The infidelity business is booming. In a recent interview, Noel Biderman, the CEO of Ashley Madison, a website for people seeking extramarital affairs, observed, \u201cI don\u2019t see an appetite for unfaithfulness waning around the world.\u201d\u009d Indeed, the company has 36 million members in 46 countries and is hoping to launch an IPO in London in the not too distant future.<\/p>\n
To what does Biderman attribute the company\u2019s success? \u201cFemale equality,\u201d\u009d he explained to Business Insider recently. \u201cWomen are getting greater equality and are generally getting married later than those in two or three generations ago. They are now more willing to put their marriage at risk. That\u2019s only going to increase because economic conditions for women are better and it gives them more choice.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
If an evangelical pastor had said that, he would have been denounced as a retrograde hick trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant by suggesting that women\u2019s liberation would destroy the traditional family. But Biderman can not only point to his company\u2019s bottom line but also decades of social science research to confirm his suspicions.<\/p>\n