Interesting article but I think the correct way to frame this is not so much that women value meaning more than men, but rather that men value high incomes in their partners less than women do. Women don’t get the same social or romantic rewards when they bring home large salaries, and so they’re able to pursue work they find interesting, meaningful and that works with their schedule without significant costs to their mating market value.

If, as a society, we start seeing STEM jobs as more meaningful / more helpful to others they’ll get more competitive. Salaries are not fixed by industry, but are a product of supply and demand - so while this sort of cultural change might shift the gender distribution in STEM marginally, it would also lower the salaries these jobs command over time. As I discussed when I talked about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders pay, compensation is a mix of financial and non financial benefits and the non financial benefits include “meaning”. If these jobs bring more “meaning” they will need to pay less to get the same level of talent. But to be honest I think the male bias in these professions is much more a reflection of small sex differences in ability and interest which lead to relatively large differences at the tails. And changing the vibes doesn’t lower the demands associated with motherhood - if these jobs become even more competitive how are moms going to keep up and rise to senior positions?

As for how easy it would be to change the vibes of these jobs in this way… I’d say very hard. First of all, this would require a generalized pro-capitalist shift in the culture, something I’m definitely for. But capitalism vs. socialism and free markets vs. central planning are hardly new debates and I’m not sure why we’d expect to make major gains, in particular with women, now. Second, I think many women choose non profits and care professions due to the vibes, as Ruxandra pointed out, but those vibes are partly the result of more egalitarian style workplaces - and I’m not sure that soft benefit would be there in a competitive tech job regardless of the cultural frame around how much value that job creates. Third, it depends what we mean by STEM but many tech/fintech jobs cannot be made to feel meaningful because they’re literally doing stuff like A/B testing button aesthetics and it’s pretty hard to make the individual feel that they’re having a social impact even if you can explain theoretically how they contribute. I expect women are more drawn to jobs based on how they make them feel than they are based on how they theoretically contribute to the world - for example I’d bet that more male EAs are open to the “Earning to give” path than are female EAs.