To answer the various questions/comments:
- Comments and behaviour like this are actually rather split between men and women. I've never had a woman here at my office actually make a comment directly like this to me, but as an office with 75% women, most of whom are between 22 and 35, it actually IS almost like «well, I'm just going to get pregnant anyway». The higher ups don't exactly treat us like respected professionals (THE reason I'm leaving), so it's sort of a cyclical problem (I was considered «aggressive» because I asked for a raise to go with my promotion...).
- I held my tongue because I could care less what he thinks, and because I don't see the point in trying to educate someone who doesn't want to be. He's a nice person, he just has a very archaic mentality. This is unfortunately very commen in Québec City (or the province in general), where almost everyone is white and Catholic and has never stepped outside his or her own province (this is not a jab at white or Catholics, but rather a jab at cultural homogeneity).
- I've tried to speak to those my own age here about finances (when they asked), but even with the social structure and free or almost-free education and health services, nobody seems to think getting ahead is possible. The fact that my BF and I spend 50% of what we make baffles my colleagues. «But we make so little?!?!» they say (which is true, we are severely underpaid for what we do, see my first point), but we're still almost all at or above Quebec's average. I've stopped trying.
Side note of celebration: My new work will be 25% work from home, with a bunch of programmers and developers (science and tech people are my spirit animals), mostly young, who all either bike to work (which I will now be able to do) or take 1.5 hr lunches to bike around the river, no time-sheets, with a «as long as you get your work done well and efficiently, we don't care when you're in the office», who have been known to shut the office on slow afternoons to go mountain biking when the whether is nice. During my second interview I was told that I was going to show everyone how to rock-climb and they would show me how to mountain bike. I'm psyched!