Career women & marriage

Joyner-Kersee's outstanding Olympic career included six medals, three of them gold. Peter Read Miller (click to enlarge photo)ANSWER true or false to the following statements:

• The more a woman achieves professionally, the less likely she is to marry.

• There's a so-called "success penalty" that puts females with high-status jobs at a disadvantage in the dating game.

• High-achieving women are more likely to intimidate the opposite sex than turn them on.

If you're like most people, you probably answered "true" to the above assertions.
After all, it's what our culture tells us about relationships. Just look at the movies "The Devil Wears Prada," in which Meryl Streep'scharacter winds up divorced because of her career focus, and "Spanglish," in which the husband falls for the maid over his more professionally accomplished wife. This message about the kind of women that men consider attractive is so pervasive that even before girls hit high school, some start dumbing down. And when we look around at all the successful single women we know personally, it's hard sometimes not to wonder why so many have such a difficult time finding a mate. Also, some of the most successful women in the United States - Oprah Winfrey, Secretary of State Condoleezza Ricefor example - aren't hitched.

Then, there are all those pessimistic studies and media reports that leave many an upwardly mobile single gal quivering inside her cubicle. Last year, a book by one of my favorite columnists, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, helped to keep the notion alive that successful, career-oriented women weren't exactly major contenders in the dating game. Dowd, who's single, wrote in "Are Men Really Necessary? When Sexes Collide" (Berkley, $15): "Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to. Unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to."

And what about that ridiculous editorial on Forbes.com last summer in which the editor of the magazine advised men who wanted to get ahead not to marry career women? Michael Noer wrote, "Whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career."

These assumptions are enough to make a woman want to trade in her pumps for a pair of flip-flops. But hang on, my goal-oriented sisters. There's a new book out that says that all the talk about men preferring to marry down is a whole lot of hooey. It's called "Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women" (Simon & Schuster, $24).

Written by a social scientist, it crunches U.S. census numbers, as well as a specially commissioned Harris Interactive Survey, to conclude that high achieving females do wind up marrying - they just do it later.

"I think there are certain elements in the media that like to characterize women, 'you can be successful in your career or you can diaper a baby. But you can't do both,' " said Christine B. Whelan, author of "Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women."

Whelan, who has a Ph.D. from Oxford University, said she decided to investigate prevailing attitudes toward career women and marriage after reading a Dowd piece in the Times on the subject.

"The social scientist in me knew better than to accept that conventional wisdom without doing some research," Whelan said.

And what she discovered is that the women she calls SWANS - strong women achievers, no spouse - aren't destined to be, well, old maids. In fact, once they get into their 30s, her numbers show that they begin to marry at a faster rate than their counterparts.

"There's a 75 percent chance that a single, 30-year-old with an advanced degree or who is successful in her career will be a bride compared to a 66 percent chance that a 30-year-old without a college degree will marry," Whelan told me yesterday. "That really puts conventional wisdom on its head, doesn't it?

"I think the reason why this conventional wisdom is so ingrained is that for our mothers' and our grandmothers' generations, it was true," she continued.

"I think men are looking for an equal, for a life partner. They're not looking for a submissive woman. Men aren't looking for someone to play fetch with them. They are looking for their equal... This generation is one where men have routinely seen women in positions of power, as role models. They don't have a sense of femininity that doesn't include career success."

And that's a good thing for all of us. Including Whelan, who's getting married this summer. link