Be ready to have serious discussions about the two body problem when you're in a relationship with an ambitious woman. When opportunities come, someone's going to have to take the hit and swallow the disruption. Men are accustomed to having their way in these matters -- this is not necessarily the case anymore.
In my case, it forced me to rejig my career plans and strike out on my own. I'm far, far, far better off for having done so (and so, more importantly, is my family), but at the time, it did seem like the end of the world.
Yep, this is the rarely-discussed side of finding an "independent"/"ambitious" partner. It seems great on paper to be "equal" but it's not so simple. I've broken off relationships over partners refusing to even humor a discussion.
Thankfully the person I married is far more willing to face my ambitions and discuss compromises and other options. We've run the gamut from me pursuing med school to SAHM-hood (and SAHD for him, too) - which, despite society generally looking down on childrearing, I think it's possible and great for someone to be ambitious about it.
Alimony is a bit amusing to consider from my perspective, then. It's being seen here and elsewhere as a bit of a "woman takes my hard-earned money" thing. I could easily think the opposite! I'm not sure all these people would necessarily appreciate being on the end of that kind of criticism if they made any sacrifices for my ambition that created an imbalance :) And with my relationship and aiming to work with my partner as much as possible for the benefit of our family, I wouldn't begrudge spousal support so easily, even if we split acrimoniously.
If you are actually married, I encourage you to reconsider very carefully what you bring to your marriage, what your wife brings to the marriage, and whether you have truly built a two-way marriage. The day I did this was surprising.
Personally, I went from "she's slacking while I'm busting my ass" to "we are both very, very tired at the end of the day for very good reasons". The mutual increase in respect and empathy afterwards was noticeable.
I'm not sure the comment you're replying to has that issue. They said:
> Without my partners support I couldn't handle my 60+ hours of high stress work each week.
So within the marriage, they're perfectly happy with the split (or at least that's a reasonable read of their comment).
They're saying that if a divorce happened, alimony laws would require them to continue working long hours to keep up their income, even though they lost the partnership benefits of the marriage that make such a workweek possible.
I have a feeling that a lot of the people ripping on alimony in this thread and elsewhere on the 'net were/are not ready for the deprioritization of self and concomitant promotion of "us"[1] inherent in marriage.
[1] Note use of "us" and not "other". You aren't putting the other person on a pedestal here!
So you're not a location independent entrepreneur/freelancer?
I was talking about this with my girlfriend recently. She's leaving the city in a year to do graduate studies. I'm a mostly location independent entrepreneur. But, leaving Canadian tax residency is complicated, and there are some big advantages to the fixed office setup I have here, because I do some video production.
I was thinking of keeping my residence here, but frequently traveling to visit her. There's some types of work I can do quite easily on the go. I'll only find out how well that works once we actually do it.
I spent eight years or so working at an investment bank in NYC on the technology side of things while my wife finished up grad school. The pay was good, but the hours and schedule rigidity were not.
My wife eventually got a really good professorship halfway around the world. We had a couple of titanic fights about what taking this job would entail -- and we eventually came to the conclusion that we would come out ahead if I quit and started my own company. I'm concentrating on building a portfolio of services now that will provide cashflow for a bigger project later on -- and it's going well. I get to play with the kids all day, write code when I feel like it (mostly late at night) and focus on getting healthier (I've lost about 20 pounds in the last year...no more stress eating on the job). Location doesn't matter because Internet: last year we spent 8 months in Doha, 2 months bumming around Europe and 1 each with family in Los Angeles and Bangladesh.
Honestly, I'm surprised more techies don't go down this road.
We moved to a jurisdiction without income tax, so we were only taxed on our earned income above a certain threshold. As US citizens, it was a reasonably lucrative move.
If you do contract development, it's really not that risky. If anything, I'd argue it's riskier not having that option available. Even though I've taken full-time jobs on occasion, always having the option to fall back on contracting is an amazing safety net.
It worked out for us, but I would be peddling bad advice if I didn't add that I don't recommend doing it without a substantial financial backstop already in place.
After a certain income threshold, yes. The income threshold is actually quite high: 103K of income earned abroad per person in a family is exempt from US taxation, which is a substantial savings.
I'm not comfortable disclosing my personal situation in any greater detail in public -- but I'm happy to chat about it over email if you are interested!
The year I took off for paternity leave was simultaneously the greatest ("wow, it's fun spending time with my kid!") and worst ("holy crap, we've been leaving women to deal with this?") thing I've ever done.
I seriously suspect a lot of jabs directed at feminism would die away if more men took paternity leave and used it as directed (and not, say, as a way to goof off for an extended period of time).
She might be too ambitious to have kids (or might want to wait until her career is sufficiently advanced). This might be fine for some, but not for others. Also, the global implications of this are described in this documentary[0]
The other issue is location/lifestyle: even if all else is agreed, it often becomes impossible to decide where to live (or to stay in one place) when both partners are ambitious.
I am not passing value judgement here - different strokes for different folks. But the strokes must match for a married couple, if it is going to work out.
Many women pay men alimony these days. I know a handful of female MDs whose ex-husbands ''supported'' them through medical school and are now receiving quite generous spousal support.
The real problem is a divorce system laden with incentives for couples to rip each other to shreds, with lawyers and others (follow the money) only too happy to help. Watch 'Divorce Corp' on Netflix. It may change the way you think about marriage and divorce in the United States.
Alimony comes after divorce. I am questioning the validity of something that comes even before that..marriage. I have often questioned the usefulness of marriage in the modern world. What is its function other than the religious aspect of it? There is certainly no moral clause to it..fidelity doesn't have anything to do with a piece of legal paper. Does the state benefit by validating and continuing to reward what is essentially was born as a religious contract between two people. Personally..I think a lot of issues from gender inequality to lgbt inequalities can be resolved if the artificial social contract of 'marriage' loses its validation from courts and the state.
Arguably one of the benefits of marriage lies expressly in the expense of divorce. It's a way of precommitting people to working through the rough patches in a marriage instead of splitting at the first sign of trouble. If you look at it strictly from a game theoretic viewpoint, there's definitely value in having a contracted cost of separation. The tough part is in making sure this cost isn't too high (as it used to be) nor too low (that people run immediately).
The social benefit of staying together instead of splitting up at the first sign of trouble is to raise progeny together as a bonded pair.
Birds do this better than human beings and that's why they are usually bond for life. It is expensive to raise offsprings and it is not worth expending energy to gather resources to raising offsprings that aren't your own.
So..from a game theory point of view..it is not about divorces or alimony but the ability or inclination(or lack thereof) to be monogamous.
Earliest mention of alimony occurs in the code of Hammurabi..wherein a man shall return the dowry of the woman along with a portion of his property ..but only when the woman has borne his offsprings. And until the children have been reared and the property/monies split evenly amongst mother and children, she cannot seek another suitor or marital partner or have other children.
Alimony comes from necessity ..it is necessary in a society that is rife with inequalities. If men and women were equal in a marriage, there would be no need for alimony.
In the olden days, a woman entered a marriage with a dowry. In gold or currency or property. The dowry was meant to be her financial nest egg and the man has no rights over it. Entire dynasties and kingdoms were based on marriages and dowries.
And then it was the time of churches to decree what is moral and what wasn't. Divorces were all initially only due to infidelity and often by the man. Alimony became a safeguard so a man wouldn't profit from his philandering ways. If the fault lies with the woman, the woman forfeits the right to collect alimony.
With no fault divorces in our modern times, alimony became part of the divorce settlement. If we don't have divorces, there won't be alimonies..if we don't have a marriages, there won't be divorces.
Therefore, the only way eliminate gender inequalities is to eliminate the institution of marriage.
Times have changed. What if..as a thought experiment, we revamp all manners of social contracts. We will have to reconsider the basic human right to procreate to perpetuate the species. It should become a responsibility and a privilege to be earned..not a birthright to be exercised by all. And also eliminate the institution of marriage.
I didn't mention alimony at all in my comment and would rather not delve into it, so I'm not sure why you fixated on it. Divorce can be costly even without any sort of alimony (personally, I think it is mostly an outdated concept).
That being said, while I agree that historically marriage was all about children I do think there are social benefits to bonded pairs which extend beyond raising children. For example, single people are more likely to commit crimes.
Seriously, this paper really surprises me. I find ambition very attractive, especially as a signal for a bunch of other personality traits (intelligence, seriousness, drive, etc.).
I understand that there's men who don't, but it really feels like they're either hung up on weird gender norms or trying to find a method of asserting dominance.
Women rule in divorce court. Legal representation quality is a fallacy. You are at the mercy of a judge, regardless how good you think your lawyer is. Been there!
I don't have access to the full paper, but I'm surprised to see that there's no definition of "ambitious." Is it ambitious to want to start a company or to want to raise children successfully? Perhaps women have a different definition of "ambitious", therefore men are trying to hold up women to their standard.
> "The questionnaire asks how often students are willing to travel for work, the number of hours per week they are willing to work, and their desired compensation. They were also asked to rate their ambition relative to their most recent work colleagues and their tendency to lead in day-to-day interactions on a 1-to-5 scale."
Women have been trained to be a timid, subservient partner to men for a millennia, and it's hard to get away from. The answer is the same for women and men: know your value, constantly strive to improve your value, and command that you get paid your value. Also, know your interaction with business is just that, business. Be more willing to cut a business relationship than a personal one. Don't blame yourself if someone doesn't see your value, just find someone who does.
I'd say that the "timid, subservient" bit is mostly an illusion and male fantasy ;) It is true that women, in many cultures, were trained to focus on family and reproduction. And men were encouraged to "do great things". And to die in wars :(
Maybe there's some biological basis for that. But mostly, I think, it was just historical accident. Driven by technological limitations, perhaps. And for sure, it's all in flux now :)
I don't think it's a male fantasy. I also don't think it's biological. Just look at how women and men are socialized from a young age.
Example: up until recently, many young girls in the west grew up on Disney princesses. Rewatch the movies, and pay attention to the female protagonists in those movies being active vs passive agents. Most are passive -- they're simply dealt a series of events (which generally happen only because they are beautiful or otherwise intrinsically valuable, not because of how they act).
Being exposed to those narratives from a very young age surely has an effect on identity, personality formation, etc.
I was arguing that how societies got to that point, over the past few millennia, was an historical accident. Or a series of accidents. There have been matriarchal cultures, for sure. With modern military technology, there's arguably no reason why they couldn't become dominant. But just a few decades ago, there was.
Not only that, but her mother was brought up that way, and her mother, and her mother, etc. The Civil War in the US broke that mold without a doubt, as certainly did WWII, but the people who make the rules and make the propaganda love inertia and keep trying to push women back into that traditional role, even though it is unhealthy in today's knowledge economy.
As I say above, it depends what you are optimising for. Not that long ago, a typical single-income household could afford a house, a car, a couple of vacations a year and to send the kids to college and to save some. Now a typical dual-income household is struggling to make ends meet. I don't have any strong feelings either way on whether the man or the woman should be the breadwinner; that's up to each individual couple to decide between them. But it's unclear how making dual-income the norm is "healthy" for anyone.
>But it's unclear how making dual-income the norm is "healthy" for anyone.
It's already the norm and has been for quite a while now. I'm specifically speaking on women getting paid their value. I mean if both partners have to work 40s, then might as well maximize profit on that labor.
It may be the "norm," but their point was whether the dual earner approach is optimal. I.e., whether it "should" be the norm. Truth is dual earner started as a way to try and vastly increase the household income. Unfortunately all it did was double the supply of labor and drive down real wages. This isn't a gendered argument. We would all likely be better off if every couple chose one of them to work the 9 to 5, and the other one to manage the home and finances (and pursue side ventures). If this happened we'd hope to see real wages increase for those left in the labor market. To some degree we're already seeing this. Labor participation among males is at its lowest point in decades and still falling. Though it's still early days so real wages haven't yet increased to compensate. Unfortunately this may not happen because corporate America is used to plentiful cheap labor, and as the labor supply diminishes they're pursuing automation strategies. In other words, corporate America has options for adjusting to the ebbs and flows of labor supply which they used to lack.
Even now the dual earner household exists because many people believe it improves their lifestyle. But let's be honest, most people wouldn't want to work if they didn't have to. Sure, in the absence of the need to make a paycheck they'd likely still do productive, valuable activities, but very few like to work for corporate America. Most jobs suck. Most managers suck. Most of the time pay sucks. Having a job isn't (or shouldn't be) special for either gender, it's a necessity to whatever point it takes to keep a roof over your head.
Maybe when the robots take all our jobs we'll finally find a better way of living.
In my job I sometimes conduct software usability research. One of the first things you notice when you do this is that without connection to demography, and almost without exception, men will blame the system under test when they can't use it, while women will blame themselves. There are deep-seated issues in gender identity that I think are implied by this, and which this "Acting Wife" study is consistent with.
If that's the case then why do married women not change their responses? If it's just a matter of "training" then why would getting married affect the answers? A simpler explanation is that single women realize that the type of men they would like to attract tend to prefer more feminine women. Married women don't have to care since they're not trying to attract a man.
Now sure, no woman should be forced to care about being feminine. Nor should she be forced to care about beauty or any other traits that the men she wishes to attract like. But at the same time, men shouldn't be forced to like any certain person either and if they happen to favor more feminine women, then that's 100% their choice to make.
Wow, your post was dead (I vouched it), but you are exactly right. Everyone in this thread is missing the point. Shocking to see the one scientifically valid interpretation of the article downvoted below threadshold. I thought we were pro-science on HN?
If women were just "choosing" to approach their career in a different way, or had just been brainwashed, then they would react the same regardless of who is around.
What this study shows is that single women expect single men to react badly to their ambition. Not that the women actually have less ambition. Yet so many in this thread are discussing this as if it's evidence that women have different inclinations. Incredible confirmation bias.
I'm tempted to get this tatoo'd on my arm and bring it out for every personal/societal argument I encounter. It's something that's so easy to forget yet so important.
For the benefit of people who don't have "tsundere" in their daily vocabulary like Chris2048:
"Tsundere (ツンデレ?, pronounced [tsɯndeɽe]) is a Japanese term for a character development process that describes a person who is initially cold and even hostile towards another person before gradually showing a warmer side over time. The word is derived from the terms tsun tsun (ツンツン?), meaning to turn away in disgust, and dere dere (デレデレ?) meaning to become 'lovey dovey'. Originally found in Japanese bishōjo games, the word is now part of the otaku moe phenomenon, reaching into other media such as maid cafes, anime, manga, novels, and even mass media. The term was made popular in the visual novel Kimi ga Nozomu Eien."
In the current climate in western culture, it's more like women know exactly what they want and how to demand it, the problem is more that it is given to them without challenging them enough, thus preventing personal and professional growth. Right now, I get to witness how a coworker has to give private lessons to students in the evenings, beside working 100% as a software engineer, because he is forced to pay for the life of his ex-wife who moved in with her new boyfriend. He is financially ruined and barely able to make ends meet.
This story is not realistic enough to be credible, nor is it reasonable evidence as a counterpoint. "Pay for the life of his ex-wife"? What does that even mean? Is it court-ordered alimony? I can hardly believe a judge would order alimony that is "financially ruinous" for either party, and if it is the case your coworker can appeal the judgement.
Even if your story were true, it has nothing to do with the climate of western culture, nor is it reasonable to extract a broad judgement of women from this anecdote. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it also seems from your comment that you don't personally know the woman whose intentions you're inferring (from the evidence of a biased party).
That story is one that sadly happens all too often. It's even worse for the poor, who are not engineers as in parent's story, you will get thrown into a jail or a prison if you are unable to pay because your sources of income are too small or to irregular: https://qz.com/397579/the-divorce-divide-how-the-us-legal-sy...
Do you honestly believe none of these people had not tried to appeal the judgement? And if the appeal court rules that the initial judgment stays then what?
The purpose of alimony is to ensure neither party falls into poverty as a result of the divorce. If your friend is struggling as a software engineer, it's clear he's living above his means.
But that's beside the point. My comment wasn't an attempt to engage in discussion. I was simply explaining why (I thought) your comment was being downvoted: it was vague, not very credible sounding, did not support your claim about women, and didn't contribute to the discussion. From your neighboring comment, it's clear you think you're doing a moral service by writing that comment, when (IMO) it's just a poorly written comment. I would be more specific about what in the comment could be improved, but I think you would just reply with "Wut?"
I can often estimate what HN's reaction will be to my comments and whether or not I get downvoted. However, I think it is of utmost importance not to censor myself and also spell out unpopular things that I am convinced of, even if it means that I am bleeding karma. It means I have challenged someone's opinion and they did not like it. That actually means that my message achieved its goal.
I think the assumption is that MBA students are more ambitious than normal. Students often choose the MBA degree because they are unsure what they really want to do. An MBA is seen as a generally useful degree which could lead to a high paying job in many different fields. Limiting the study to students who had made that choice, for whatever reason, could very well have an effect on the study's outcome.
I fear instead the MBA and post-undergrad route has become the new "safe way to go". Extend your student loans, stay with your friends from college, keep going out on the weekends, keep a relative life of leisure (subjective, the course loads of some people are egregiously harder then others but from what I've seen it tends to be similar to undergrad for most).
In my experience, it is deathly hard to meet ambitious women. I've known many ambitious men, but women in my experience seem to lack the desire to really go all out in their careers.
I am sure there are biological factors, including variations in androgenic hormones etc. But I do believe it is largely cultural and this study matches what I've seen in my own life quite closely.
This is unfortunate because I am attracted to more ambitious women.
I had a direct report for years. She was very smart, capable, effective, and a great thinking partner on my leadership team. She also got an unfair (IMO) amount of blowback from her interactions with other leaders.
"Rough", "abrasive", "difficult" were the common labels. While there were things she may have done differently, I don't think I'd have seen the same blowback from an identically-acting male leader. I suspect that her experience is common and that if it's gender biased (I think it is), this continual molding could tend to create the outcomes you observe.
Thought experiment: How often do we tell young girls "Don't be so bossy" as compared to how often we say that to young boys?
Or "Imagine that you just heard a mom tell her kid, 'Don't be so bossy!' What gender is the child that she is addressing?"
> How often do we tell young girls "Don't be so bossy"
I can't say, but every time I wind up watching a children's show targeted at girls (usually in a lobby or exercise room), the protagonists are all highly assertive and there's often heavy-handed promotion of the subtext "boys are dumb and useless and it's OK to be a complete asshole to them if it gets you what you want."
If you saw the exact same content in a show you perceived to be targeted at boys, how certain are you that you'd think the same subtext existed with the gender roles reversed?
When was the last time you saw a children's TV show endorse violence towards women? It was only a few month ago, in a hotel exercise room, that I saw a non-self-defense kick-to-the-balls presented in a positive light (giggles from the protagonists, affirming + explictly gendered statement from the narrator). I was upset, but not shocked, because I've seen it before.
Hopefully it's just part of the natural swing towards over-correction and it'll all settle out in another few decades, but a corresponding overcorrection in corporate policy could get ugly. Psychopaths do well enough in the corporate environment as it is.
I have a friend who mentioned his 'kick in the balls' theory..it goes something like ..every chick flick will have a 'kick in the balls'(literally) slap stick scene because it is cathartic to women and that Hollywood knows that and will cater to that unconscious trigger for laughs. I started looking for it in movies after that and I have to admit that it's true that there would be at least one hurt male genitalia routine. Remarkable.
>Imagine that you just heard a mom tell her kid, 'Don't be so bossy!' What gender is the child that she is addressing?
Imagine if you heard a parent tell their child "don't be an asshole". What gender is the child? I think it's true that women are held to a different standard when it comes to assertiveness, but the existence of a female-specific insult is not evidence of that. There are plenty of male-specific insults of the same nature. Asshole, dick, douche, prick, bastard, etcetera
I agree with your counter-example for boys. It's a good example.
I do however think that this might lead to girls being discouraged from becoming bosses (a bad thing[1]) while boys being discouraged from becoming assholes (a good thing).
> I don't think I'd have seen the same blowback from an identically-acting male leader.
Let's take a step back and remove gender from the discussion.
My experience working with senior leadership has been to get results you end up stepping on toes. As such you get called all sorts of things.
It's also my experience that the way a person acts towards their boss is different from the way they act with their peers which again is different than the way they act towards their subordinates.
With this in mind are you sure it had anything to do with sexism?
women in my experience seem to lack the desire to really go all out in their careers
It depends what you are optimising for. If men "go all out" but experience burnout, stress ulcers, depression, carpal tunnel syndrome, problems from bad diet and poor posture and lack of fresh air and exercise, yadda yadda then are women wise or foolish to emulate them? What about the life expectancy gap that no-one likes to talk about?
Consider that many men who sacrifice their health to "ambition" are doing so to provide for or at least to impress a woman. Who is really exploiting who?
This. Much of the conversation on this thread has made work sound like a hallowed calling, something to be prized and cherished. But it's just a job people. And it's equally brutal on the minds and bodies of men and women alike. I hope my daughters can find a better way than just working some pointless corporate gig for a paycheck. I don't know what that looks like yet, but I do know the world will look a lot different in a decade or two when they become adults.
i didn't see any value judgments in the gp. it's common knowledge these days that a career could very well jeopardize your physical and mental health. i think that was the exact point gp was trying to make - women exhibit less sacrificial behavior in pursuing their careers.
I think you may be misreading the study. Based on the abstract, my takeaway was that women are not less ambitious, but that single women feel social pressure to appear to be less ambitious. Which does eventually play into what actions they take. But the fact that non-single women do _not_ follow the same pattern is strong evidence that the concealment of ambition is a social issue, not a biological difference.
It's actually quite easy to meet ambitious women in a major city. I mean, realistically, they are so ambitious they probably neither have the time nor need to meet you.
Maybe it's the other way round - maybe it's the women who are "normally" ambitious, but it's the men who feel more pressure to be successful and thus ambitious (because women seem to value that more than men, in average, as far as sexual relationships are concerned), so you see more ambitious men than women.
I'm guessing both effects have an effect in reality.
I have several close friends who are extremely ambitious women. By and large, they are too busy working 80+ hour weeks as surgical residents or profs trying to get tenure to spend any time dating. Those who are married met their partners earlier in life when they were less busy (my wife and I met while in school, for example) or through work (plenty of couples form during residency).
If you want to meet ambitious women, find ways to interact with careers that require ambition. Typically something that requires an advanced education will have ambitious people by default.
What this study shows is that you've met a lot of ambitious women, but they pretended to not be ambitious around you because they expected you to react badly.
i think down grading your worth is negative in the partner market. and that is why they are single. or that they rated themself acording to social rank to not piss off their class mates.
It seems easier to get along with someone who has a career and therefore similar goals and troubles and life-rhythm.
And a wife with a career is less likely to look for long term alimony in the event of a divorce.