This recent New York Times op-ed, by Maureen Dowd, has caused quite a stir. Dowd’s premise is that “The more women achieve, the less desirable they are” to men.
After some analysis of recent movie plots (quite interesting as an indication of what the culture is thinking about, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about what people are doing), Dowd summed up two recent studies:
A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.
Well, she’s gotten the details wrong (it amazes me how often writers for major newspapers do that), but on the whole that’s a fair summary.
A few things to remember when thinking about this study.
- This study asked undergraduates who among their hypothetical co-workers they’d prefer for a hypothetical long-term relationship: a boss, a peer, or an assistant. Most undergrads are 19 or 20, while the average age of first marriage for a US man is 29. Isn’t it likely that many of the 19-year-olds surveyed here are going to grow up a lot, and alter their preferences, in the next ten years?
- There was a high degree of overlap in this study. On average, men ranked the assistant a 6.4 out of 9, while ranking equal peer woman only 4.9 out of 9. But (if I’m reading the data correctly) some of the men ranked the peer as high as 7.1, and some ranked the assistant as low as 4.3.
- The data reported in the study doesn’t support the conclusion that “a majority of men preferred the assistant.” The study only reported averages. While clearly more men preferred the assistant than preferred any single other option, it’s quite possible that the combined number of men who preferred the boss, the peer, or who had no preference outnumbered men who preferred the assistant. I’m not assuming this is the case; but I’m not assuming the opposite, either. My point is, neither assumption is justified from the data the researchers published.
- The researchers were expecting to find that women preferred dominant men. They found, instead, that women didn’t have any notable preference for dominant men (or for peers, or for underlings).
Dowd cited another study, this one from Britain:
A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and reported last week, suggested that smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman’s chance to get married, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.
As far as I know, this study has not yet been officially published. This article in the UK’s Sunday Times seems to be the primary source of information about this study. Curiously, the Times writer suggests an explanation for the findings that Dowd ignores: Perhaps smarter women are less likely to want to be married.
From the blogger Ann Althouse:
It may well be that some or all of these things are true: 1. women have less to gain from marriage once they are able to provide for themselves economically, 2. women with a higher IQ are more likely to be able to support themselves well, 3. more intelligent persons are better able to form preferences by analyzing real world factors and less likely to adopt established conventions, and 4. not marrying is the more rational choice for an intelligent woman. If some or all of these things are at least partially true, a high IQ in women might be a hindrance for the institution of marriage, but not for the woman herself.
Anecdotally, the “men prefer to marry stupider women” implication that some have read into this study totally contradicts what I’ve seen in my friends group and family; men I know are not looking for stupid women to wed. (Or anyhow, if that’s what they’re looking for, they’re not finding ’em).
More importantly, the numbers reported for this study – “the prospect for marriage drops 40 percent for each 16-point rise in IQ” – is, without context, completely meaningless. What we should be asking is, 40 percent of what? What’s the scale?
Most people who read this statistic assume it’s an expression of real-life odds of being married (i.e., if a woman with an IQ of 120 has a 50% chance of getting married, than a woman with a IQ of 136 must have a 10% chance of getting married). But that’s obviously not what the study found. At that rate, it would take only a 40-IQ-point-rise to move from 100% of women being married to absolutely no women being married. If real odds fell and rose that steeply with IQ, then none of us would have ever met a brilliant married woman, or a stupid single woman.
The same researchers confirmed their findings by doing a similar analysis of income and marriage odds. But the Sunday Times reported these results with statistics that are considerably more meaningful, because they’re given in terms of real-life odds of being married:
They found 88% of 40-year-old men in the top socioeconomic class were married, compared with 80% in the lowest class. Among women aged 40 the trend is reversed. The researchers found that 82% of the top class were wed, compared with 86% in the lowest class.
So according to this, being successful lowers women’s odds of being married – from 86% to 82%. That’s not exactly a big deal, is it? It’s not a statistic which will get a lot of play in the press (or in the blogosphere). Yet the researchers apparently felt this finding confirmed, rather than contradicted, their findings on IQ and marriage. There’s no way to know for sure without seeing the actual research – but I suspect this means that the IQ differences, expressed in real-life terms, are probably not huge either.
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I think you mean “dominant” rather than “dominate” (in “…that women would prefer dominate men”). just a bit distracting…
[Thanks for spotting that, ACM! I’ve made the correction… this’ll teach me to post when I’m so sleepy! -Amp]
Good analysis — thanks for pulling it all together. I’ve certainly known bright men who went for women who were fluff by comparison (but maybe not relative to the total population), but I’ve also known women who preferred “eye candy” guys over those with substance, so anecdotal evidence unhelpful as usual. You’d think that guys who want real companionship/partnership would want equals on many levels, but those who want more starky complementary roles (or who want to be looked after in return for support) might have different criteria…
Just another 2 cents.
Studies have shown that people tend to wind up with partners who are roughly equal in intelligence and roughly equal in attractiveness (as determined by the society in which they live). How come none of these articles ever mentions that?
Good post, however I can think of an arithmetically sound way in which the described “prospects” for marriage can decrease by a fixed percentage with every x points of IQ. The percentage is taken off the average, not the original amount. So supposing the initial “prospects” are 60 percent. 40 percent of that is 24, so now the “prospects” are 36 percent. 40 percent of that is 14.4, so now the “prospects” are 21.6 percent.
I still have no idea what they mean by “prospects,” and at first glance the numbers look ridiculous, but at least this interpretation makes sense.
Of course, the other problem is that “IQ” doesn’t actually measure anything real, but that’s another debate.
Because that wouldn’t contribute to the agenda of making women feel bad.
The media suck.
“the other problem is that “IQ”? doesn’t actually measure anything real”
You are about to go in for surgery, and are being required to select a surgeon. You know that both of your choices graduated from medical school, but the only other information you have is that the first one has an IQ of 95, and the second one has an IQ of 145.
If IQ measures nothing real, then you have no basis of comparison, and it would be logical for you to flip a coin.
Do you flip a coin, or do you pick the surgeon with the higher IQ?
Another important question is “how much stupider”?
If men are seeking women who are five points shy on the IQ scale, that indicates one thing. If we are seeking women fifty points lower, that indicates something entirely different.
Robert, you pick the surgeon with the largest number of your particular procedure, and a good success rate at that procedure. If you have to have a coronary bypass, you go for the surgeon who does 200 procedures a year, not 40 procedures a year.
IQ tests were originally devised to screen out significantly subnormal army recruits. They later were used in school placements, and as a potential identifier of underachieving students. Once an initial placement has been made, the sensible course to evaluate actual performance and adjust according to that actual performance.
[scowl] Dowd is such a pompous, lazy hack. I already went into that on feministing (though my posts have a strange habit of disappearing there), so I won’t bother again right now.
They found 88% of 40-year-old men in the top socioeconomic class were married, compared with 80% in the lowest class. Among women aged 40 the trend is reversed. The researchers found that 82% of the top class were wed, compared with 86% in the lowest class.
This does not compute with two other facts I know. Fact One: Your socioeconomic class is usually considered a family trait. So a married couple will both be in the same socioecconomic class. Due to dying but still dominate discrimination, all married couples consist of one man and one woman. Thus, there should be an equal number of married men and married women in all socioecconomic classes. Thus, differences in the percentages of married men or women in any socioecconomic class should depend on number of single men or women in that class.
Fact Two: Single women in poverty outnumber single men in poverty by a considerable margin. Combine that with the conclusions from fact one, and that means that the percentage of women in the lowest socioeconomic class who are married should be lower than the percentage of men in the lowest socioeconomic class who are married.
What am I missing here?
Why is it that in 2005, women’s lives are still being linked to men’s desire? Please, please, someone show me a correlative link. A substantial link.
Argh. What BS.
Different social scientists define class and socioeconomic status in very different ways. It’s often useful to look at their criteria.
I do think it works best to determine class status per household. But, in this case, we’re comparing statuses before marriage. Most likely, each is an independent adult beforehand.
There’s also a real distinction between the British and American spin on the ‘findings’.
Dowd’s take is ‘Smart girls hide how smart they are’; since the only goal a woman could possibly have in life is marriage and children.
The Times article, while it has a certain amount of misogynist nonsense scattered throughout, ends on this lovely quote:
“A chap with a high IQ is going to get a demanding job that is going to take up a lot of his energy and time. In many ways he wants a woman who is an old-fashioned wife and looks after the home, a copy of his mum in a way.
“The bright girl, on the other hand, remembers that old saying that at first she sinks into his arms only to spend the rest of her life with her arms in his sink.”?
The obvious implication — who wants to spend their life washing dishes?
Speaking as an over-educated and rather high-earning woman, I’d rather not marry and work in my profession than marry and not work. I suspect more than a few female doctors, lawyers, PhD’s and MBA’s make the same choice. That’s the root of these findings, I’d argue.
(oh, and need we point out that you needn’t marry to have sex, be loved, or have babies, even if you’re a 30 + PhD with dorky glasses?)
Huh. Now that last little gem implies to me that women who get married tend to not be successful careerwise. Which implies that intelligent women know that a husband is likely to drag her down since she’ll probably still be primarily responsible for the house and childcare.
It’s old news, however that men who are married are generally more successful careerwise because their wife takes cares of the domestic side of things, allowing them to concentrate more on their jobs.
IOW, if men were likely to take up their share of the domestic chores in a partnership, or even the majority of the chores – their success rate would decline and their wive’s would increase.
What’s really fascinating to me in the UK survey is…. nobody ever, EVER asks the girls if they’d prefer to have partner who was like the traditional 50’s wife. I bet a majority would prefer a husband who stayed home and actually did all of the domestic work while she spent longer hours at the office (and made good money) just as much as the men prefer a wife who does the same.
“that smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. ”
What about the men who had smart mums with demanding jobs? Not all mums were “old-fashioned wives”.
I think I’d prefer a 33 1/3rd split between domestic chores, my wage job, and my art. That would be a vast improvement over the all-or-nothing faux “choice” I’ve got now. Bah. Full time wage work is a bore, but being cooped up at home all day would drive me just as insane. Balance, damnit !! Why is the Land of the F(r)ee so rackin’ frackin’ oblivious to the concept of BALANCE !!
I’m not sure where the focus on intelligence came from. Even if it’s true that men are looking for women with lower-level jobs, that doesnt necessarily correlate to looking for less intelligent women.
And I would believe that men often prefer women with lower-level jobs. It’s easier to act like there’s a real division of labor in the household where you’re the breadwinner and your wife is in charge of the house if her job is lower-level than yours. And it’s easier to act like there’s a real division of labor in which you’re the breadwinner than it is to care about equality. Equality of job levels would mean that her job would have to be given equal weight in considering which partner should care for children, which partner’s job should be preferenced in case of a move, which partner’s job is really important.
Alsis38, what’s stopping you?
I am teaching my children half days, and working half days on my various devious schemes. My wife is spending about half her time working around the house, and half her time on her design business.
So we both work “full time” but we’re both also doing half jobs because that’s the way things work best for us.
You can order your life any way you want. This might entail sacrifices – even major sacrifices. We don’t eat out very often or drive shiny new cars. We pay cash for most medical expenses. For other people, the sacrifice might be more drastic than that; we are relatively lucky in our material circumstances. As my grandmother was fond of pointing out, though, it is a rare opportunity to get to choose from a menu of only wonderful choices. (My great-grandmother would say “you get crap and you get apples. Sometimes you have to dig through crap to get at the apples.”)
It is my fervent wish for you that you achieve the life design which will make you the happiest.
Good points by MustangSally and thistle. A domestic arrangement whereby one partner earns enough to support a partner and however many kids, and the other partner works full-time in the home, is probably the most economically comfortable. It’s not surprising that men would want such an arrangement. And I’m sure that many women would want it too, given the choice.
Trouble is, only a small percentage of people are going to have the luck and skills to support a whole nuclear family on one salary. And only a small percentage of people are going to be happy working full-time at home. So if you can’t get that ideal, an ‘unbalanced’ partnership may still be easier to manage than a completely financially equal one. (Not to say an equal partnership is impossible, just more difficult.) If we’re talking a heterosexual partnership, I see no reason why the unbalance should always fall along the same gender lines though.
Of course, in that situation, many would assume that the high-earning partner was superior and / or happier than the partner with the less prestigious job who spent more time on domestic and child-rearing work. I wouldn’t. Depends on the individual circumstances.
The problem, as I point out in my blog, isn’t just the big decisions, but it’s also that women, who earn less are either expected to by their husbands or guilt themselves into making up the money they don’t make at work by picking up the 2nd shift at home. Which leaves them far too tired and/or strapped by marital responsibilities to push forward in their careers. When overtime, paid or unpaid, is a baseline requirement for promotion, women are going to be weeded out of promotion pools. Most of the women at my job leave at the same time every day so they have time to do housework. And those are the ones without children. Ones with children have to scale back work commitments even further.
Robert, your material comfort is why you can order your life as you’d like. The #1 money buys you is freedom.
You are about to go in for surgery, and are being required to select a surgeon. You know that both of your choices graduated from medical school, but the only other information you have is that the first one has an IQ of 95, and the second one has an IQ of 145.
If IQ measures nothing real, then you have no basis of comparison, and it would be logical for you to flip a coin.
Do you flip a coin, or do you pick the surgeon with the higher IQ?
I’d figure the surgeon with the 145 IQ probably had a better education because tests very similar to IQ tests are used to determine college and grad school admissions. But I still wouldn’t know. The 145 guy could be a slacker who barely slid through Grenada med school but “tests well.”
Furthermore, at such extreme differences, even a crude instrument like the IQ test can tell us a lot. But that’s not what these studies are measuring. They’re talking about 4, 5 point differences in IQ, which are completely meaningless. If I had to choose between two surgeons with 5 point IQ difference and no other information, I’d gladly flip a coin.
Let me reverse the question. Would you prefer an auto mechanic with a 145 IQ? A masseuse? An artist? A linebacker? All these jobs require “intelligence,” but IQ alone is not going to adequately measure aptitude for these jobs. If it’s not the best measure for these jobs, what makes you so sure it’s a reasonable measure for surgeons?
You can order your life any way you want.
Sigh. Robert, to be blunt, I need my healthcare coverage that comes through work. My partner can’t afford to put me on his coverage and still run his business if I’m only bringing in a part-timer’s salary at some job that pays less than what I make now. I could live quite well on a 3o hr workweek based on my current hourly wage, but the bosses basically looked at me like I was some kind of cockroach when I asked them if I could cut my hours back. Oregon’s job market stinks, so my attempts at a lateral transfer into another department haven’t been very successful, though I’ve been trying for two years now.
Also, even if I wanted to persuade my partner to pay all the bills so I could stay home all the time, I wouldn’t. For the same reason that I wouldn’t get married. Too much damn baggage, too many strings attached. I really don’t want to drop the boss at work just to replace her with a boss at home. Amanda points out just above a lot of the automatic assumptions that creep into such a relationship, because of “tradition” in male/female roles. It’s not worth it to me.
Amanda, what makes you assume I have a high level of material comfort?
Neither my wife nor I have a high income.
When I was 26 I was treated to a barrage of news regarding the latest trend — that women over 25 would have a difficult time finding a mate. I got married at 29, and later found out that a census statistician had basically skewered the analysis underlying that so-called trend. This study seems to have even less authenticity — asking college students who they would prefer to marry is a bit like asking four year olds what their favorite foods are. Pizza and ice cream! No shit! Thanks, Amp, for skewering this silly study. Shame on Maureen Dowd, whom I never read anymore. Lots of men grow up and realize that there are benefits to not being the single source of income in a household.
As for the IQ of doctors — I dated a surgeon whose IQ, I guarantee you, was closer to 95 than to 145. Sure, you need to be smart enough to get into and through medical school, and there may be some medical jobs that require a high IQ, but mostly, and especially for surgeons, doctors have to be methodical, detail oriented people, a trait that is not necessarily present in those with genius IQs. Moreover, those with lower than genius IQs might be less likely to get frustrated with the relatively routine tasks that make up doctors’ workaday lives. And if you aren’t a people person, well then, you really could be miserable. The point is, high IQ isn’t necessarily the best indicator of optimal job performance, even in demanding professions. It depends on what the job requires.
Robert, “material comfort” has nothing to do with money. It’s about having the luxury of choice, the ability to choose how much you want to work and how many “luxuries” you want to sacrifice without it seriously impacting your day-to-day life.
OK, I guess then that I do have more choices than a lot of people.
I’m not sure how I have more choice than, say, Alsis. I imagine she makes considerably more money than we do.
Robert,
Do you have any health issues that require you have health insurance in order to pay for treatment? If so, then you need to either be an FTE or you need to be able to run your own business successfully enough to pay for insurance. If alsis makes considerably more money than you do, so do I. But I must be a FTE in order to get the treatment that my spouse needs. I do not have the ability to run a business that will be succesful enough to pay for HI. Therefore my choices are fewer than those of somebody without serious health issues in their family.
Robert, please. Let us not go there today. There’s a reason that I’m obsessed with issues of healthcare and a reason why –at this point– I would likely vote for a box of hamsters or a paper shredder if they/it got up on a podium and announced that single-payer was the way to go in the 2008 campaign.
For other people, the sacrifice might be more drastic than that; we are relatively lucky in our material circumstances.
’cause you said so.
I’m not sure how I have more choice than, say, Alsis. I imagine she makes considerably more money than we do.
1. I’m not sure why you assume this.
2. You can make a reasonable salary and still have limited choices.
3. Alsis says her circumstances don’t allow her to follow your suggestions, and I believe her.
My basic point is that it’s very frustrating when people say things like, “You can order your life any way you want.” No, many people can’t. I mean, what do you suggest? What would you say to someone who wants to have more time to pursue her passions, but is living paycheck-to-paycheck?
Unlike you, Robert (and, in fact, me), many people have to sacrifice the car, the eating out, the vacations, and time with their friends and family, and their interests, at least some of them. Most people have to squeeze their real lives into evenings and weekends, between commuting and doing chores and running errands and maintaing relationships and caring for children and cooking healthy meals and getting enough exercise and sleeping. Some people have to work so hard that they have no real lives. That’s tragic and part of the reason I call myself a liberal.
Cookies, Hestia ? ;)
Robert, COBRA in Oregon would run me several hundred dollars a month. Even if the Oregon Healthplan weren’t busy imploding at the moment, thanks to Governor Cold Fish and the rest, I’d still probably have too high an income to access it. Also, COBRA only lasts for 18 months. Once those are up, if you still can’t pay for your own insurance, you’re shit out of luck.
So you’re talking a double-barrelled paycut if I decide to bolt public employment altogether: The pay cut borne of a non-Union wage and the pay cut borne of having to cover for my own insurance if I can’t find a job that provides it.
I did the math and found that if my work hours in Government never fell below 30 hrs, I could keep my coverage. Below that, I could augment them at great difficulty with COBRA. But again, that would be only a temporary solution.
The other problem, Robert is there is still a double standard when it comes to women who choose more domesticity than work and men who do the same. Unless we win the lottery in the next month, my husband will become a fulltime “homemaker” and will stay at home to take care of the baby and I’ll be trundling on back to work fulltime after a minimal maternity leave. So I’ll be one of the few lucky ones – a woman who does get a traditional 50’s wife at home.
But in making this decision, the hardest obstacle we’ve had to work around is both of our ingrained uneasiness over such a complete role reversal. Society still looks at a SAHD and thinks there’s something wrong with a man who chooses to stay at home – like he can’t cut it in the real world. Unlike women who make the same choice. Then there’s the difficulty in rejoining the workforce. Though women typically suffer from large gaps in employment history on their resume, employers are becoming more understanding. I don’t see that happening with men.
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But in making this decision, the hardest obstacle we’ve had to work around is both of our ingrained uneasiness over such a complete role reversal.
Consider yourselves lucky, then. The hardest obstacle we’ve had to work around is other people’s ingrained prejudices.
Robert, the problem is that you’re making absolutist statements. Many people CAN order their lives and give up material comforts to achieve certain goals. Many people can’t, especially when you look at the long-term view: opportunity costs, the costs of risks, and so on. Paying cash for a doctor visit is far different than coming up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover the treatment of a closed-head injury.
I’m sure the men-who-want-to-marry-stupid-women thing happens, and the women-aren’t-interested-in-marriage thing happens as well, but I’ll throw my own two cents in to the pot.
Perhaps women are becoming socially conditioned to expect men to leave. Every man has mother issues and every woman has daddy issues, although to call them issues sort of presumes they will be problems when that is not necessarily the case. Basic psychology tells us that we learn how to relate to the world at large from our parents at an extremely early developmental stage. The first two years are fundamental in shaping our personalities and how we approach life.
We are looking at the first massive generation of both men and women who are of marrying age who are children of divorce. In staggering numbers. And divorce rates in the last 30 years have skyrocketed. If enough women watch their single mothers raise them and feed them without a man around or with rotating men around, what does that tell them about the stability of inter-gender relationships?
That attitude and behavior can be overcome, but if you go into a relationship with the expectation that someone will leave you, they typically will. You sort of get what you ask for. So how many relationships die on the way to the altar because one or the other of the parties is expecting the other to leave?
How affordable is the therapy needed to overcome one’s psychological problems, especially given today’s economy and the strangehold of HMO’s on insurance companies and the uninsured?
In short, I don’t see good things for the institution of marriage at large.
On the other hand, perhaps once we are all completely fucked up we can go into relationships with more realistic expectations and we can learn to deal with our collective fucked-up-ness.
Marriage is an old fashioned-arrangement so of course men will chose an old-fashioned woman to take into one…
I guess it means we just have to look for other arrangements to satisfy our need for compansionship, children, financial stability, etc.,
Because there are no men who wish to marry except the old-fashioned type?
Gremlin, I actually don’t think so. Fathers, even with the high divorce rates, are around a lot more than they ever were in the past. In the past, men had the chance to check out mentally from bad marriages and just be scarce, which meant that kids had little access. Even men in happy marriages were expected to be distant observers in child-rearing activities.
My parents are divorced and I can tell you now that I still had more access to my dad than they did to theirs. I have a world of fond memories of my dad doing stuff with us that their dads would have never done–dad making dinner with us at his feet, taking us to the park, having us with him when he went to friends’ houses, picking us up from school, the whole nine yards. Feminist innovations have made it so that dads take on at least some more of the childcare duties, and that I think has more significance than the divorce rate on whether or not kids get exposure to their fathers.
The whole study isn’t saying what people say it does.
Asking if someone would rather marry their boss or their assistant is *not* the same thing as asking if they would prefer to marry someone with the equivalent job but with no business relationship.