They shouldn't? That isn't entirely fair though? Many women obviously make it into PhDs and med school, but I'm saying medical school + residency, or law school or getting a PhD clashes with the peak years for a woman to have babies and start a family. A woman deciding to pursue professionalization or PhD has three options.
Delays family until she starts her career, but endures higher risks for birth complications and developmental abnormalities in child. Research shows that in a family she would be most likely taking on the brunt of the family work and child care, which would put her on the "mommy track", swaying her away from "dominating her field".
Gets married and has baby during recommended years to do so. It clashes with her thesis project and she submits a sub par project and performs poorly in trying to defend thesis and has to try again, or barely makes it. Nevertheless, it is extremely stressful to raise a family and complete a PhD at the same time. Research shows that in a family she would be most likely taking on the brunt of the family work and child care, which would put her on the "mommy track", swaying her away from "dominating her field".
Has no baby at all and focuses solely on her career. Does not have to worry about unfair division of labor at home and is therefore more likely able to "dominate her field".
Women and men aren't so different. Research shows that women are practically on the verge of begging their husbands to do more housework, and yet little has changed. If women are family oriented it's probably because they've had to be, because when we watch the Simpsons or Modern Family, we can never see the dad scrubbing the bath tub and the woman sitting on the couch drinking beer and watching tv.
You don't get taunted about major life choices though and that's where the major difference lies. A coin purse, trying sewing or choosing to draw aren't things that haunt you for the rest of your life. Choosing to take an arts history degree over an engineering degree is something that can impact the rest of your life, and strikes a chord. The worst thing that happens if you give into your bullies is that you give up gardening, your coin purse, and your sewing machine, which is bad. The worst thing that happens if you tell women that they don't belong in a field which they are interested in, they lose on out pursuing their potential passion, lose out on a big paycheck, lose out on making a potential contribution to society.
Okay, and I bet there are a lot of stories about male nurses who entered their career despite being called pussies. But in the end if we face the facts, any time females flood an industry the wages go down and anytime men flood an industry wages go up. When women dominated computer science during the WWII era, wages were low but post WWII, when men flooded the industry wages went up! The exact opposite happened with teaching and clerical work, traditionally male dominated fields with high pay before women flooded the market. Women on a daily basis are being told to stick to low paying industries because they don't belong and they're not worth it. This nobel prize winning laureate reflected this sentiment.