One in four women now earns more than her husband. And that's subverting relationships for reasons couples often openly disdain. It all comes down to irrational expectations about the exercise of power in the relationship.
Although Ozzie and Harriet have long since died as icons of our intimate arrangements, the notion that they symbolized that its a husband's duty to bring home the bacon -- lives on, quite subversively, deep inside our heads. Typically, it resides there outside of awareness, having been absorbed from the culture before we ever gave much thought to gender roles -- although it shapes our individual identities as men and women.
So when she brings home the bacon, family dynamics may take a turn for the worse over injured identities and gender-role expectations in all their stunning irrationality. At the very least, the effort to replace economics with a new glue for the relationship can take what feels like endless negotiation. In extreme cases, couples may end up sacrificing their relationship to attitudes both partners openly condemn.
In the traditional order of things, money brought with it the authority -- recognized by both partners -- of he who had it to exercise power. In the changing order of things, everything symbolized by money -- value, status, power, and the potential for independence -- becomes a hidden issue in the household when money switches gender.
This is not a matter quietly swept under the cultural rug much longer. Seven million American women earned more than their mates in 1993, up from five million in 1987. Last year, a very substantial 22.3 percent of all working wives outearned their husbands -- an achievement all the more remarkable since women overall make about 70 cents to the male dollar.
The uppermost echelon of women in corporate America have seen their salaries double over the past 10 years, to an average of $187,000, according to a 1993 study. Yet only 69 percent of the female movers and shakers at major U.S. corporations are married, versus 91 percent of males. Sure, getting to the top requires a sacrifice of time that might otherwise be spent cultivating intimate relationships; what's not clear is how much of the marriage gap reflects relationship difficulties high-earning women face just because of their salaries.
Among those who marry, female executives now pull in 66 percent of their household income. But all families increasingly rely on the woman's paycheck to keep the household humming. Layoffs, the high cost of living, medical expenses, falling male wages, the desire for a better lifestyle, and assorted other economic factors have made dual-income families a reality for 59 percent of married couples in the United States.
Working women report that their ability to bring home a paycheck increases feelings of power, improves self-esteem, and gives them fulfillment and independence. But they also sense that society as a whole has yet to embrace female earning power as a positive. They point to the largely negative media treatment of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Zoe Baird, and other women whose high earnings have been well publicized.
SOCIETY AND STEREOTYPES
"There is a cultural stereotype that a powerful woman is less feminine, desirable, and attractive than one who isn't," says Cloe Madanes, marriage therapist, and author of The Secret Meaning of Money: How It Binds Together Families in Love, Envy, Compassion or Anger (Jossey Bass, 1994). "While a successful male is lauded for his achievements, the successful woman fears losing the love of her spouse, of her children, and of her parents if she appears too financially strong. Heaven forbid she earn more than her husband -- or worse, her father."
"The societal norm still says there is something wrong with a man if a woman is making more money," says psychologist Dorothy Cantor, Psy. D., coauthor of Women and Power: The Secrets of Leadership (Houghton Mifflin, 1992). "But as more couples earn equal pay, the gap will begin to dose, and such notions will begin to fall off."
MANGLED MASCULINITY
Part of the problem lies with men. Working women have reconstructed the definition of womanhood, says Ronald Levant, Ed.D., a marriage and family therapist in Belmont, Massachusetts, who also teaches at Harvard Medical School. But "men have been slower to respond to the change in women's roles, in part because it challenges the notions of male privilege and entitlement. Males aren't ready to give up their advantage in terms of earnings and social power." The idea of women having the upper hand in any way, he says, threatens traditional male identity.
"He feels less of a man -- even though he would rather not feel this way," adds Barry Dym, Ph.D., a family psychologist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, detailing the confusing calculus of cultural roles. "It violates the imagery we have of ourselves as providers."
The traditional measure of a man -- the model we're still working from -- is what he achieves in the world, which, when reduced to a common denominator, is how much he makes. "Money is so charged in American culture," says Dym. "It's our only reckoning of status. People are more willing to talk to me about their sex life than they are about their income."
When she earns more, he feels unimportant. And often anxious, sensing that the marriage itself is threatened, as though the old premise of the relationship no longer applies because she doesn't need the protection of his earning power. He now has to invent for himself a new platform on which to base the relationship.
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