If women keep in doing the work they start in, there is no trouble about paying such debts. It seems to me that there are barriers to continuing a research job after marriage. The general rule is not to do so. It is hard to get a double position for husband and wife. And unless the woman has already gotten well along on her research before marriage she is apt to let it drop.
Children impede the progress of scientific investigation too .
But here I come back to the fact that many women do actually combine marriage and research to prove that it can be done. I know of one woman, Ethel Harvey who was publishing before her marriage to a Princeton professor, dropped out for the years when her two sons were growing up, and after that long absence is back in it again. She got her picture and a description of her work in Life the other week. Another woman I know gave up her research in Histology for marriage and a small daughter and when her husband died some years later, she went back into it and is doing well. In fact I can think of three widows who have turned back to research after their lives were disrupted, among my acquaintances.