> There's a fairly simple explanation: in egalitarian societies femininity is socially acceptable even in "traditionally male" occupations. So women don't need to act "masculine" to make progress in those jobs. When it's socially acceptable for a CEO to be a mother and a woman, more women will feel comfortable pursuing a family in addition (rather than in exclusion) to a career.
I don't quite understand what you're saying here. The study doesn't seem to say anything about women "acting masculine" or "acting feminine". It's about gender disparity in careers, and how that disparity is larger in egalitarian soceties and smaller in less egalitarian societies.
> There's another fairly simple explanation: "equal opportunity" is not the same as "non-sexist". Without knowing how "gender-egalitarian"-ness is measured (it's suspicious that it uses the phrase "more developed") it's impossible to tell what the societal attitudes actually look like. But it's entirely possible that the countries with the most egalitarian laws still have strict gender roles that are socially reinforced.
Are you arguing that that North America, Western Europe, and Scandinivia may actually enforce stricter gender roles than Iraq, Iran, and Kazakhstan? That seems...unlikely.
Anyway, the abstract mentions a "Gender Equality Index" that's being discussed here. I imagine they go into more detail in the paper itself if you're curious.
> So either way the lesson isn't "feminism is wrong" or "equal opportunity is meaningless": either equal opportunity allows women to succeed without abandoning their gender role, or egalitarianism masks the harm of socially reinforced gender roles, or maybe even both.
Again, the abstract doesn't seem to be saying anything about gender roles -- it's purely about male and female representation in various careers.
Also, egalitarianism would have to do more than "mask the harm of socially reinforced gender roles," it would have to increase that harm, as less egalitarian countries have less gender disparity.