Saturday, January 11, 2014

Elite Women Are Becoming More Like Elite Men, Less Like Other Women

Alison Wolf's main point in The XX Factor is that women in the top fifth of the economy live lives more like their male counterparts - high education, long careers, hired help. 

In fact, if they hire help and go right back to work after they have kids, women of the top classes do not even pay a 'mommy penalty' in their earnings.  Elite women, in other words, are living more like elite men than they are like other women.

The bottom 80% of the economic structure is very gendered.  The Fortunate Fifth, though, are becoming more integrated and similar to one another.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Do the elite men and elite women have marriages/family life that are similar as well. It seems to me that elite men are far more likely to have a non-working spouse whereas elite women are more likely to be single/divorced and/or have a working spouse, but I don't have any stats to back it up.