Photo by Flickr user Eoin Gardiner. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Em & Lo report from the Institute for Public Research that really nail shut the coffin on the misogynist fantasy that women innately "hypergamous" gold-diggers.
Is there any generation that doesn’t consider itself a watershed? We’re suckers for studies that prove we were born at a true turning point. Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research — a lefty, UK-based think tank — shows that “marrying up” is becoming a thing of the past, and the change really started with women born in the 1970s (hi!). While there has been a slight rise in the number of women who “marry down” (we prefer to think of it as a rise in the number of men seeking “aspirational marriages”), the most significant change is that more and more women are choosing to marry men of a similar social status, rather than trying to “bag a rich man,” as the classy saying goes. Sorry, Don Draper.
Amongst women born in 1958, for example, 38% married “well” — and please take those distancing quote-marks seriously! 23% married someone from a poorer background, and about a third married someone of similar status. Amongst women born in 1970, the number “marrying up” dropped by 5%, and 45% married someone of similar status. And for women born between 1976 and 1981, only 16% married a Don Draper.
Source: Today on EMandLO.com
Hmm... how 'bout that "hypergamy instinct" women are supposed to have evolved according to the usual evo-psycho suspects?
A 50% drop in the number of women "marrying up" and a corresponding increase in the number marrying across would require a heck of a lot of "evolution" in a single generation. On the other hand, if women were, like, people maybe it's something more like when when have the financial, economic, and political resources to marry who they want instead of who they have to you marry who they want!
Incidentally this is really, really good news for men and (some varieties of) men's rights activists who've correctly observed that men have been socially constructed to value ourselves only as innately unattractive, possibly unlovable "walking wallets."
In other words, this information further demonstrates how bogus the bogus Two Rules of Desire really are. Especially Rule #2.
Tags:
Hi figleaf! You forgot the
Submitted by Unicorn (not verified) on Wed, 2012-04-18 23:37.Hi figleaf! You forgot the http on the em and lo link so it's failing to link properly.
Thanks, Unicorn. I've fixed
Submitted by figleaf on Thu, 2012-04-19 05:35.Thanks, Unicorn. I've fixed the links. --fl.
Actually this is a rather
Submitted by Clarence (not verified) on Mon, 2012-04-23 08:37.Actually this is a rather silly misunderstanding on your part.
A. It it assumes "hypergamy " is only expressed in terms of money which would be funny since we didn't exactly have money back when we were first separating from other primates;
B. It assumes the amount of a particular type of hypergamy is fixed, and totally not malleable based on circumstance, which is kind of weird coming from someone like you, who seems to be basically a "blank slater". In fact, we can't be sure what factors were being selected for in those matchings;
C. I haven't looked at the studies yet, but from your write up here the data is OLD, and from a time when the "wage gap" was being narrowed faster than it is today due in part to large amounts of women entering the workforce. Which you also missed something: if more women WORK, there will be fewer males that make more than they do and so, regardless of their preferences, more women (who want to get married in the first place) we be faced with less-than-ideal partners.
Seriously Figleaf, when you try to deny the existence of hypergamy, you would probably be prudent to deal with the more formal form (plenty of economics papers such as Baumeister for you to look at, plenty of evolutionary psych stuff) first.
I don't know, Clarence. The
Submitted by figleaf on Mon, 2012-04-23 11:17.I don't know, Clarence. The way I read it, it's not about cash earnings, it's about capacity to provide for one's self. If social and economic factors can effect a 50% or more change just one or two generations that suggests it's difficult to measure true levels of "genetically" selected for "hypergamy" against what now appears to be the considerable background noise of blunt, non-biological economic necessity.
But if social and economic externalities make such a big difference you have to go searching for less obvious manifestations of an effect you insist is there then... for anyone who doesn't already agree the effect is there it may be a harder sell.
Which is where we appear to be sitting in the conversation. You're saying "hypergamy" is still there, it's just that social and economic parity is covering up the most visible, previously "obvious" manifestations. I'm saying... exactly the same thing, but with a healthy dose of Occam's razor. --fl
The numbers in surveys
Submitted by Jkeys (not verified) on Sun, 2012-04-29 12:53.The numbers in surveys fluctuates up and down like waves and troffs so much I lost interest some time ago. The constant in my experience is that women are pretty much attracted to what ever maturity level they are currently and inherantly at.
Some never get past the physical attraction level while some mature out of it to practicality in their lives.
Well, they sound a bit just like men there eh? Well almost