I apologize for the tone. I had dealt with too many idiots making spurious, derailing objections to nitpicky points, and should have just shut my mouth for a while rather than assuming you were also derailing and taking irritation with them out on you. I'm sorry.

The point of using that statistic for me is that I don't want women dropping out at a higher rate then men. (That investment bankers have an equal level of sexist shitheel behavior is not comforting to me. I have worked in finance, and I don't think that's an acceptable model for tech.) Your offered explanation, that women are the primary caregiver of infants, is still part of structural sexism. Past a period that civilized countries cover with parental leave, both parents are equally capable of caring for children. (My brother was primary caregiver for my nephew, so I've seen it up close.)

I think your follow-up conclusion, that there's a single issue (gendered work vs misogyny), is a false framing. First, I don't think those are necessarily distinct. I see misogyny and abuse as part of the system of control that maintains gendered work. (As is male willingness to tolerate it. Note the all the male pearl-clutching that has taken place around codes of conduct.) It's similar to the way that police (and much of society) are more accepting of the rape of women who "dressed wrong" or were otherwise not following a very gendered code of sexuality.

Second, even if they were entirely distinct, there's no reason to think there's just one explanation here. We're talking about the entire professional lives of millions of people with cultural factors going back thousands of years: it's inevitably complicated. There are likely many causes, many of the overlapping and reinforcing. The male-female ratio is very different in tech, and historically has gotten worse compared to other white-collar professions. The explanation can be gendered work and trolls and misogyny and a bunch of other things.

Third, whatever the causes, the responses may be distinct. Having the rib platter every night for dinner may eventually cause a heart attack, but paramedics don't treat heart attacks with food. That actual mentors of women are seeing the instances of abuse and saying, "Whoa, maybe I shouldn't be encouraging women to get into the field," tells you that there's a relationship.

> I think the actual instances of abuse (of which there are many) are more compelling

If you think something is more compelling, that's great. You should run with it. As I said, other people right here in this thread find anecdotes worthless and demand stats. Not every sentence in every post has to be for you and you alone.

> while concerning to feminism as a whole

So this concerns me; it sounds like you're treating feminism as an other. Feminism is the movement that, for the last 150 years or so, has been trying to change the world from one where women are property to one where men and women are equal. Do you really not think people should be treated as equals based on things like gender, race, and sexual orientation? Because if you don't, a) well duh you don't like statistics demonstrating that women are not being treated equally, and b) I'm not sure why I should worry about your take on a particular statistic, because then we're back in the land of anonymous HN commenters nitpicking things that they were never going to accept anyhow as a means to derailing the discussion.