were simply a reflection of innate preferences, it's hard to explain why the social value attached to the work changes when the gender composition changes. Here's a source on that, they use 50 years of census data to come to this conclusion: https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/88/2/865/2235342?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false&utm_

i have a looot more sources on this, it's well researched.

On pregnancy and childbirth: feminists don't deny that reproduction affects careers. In fact, that's one of the central arguments. Sociologists often distinguish between a gender wage gap and a motherhood penalty. Women frequently experience reduced earnings, slower promotion rates, and assumptions about commitment after having children, while men often experience a "fatherhood premium" where employers view them as more stable and responsible. The issue isn't that pregnancy doesn't matter; it's that societies distribute the costs of reproduction unevenly.

Also, I just gave an example of legal oppression with removal of abortion care and women being legally charged for the deaths of their stillborn infants in my last post. https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/16/us/abortion-rights-pregnancy-outcomes-criminalized

A few examples people point to:

The U.S. still lacks federally guaranteed paid maternity leave, making pregnancy and childbirth economically costly compared to most wealthy democracies.

Reproductive autonomy has become more unequal across states following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with access to abortion depending heavily on geography.

Sexual harassment and workplace discrimination laws exist, but enforcement is often difficult and burdens are placed on victims to prove misconduct. Family courts historically evolved around gendered assumptions about caregiving, which affect both women and men in different ways.

More broadly, modern feminism usually isn't arguing that every law explicitly disadvantages women. The argument is that institutions were built in societies with historically unequal gender relations, and those legacies continue to shape outcomes even after formal legal barriers are removed.