The Richer Sex?

In March, the cover of Time magazine shocked its audience with a picture of a woman and the headline “The Richer Sex.” This should be great news indeed—not because women want to be better, richer or more powerful than men but because it signified that perhaps we are getting a foothold in workplace equality. In the inside article, “Money Women and Power,” the author, Liz Mundy, writes that as female economic clout grows, it is changing the way men and women go about the various areas that make up our lives: work, play, shopping, sharing and “even loving each other.”

A lot of what Mundy points out is spot on. Families who have the audacity to question—or (gasp) break—the societal norm of the “traditional family” in which the man works and the woman doesn’t (or aspires not to) or the woman has the secondary career, are doing just fine, thank you. They may even be supplying us with a vision for the future where each family individually decides the career priorities for both husband and wife rather than letting society do that for us.

To prove her hypotheses, Mundy highlights many real-life families who are turning tradition on its head: one in particular that resonated with me is a couple named Leslie and Damon Ajouny. When Leslie married Damon, everyone thought he would be the hotshot, bread-winning lawyer. Instead, he and she both opted for his taking the secondary career: he sells real estate, cooks “ambitiously” and coaches the kids.

“We both have made sacrifices,” says Leslie, who expands the definition of provider to include what Damon does as well. As a parent she points out, “your priority is to provide for your young family—the love, the affection, the nurturing. For us, it’s about what’s best for the family.”

Mundy proclaims “The old deal is off. Women’s earnings have given them more economic influence both at home and in public.” While women still do the majority of child- and house-related chores, research shows that as our financial clout grows, men have become significantly more hands-on in child-rearing now than in past generations.

But we have to be careful not to raise the victory flag on economic equality just yet. This week, Cataylyst came out with a guest post by researcher Emily Troiano asking—and answering—the question, “Do Women Really Outearn Men?” This piece, in true Catalyst form, delves deeply into the details behnd the numbers. Her conclusion is that some women are outearning men—but more aren’t.

It’s an important distinction to make,” says Troiano, “ because overemphasizing the progress women have made could damage efforts to address the many barriers that still hinder change and advancement. In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, 38 percent of working wives outearned their husbands. This number is for all husbands, and includes men who are unemployed as well as those who are retired, in school, and on disability. For dual-earner couples, or couples in which both the husband and wife were currently employed, 29 percent of wives outearned their husbands—that’s still less than 3 in 10. And perhaps most importantly, these numbers only include wives with earnings, who are a subset of the greater picture.

So rather than discount our victories, perhaps we can rejoice in the progress we have made, at least in the last generation. We can also teach our children to think about what’s best for their families, rather than doing what society stereotypically expects of them.

By Erin Wolf