That Old Can of Worms: Women Who Out-Earn Men

Posted by: Lauren Young on May 16

This is written by Savita Iyer-Ahrestani, a freelance financial journalist now living in The Netherlands who guest blogs for Working Parents every other Friday.

It’s always in the house but most of the time, we’re not aware of it, having stored it at the back of some closet, behind the daily logistics of our lives. We try not to take it out but then there are times when that can of worms just seems to make its own way out of the closet, and its contents rear their ugly heads.

According to a report put out at the end of last year by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than a quarter of working women in the U.S. make more than their husbands. The number has risen by two percentage points since 2000, and continues to rise steadily.

I’m one of the women included in those statistics, and until such time as my husband finishes the PhD he has been working on for the past three years, or finds a job that’s better remunerated than mine, I will remain a part of them. (You’ll find a similar tale here.)

Most of the time, I don’t even think about it. But there are other moments when being both the major breadwinner and the one (I feel) putting in the greater contribution to the smooth running of our household make me angry. Okay, I work from home – but why must I always be the one arranging and rearranging my schedule to accommodate the kids and their activities/needs? Is it right that my husband gets to disappear to a university campus all day while I’m stuck cramming work and home into my day, most of the time just about managing to meet the demands of both?

Granted, completing a doctorate is no easy task, and it is a demanding and full-time occupation. Yet I have moments in which I tend to “monetize” things, and I believe – albeit only for a brief time – that what I do is more “important” than what my husband does because it pays more.

As such, I also feel I’m “entitled” to something more – but what? I’m not totally sure.

According to an article I came across in the Boston Globe , women who out-earn their husbands by doing extremely demanding jobs, are still taking on the onus of household and child-related duties. But, the article points out, many women also are in the position they’re in because they do not want to relinquish their traditional role. They feel their husbands can’t handle the home stuff as well as they do, thereby leaving the men to fall back upon those conventional gender stereotypes.

When I’m calm and can think clearly, I realize that I am in quite an enviable position as I’ve got a husband who actually enjoys doing household related work. He may, like the best of us, shirk it when he can, but I can count on him to pitch in and go the extra mile when I need him to. Unlike another father I know who earns less than his wife, my husband doesn’t denigrate chauffering kids back home from school and to extra curricular activities as “woman’s work.” On the contrary, he has often bailed me out to the detriment of his own work when I’m on deadline or expecting a phone call, by picking up the kids from school and taking them to wherever they need to go to.

Unlike some men who might feel depressed and demoralized that their wives are earning more than them, as Donald Trump points out in a recent posting on his Trump Blog , my husband is upbeat and cheery and comfortable with who he is and where we are in life.

“With a woman bringing in more money, [a] relationship actually ends up being stronger because money always seems to make life easier,” Trump writes.

That may be true, but I’d also like to think that my husband’s attitude alone is usually enough to stuff those worms back into their can and put me back on track.

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