What happens when women are in the majority

We now know the answer: marriage crisis !

Willie picked up The Economist with the cover headline "What happens when women are the majority in the work place."  I stole the issue from him.

We predicted the marriage crisis two years ago. Now a story in The New York Times on the marriage crisis is bouncing all over the web, according to one of my favorite Gen Y bloggers, 24 year old Rob Pitingolo.

But this is simple math! If two out of every three college graduates are women (they are) and most all want to marry college educated men (most all do), then half of the women will not find an eligible mate and have to settle for a high school graduate.

Would not gender equity (our position) benefit both females and males? Where do the feminists stand on this issue? We are waiting feminists......  

Comments

[Rob]

But this is simple math! If two out of every three college graduates are women (they are) and most all want to marry college educated men (most all do), then half of the women will not find an eligible mate and have to settle for a high school graduate.

I think it's slightly more complicated than these simple numbers. If women all married men of the same age, this might be true. It might also be true if women have no age preference. But it seems that women overwhelmingly choose to marry older men. This means that they remove themselves from the marriage market earlier than men, balancing out the equation. Since women also live longer than men, this arrangement also produces more female widows. Nevertheless, it seems that women are less concerned about their potential widowness decades away when they first marry.

Perhaps there are women who, as young college students, wind-up marrying a high-school graduate because he can provide financial security much earlier than her male peer from college, even if she says she prefers a college educated man in theory?

[Suzanne]

I think some feminists would say that a woman doesn't need to be married to lead a fulfilling life. Personally, as a feminist, I think that the issue goes so much deeper. We all benefit from equity in all forms. Simplistically speaking, what if the mind that is capable of coming up with a cure for cancer happens to belong to a guy? What if that guy can't get through undergrad because he's not being graded on knowledge, but on behavior? That does no good for women who may some day get cancer.

It was bad when the discriminated against women. It is no bad that they are discriminating against men.

I also want to point out how this impacts the whole 75 cents women supposedly make for every dollar a man makes. In major cities, women make more money than men until they decide to have kids. Many women (not all) decide (the women decide this) to go parttime (which I did for five years) to stay home or to otherwise shift gears to focus on their family. They take a pay cut because of this (as do men who do this.) They are usually able to do this because they are married to a man who also has a good job. If your smart guy can only get a job at Walmart, your choices when you become a mother are then severely limited.