Women have outpaced men in acquiring education for a few decades now, with 185 women earning college degrees at age 22 for every 100 men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And more women are now employed because men are more likely to work in industries that are declining or cyclical. An essay by Don Peck in The Atlantic reported that in November nearly a fifth of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 did not have jobs, the highest figure since 1948.
How might these changes affect decisions to marry? Should women alter their expectations of what a husband brings to a marriage?
* Betsey Stevenson, economist, University of Pennsylvania
* Stephanie Coontz, historian, Evergreen State College
* Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Institute for American Values
* Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist, Rutgers University
People generally don’t seem to get the idea that as more people earn a college degree – the degree becomes worth less. To think otherwise is to be living in the fairyland of ponzi schemes and chain letters.
If men still control most of the world’s money, I have a hard time believing that we are watching the creation of a level playing field. The fact that more women are getting college degrees doesn’t automatically mean that the women will get better jobs. Yes, maybe better paying jobs than illiterate men – but not jobs that will support an entire family. Is it possible the future of North American labor will be in glorified secretarial work done by women who worked very hard to get a diploma – diplomas revered in the past, but not so much now? The labor movement is dead and I don’t see it coming back to life – not with well educated, very hard-working women in India ready to take on any office job at a distance. Or, as my daughter-in-law saw at the insurance company she worked at for 16 yrs. – groups of woman were flown in from India to work midnight-to eight for six weeks at a time. My daughter-in-law saw the writing on the wall and quit after she found a new position.
It is naive to think that a college degree will protect women from becoming wage-slaves, or that women will no longer find men who have the means to provide them with a safe environment to bring children into the world more attractive than ne’er-do-wells.