Now working on her PhD in English at Memorial University, Hurley said she would marry a man with a lower status, but her expectations fit with what Byrne and Barling found in their study. PhD student Melanie Hurley says she would be in a relationship with a man of lower status, but he'd have to pull his weight around the house.
"Women are entering education at higher levels: MBAs, law school, medicine, and we don't want that to stop." "But be realistic about the changing roles in society." "We are socialized to think that men are the higher breadwinners," Byrne said.
It's a simple reality that more women than men are graduating from university in Canada these days. "We found that when husbands provided their spouses with tangible support - child care, domestic work, elder support, it signals to the wives, 'I'm supported at home.'" "I don't want people to think, 'I earn more than my husband, our marriage is doomed,'" she said. It could be for financial barriers." 'Those couples tend to be OK'īut Byrne said just because a woman has a better job and greater status than her husband, it doesn't have to be a miserable marriage. There are so many reasons why people stay in marriages, even unhappy ones," she said. "There's a whole host of reasons why people leave a marriage. (Glenn Payette/CBC News)īyrne said that some of the women surveyed had left their marriages, while others stayed. She says the concept of "higher status" is relative.Īccording to census numbers, 60 per cent of graduates from universities in Canada between the ages of 25-29 are women. "They had consulted a lawyer." What does 'higher status' mean, anyway?īyrne and Barling surveyed women in executive positions, CEOs, and university dean-level positions in married or common-law heterosexual relationships.īyrne said you can also put doctors, lawyers, principals, even teachers on that list, depending on the status of the men they married.
"They talked to their friends about potentially leaving their spouse," she said. "They were feeling greater levels of conflict in their marriage."īyrne said some of the women were taking things further. They were also less happy in their marriage." "What we found was women whose husbands did not have the same status levels as theirs … were embarrassed and resentful for it. The methodology of the study was focused on interviews with 209 women in high status positions. Alyson Byrne says that while her study shows the resentment some women have for the men in their lives, it's not all doom and gloom for relationships.